Thomas Frederick Peart, Baron Peart, PC (30 April 1914 – 26 August 1988) was a British Labour politician who served in the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s and was a candidate for Deputy Leader of the Party.
Early life and education
Thomas Frederick Peart was born in Durham, England, in 1914, the son of Emerson Featherstone Peart, a headmaster and leading Labour member of Durham County Council, and Florence Blissenden. The younger Peart qualified as a teacher at the University of Durham in 1936. He studied at the Inner Temple but did not enter the legal profession, instead teaching economics in Durham. When Labour returned to power, Peart once more took the Agriculture portfolio.
On 23 September 1976, Peart was created a life peer as Baron Peart, of Workington in the County of Cumbria, to serve as Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal at a time when the Labour faction in the Lords was tiny compared to the vast Tory majority, mainly composed of hereditary peers.
Personal life and death
In 1945, Peart married Bette Lewis, and they had one son.
In 1984, Peart was attacked by two robbers who broke into his London home. This preceded a terminal decline in his health, and he died at a hospital in London on 26 August 1988, at the age of 74.