Geoffrey de Freitas
Sir Geoffrey Stanley de Freitas KCMG ( born April 7, 1913 † August 10, 1982 in Cambridge ) was a British politician and diplomat.
Life
Geoffrey de Freitas was the son of Edith de Freitas and Anthony de Freitas. After boarding school in Haileybury in England, he studied Clare College, Cambridge. Followed two years at Yale, with a Mellon Fellowship in International Law and in 1936 on his return he met his future wife.
In 1938 he married Helen Graham Bell, with whom he had three sons and a daughter.
He practiced in London from the profession of lawyer and gained political experience as an alderman of Shoreditch. During World War II he was Squadron Leader of the Royal Air Force.
After 1945 he lived with his family in Loughton and Cambridge. 1945 elections to the House of Commons, he was elected as a candidate of Labour in the constituency of Nottingham Central. In the cabinet of Clement Attlee, he was parliamentary secretary.
As Secretary of State for Aviation, he participated in the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1947 in Lake Success. He participated in the drafting of the North Atlantic Treaty, and was involved in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
In the elections of 1950 de Freitas was a member of the House of Commons for the electoral district of Lincoln. He was State Secretary in the Ministry of Interior and held in the House of Commons acclaimed lectures. For a while, Betty Boothroyd was his assistant and remained a friend of the family.
In 1957, he chaired a meeting of the Hansard Society on parliamentary governments in West Africa. In October 1961, he was Knight. He retired on 20 December in 1961 from the House of Commons by, he applied for the sinecure of the deputy and bailiff of the Manor of Northstead. In 1961 he was briefly High Commissioner in Accra, Ghana. It was the first appointment as representative of the Labour government in the recently newly independent, former British colonies. From 1963 to 1964 he was High Commissioner in Nairobi, Kenya. There he tried to support an East African alliance of Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya.
In 1964, he accepted the offer to run for the Labour Party in the constituency of Kettering, and returned to England. In 1965, de Freitas to the Labour delegation to the Euro Europe and was from 1966 to 1969 Chairman of the Council of Europe.
From 1975 to 1979 Sir Geoffrey sat in the European Parliament.