Tim Beaumont

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Timothy Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley
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Life Peerage
Personal details
Born
Timothy Wentworth Beaumont

22 November 1928
Died8 April 2008(2008-04-08) (aged 79)
Political partyGreen Party of England and Wales
Other political
affiliations		Liberal Democrats (until 1999)
Spouse
Mary Rose Wauchope
​
(m. 1955)​
Parent(s)Michael Beaumont
Faith Pease

Timothy Wentworth Beaumont, Baron Beaumont of Whitley (22 November 1928 – 8 April 2008) was a British politician and an

Anglican priest. He was politically active, successively, in the Liberal Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party of England and Wales. A life peer since 1967, in 1999 he became the first member of either of the British Houses of Parliament of the United Kingdom to represent the Green Party.[1][2]

Early and private life

Beaumont's father,

MP for Aylesbury, and his paternal grandfather, Hubert Beaumont, was the Liberal MP for Eastbourne from 1906 to 1910 and son of Wentworth Beaumont, 1st Baron Allendale. Beaumont's mother, Faith Pease, died when he was six; his maternal grandfather was the Liberal politician Jack Pease, 1st Baron Gainford.[3]

Beaumont was educated at

Master of Arts (MA Oxon) degree.[4]

He married Mary Rose Wauchope (a cousin of Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon) in 1955, with whom he had two sons and two daughters.[5]

Church career

After graduating from Oxford, he trained for

St John's Cathedral in Hong Kong from 1955 to 1957 and then was vicar of Christ Church, Kowloon Tong
, until 1959.

Having received a substantial inheritance in that year, he returned to England to live in

priest-in-charge of St Philip and All Saints with St Luke, Kew in the Diocese of Southwark, and then retired to Clapham in 1991.[2]

The

special school for students with severe and complex learning needs, is named after his wife.[6]

Political career

After making a substantial donation to the

Child's Hill in Greater London, in 1967.[7] He was chair of the Liberal Party in 1967–1968 and then President in 1969–1970. In Parliament he was Liberal spokesman on education and the arts until 1986. He also served as leader of the Liberals in the Council of Europe. He was co-ordinator of the Green Alliance
from 1978 to 1980.

He joined the Liberal Democrats, but, objecting to their support for free trade, he moved to the Green Party in 1999, and became the Green Party spokesman on agriculture. He stood for election to Lambeth Council for the Green Party in Clapham Common ward in 2006.

Beaumont was a Eurosceptic, and for many years he was a vice-president of the cross-party Campaign for an Independent Britain, which campaigned against British membership of the European Union.[8]

In a memorable action, Beaumont put forth in May 1996 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."[9]

Other achievements

Beaumont was a patron of

Illustrated London News
from 1976 to 1980, and wrote the book The End of the Yellowbrick Road, published in 1997.

Baron Beaumont of Whitley died at St Thomas' Hospital in London after being hospitalised for several weeks.

Arms

Coat of arms of Tim Beaumont
Coronet
A Coronet of a Baron
Crest
A bull's head erased quarterly Argent and Gules charged with a mullet Sable.
Escutcheon
Gules a lion rampant Or armed and langued Azure between eight crescents in orle of the second.
Supporters
Dexter a Phoenix sinister a Pelican vulning herself Proper.
Motto
Ich Kann Nicht Anders (I Can Do No Other)[10]

References

  1. ^ "Obituaries – Lord Beaumont of Whitley – Anglican minister who pursued his vocation in tandem with a political career in three parties". The Times. 11 April 2008. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Obituaries – The Rev Lord Beaumont of Whitley". The Daily Telegraph. 11 April 2008. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  3. ^ a b "Obituary – Lord Beaumont of Whitley". The Guardian. 11 April 2008. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  4. ^ a b c "The Revd and Rt Hon Lord BEAUMONT OF WHITLEY". Crockford's Clerical Directory (online ed.). Church House Publishing. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  5. ^ "Lord Beaumont of Whitley: Millionaire priest and publisher who became". The Independent. 11 April 2008. Archived from the original on 7 May 2022. Retrieved 26 November 2019.
  6. Mary Rose School. p. 2. Retrieved 6 March 2012.[permanent dead link
    ]
  7. ^ "No. 44470". The London Gazette. 7 December 1967. p. 13399.
  8. ^ Beaumont is shown as one of the patrons, and later one of the vice-presidents, of the CIB on CIB literature from the early 1990s to his death in 2008, such as the following CIB press release: British fishermen protest plans to "celebrate" the EU's fifty years of disaster, Campaign for an Independent Britain, 01/05/2007.
  9. ^ "Piped Music and Showing of Television Programmes Bill". Parliament of the United Kingdom. 11 April 2008. Retrieved 23 July 2012.
  10. ^ Debrett's Peerage. 2003. p. 128.

External links

Party political offices
Preceded by Treasurer of the Liberal Party
1962–1965
With: Ronald Gardner-Thorpe
Andrew Murray 		Succeeded by
Preceded by Chairman of the Liberal Party
1967–1968 		Succeeded by
Preceded by President of the Liberal Party
1969–1970 		Succeeded by
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