Background
Geoffrey de Freitas was the son of Sir Anthony and Lady (Edith) de Freitas.
Geoffrey de Freitas was the son of Sir Anthony and Lady (Edith) de Freitas.
De Freitas was educated at Haileybury and Clare College, Cambridge, where he was a successful student and athlete, and was president of the Cambridge Union Society.
Sir Anthony was Chief Justice of Saint Vincent in Geoffrey"s youth, and later of British Guiana, having held a variety of legal and administrative posts in the British West Indies. During the war he became a Squadron Leader, but returned to politics in 1945, the family living at Loughton and then Cambridge. He beat the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament for Nottingham Central in the 1945 election, and was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to Clement Attlee.
As Under-Secretary for Air he went to the United Nations Assembly at Lake Success in 1947.
Some years later he would co-author a booklet on the subject of an Atlantic Assembly, and he had a long-standing connection with the North Atlantic Assembly. He was appointed Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department and held a succession of front bench posts throughout the decade.
Foreign a while Betty Boothroyd was assistant to de Freitas and she remained a friend of the family. In 1961 de Freitas was nominated to be British High Commissioner to Ghana, and was knighted in October of that year.
He resigned his seat in the Commons on 20 December 1961, taking the sinecure of Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead.
He was the first Labour appointment to an important role in one of the newly independent former British colonies. In 1957 he had chaired a Hansard Society conference on parliamentary government in West Africa. After Accra, he was briefly in Nairobi, as British representative supporting an attempt to build a Federation of East Africa which would include Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya.
In 1964 he was invited to stand for election to represent Kettering, then a safe Labour seat, and returned to England.
There was no front bench role for him with Harold Wilson as party leader, but de Freitas led the Labour delegation to the Council of Europe in 1965 and was President of the Council from 1966–1969. In 1971 his reluctance to be nominated for election as Speaker of the House of Commons led to a reappraisal of the system.
From 1975–1979 Sir Geoffrey was a delegate to the European Parliament. He retired from politics in 1979 and died three years later, in Cambridge, aged 69.
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. 38th United Kingdom Parliament. 39th United Kingdom Parliament.
40th United Kingdom Parliament.
41st United Kingdom Parliament. 42nd United Kingdom Parliament.
43rd United Kingdom Parliament. 44th United Kingdom Parliament.
45th United Kingdom Parliament.
46th United Kingdom Parliament. 47th United Kingdom Parliament]
Foreign many years a Labour Member of Parliament, he also served as British High Commissioner in Accra and Nairobi, and later as President of the Council of Europe. In the 1950 general election de Freitas became Member of Parliament for Lincoln.