Education
He was educated at Highgate School and Street Edmund Hall, Oxford.
He was educated at Highgate School and Street Edmund Hall, Oxford.
He taught at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, from 1953 to 1959 and at Friends" School, Kamusinga, in Kenya, from 1960 to 1961. He then worked for various development charities, until 1962. After unsuccessfully contesting Scarborough and Whitby in 1959, Barnett was elected Member of Parliament for South Dorset in a by-election in November 1962 after the Conservative Member of Parliament Victor Montagu succeeded to the peerage as the Earl of Sandwich.
Barnett only held the seat briefly as he was defeated in the 1964 general election.
He was returned to parliament as Member of Parliament for Greenwich in a by-election in July 1971, upon the resignation of the Labour incumbent Richard Marsh to become chairman of British Rail, and retained the seat until his death on Christmas Eve 1986. Guy Barnett was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, under Peter Shore, from 1976 to 1979 (when Labour lost the General Election) and Joint Secretary of the Parliamentary Group on Overseas Development from 1984 to 1986.
He was on the Board of Christian Aid from 1984 to 1986. He was a Governor of the Institute of Development Studies from 1984 to 1986 and a Trustee of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich from 1974 to 1976.
He was a Justice of the Peace.
In 1965, Cambridge University press published his book, By the Lake, about Kenyan culture. He died on Christmas Eve 1986, aged 58.
42nd United Kingdom Parliament. 45th United Kingdom Parliament. 46th United Kingdom Parliament.
47th United Kingdom Parliament.
48th United Kingdom Parliament. 49th United Kingdom Parliament]
He was a Member of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration from 1972 to 1974 and of the Public Accounts Committee in 1975.
He was a Member of the European Parliament from 1975 to 1976, as an appointed delegate of the United Kingdom Parliament. He was a Member of the General Advisory Council of British Broadcasting Corporation from 1973 to 1976.