Francis Noel-Baker: the man who helped found Amnesty International

Francis Noel-Baker (KC 1939, History): Labour politician who clashed with the party over Cyprus and helped create Amnesty International, by fellow King's member Tam Dalyell (KC 1952, Economics)

To his astonishment and consternation – because he was due in October 1945 to return to King's College, Cambridge, to complete the second and third year of his degree – Francis Noel-Baker found himself, at the age of 25, elected as Member of Parliament for Brentford and Chiswick in the unforeseen, Attlee-led Labour landslide.

The result was all the more unexpected because his opponent, Colonel Sir Harold Mitchell, who had occupied the seat since 1931 and had risen to vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, was known as a close friend of Winston Churchill and had the reputation of being a good constituency MP.

Noel-Baker was the "baby of the Parliamentary Labour Party", a slightly uncomfortable position, as I know, having been elected at the age of 29. He came to the House of Commons, as he told me in 1962, "too young for my own good". In my judgement, as MP for Swindon from 1955 to 1968 he would have had Cabinet office had Hugh Gaitskell survived, or had George Brown or Jim Callaghan and not Harold Wilson become leader of the Labour Party...

• Read the whole obituary in The Independent