Philip Noel-Baker

In 1915 Philip Baker married Irene Noel, a field hospital nurse in East Grinstead, and adopted the hyphenated name Noel-Baker. The couple had one son, Francis.

The marriage was, however, not a happy one and Noel-Baker became involved in an affair with Megan Lloyd George in 1936 that lasted up to Irene’s death in 1956.

He lived a long life and died on 8 October 1982, in Westminster, London, at the age of 92..

Philip Noel-Baker was born in Brondesbury Park, London, on 1 November 1889. His parents were Canadian-born Quaker father, Joseph Allen Baker and Scottish-born mother, Elizabeth Balmer Moscrip. He had six siblings.

His father served as a Progressive Party member of the London County Council and as Liberal Party member of the House of Commons for East Finsbury. He was also interested in humanitarian causes, an interest his son inherited.

Young Philip was a good student. He was educated at Ackworth School, Bootham School and then in the U.S. at the Quaker-associated Haverford College in Pennsylvania. He was also active in athletics.

He joined the King's College, Cambridge, in 1908, studying there until 1912. He was President of the Cambridge Union Society in 1912 and President of the Cambridge University Athletic Club from 1910 to 1912. He also studied for a brief time in Paris and Munich.

He ran in the Olympic Games held in Stockholm in 1912, participating in the 800 meters and 1500 meters, reaching the final of the 1500 meters, won by his fellow countryman Arnold Jackson.

In 1914, he accepted the post of vice-principal of Ruskin College at Oxford. The World War I broke out the same year and he organized and became the commandant of the Friends' Ambulance Unit attached to the fighting front in France (1914-1915).

In 1920, he was captain of the British track team for the Summer Olympics in Antwerp and carried the flag. He won the silver medal in the 1,500 meters. He was again the captain for the 1924 Olympics at Paris.

Noel-Baker participated in the formation, the administration, and the legislative deliberations of the League of Nations and the United Nations. He served as the principal assistant to Lord Robert Cecil on the committee which drafted the League of Nations Covenant in 1918-1919.

The University of London invited him to become the first Sir Ernest Cassell Professor of International Law and he occupied this chair from 1924 to 1929. Drawing from his experience as a pacifist, he conducted research on the related issues and wrote and published ‘The Geneva Protocol for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes’ (1925), ‘The League of Nations at Work’ (1926), ‘Disarmament’ (1926), and ‘Disarmament and the Coolidge Conference’ (1927).

He was elected a member of the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, in 1937. Before the beginning of the World War II, he spoke at the House of Commons against aerial bombing of German cities based on moral grounds.

Philip Noel-Baker was committed to pacifist ideals and campaigned widely for 40 years for peace through multilateral disarmament. He helped to draw up the United Nations Charter, and worked determinedly to prevent nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union after the World War II.