Lord Tim Beaumont R.I.P.

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It is with great sadness that I learned of the death
on Tuesday of Tim Beaumont, Lord Beaumont of Whitley.

Tim was the sole Green Party representative in Parliament. He will be sorely missed.

He was a man of great charm and quite determination. I will miss his yearly ‘Tim Beaumont’s gleamings for the year’ which were always filled with quite humour.

A memorial service will be held at 2.30 pm on Friday 18th April at the
Church of the Holy Spirit, Narbonne Avenue, SW4.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7341044.stm

The Green Party's only peer, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, has died aged 79.

He was chairman of the Liberal Party when he joined the Lords in 1967 but then defected to the Greens in 1999.

His opposition to the Liberal Democrats' support for an increase in free trade around the world was a factor in his decision to switch.

He was "a pioneering spirit in green politics" who would be "enormously missed", said Green principal speakers Caroline Lucas and Derek Wall.

They also praised him as "a passionate defender of human rights and civil liberties".

"He worked tirelessly to put sustainable development higher up the political agenda and, in particular, to promote sustainable energy," they said, in a joint statement.

Lord Beaumont died on Wednesday at St Thomas's Hospital in London, where he had been for several weeks, a party spokesman said.

Long obituary in The Daily Telegraph:

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/04/11/db1101.xml

Here is the Wikipedia entry:

Timothy Wentworth Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley (born 22 November 1928) is a politician in the United Kingdom. He is the only person to sit in the House of Lords as a member of the Green Party.

Beaumont's father, Michael Beaumont, was a Conservative Member of Parliament; his maternal grandfather was Liberal politician Joseph Albert Pease, 1st Baron Gainford. Timothy was educated at Eton College, Gordonstoun School, Christ Church, Oxford and Westcott House. He became an Anglican priest in Kowloon, Hong Kong 1957-59.

He was created a Liberal Life peer as Baron Beaumont of Whitley, of Child's Hill in Greater London in 1967. He was chair of the Liberal Party 1967-8 and President 1969-70. In 1973 he resigned his holy orders, but resumed them in 1984, becoming Vicar of All Souls, Kew in the Diocese of Southwark, now retired. He joined the Liberal Democrats but objected to their support for free trade and joined the Green Party in 1999.

Beaumont is a patron of transgender equality campaign group Press for Change.

He is married to Mary Rose Wauchope, with whom he has had two sons and two daughters named Hubert, Aleric, Atalanta, and Ariadne and has a total of ten grandchildren: Amelia, George, Richard, Felix, Michael, Oliver, Milo, Casper, Clio and Isabella.

In May 2006 Lord Beaumont put forth a bill to "draw up a plan to prohibit piped music and the showing of television programmes in the public areas of hospitals and on public transport; and to require the wearing of headphones by persons listening to music in the public areas of hospitals and on public transport." [1]

He strongly supported the current Green Party system of having Principal Speakers rather than a leader, saying that "in 60 years in politics I have only known one good party leader"[