British politician (1921–1966)
Peter Arthur David Baker MC (20 April 1921 – 14 November 1966) was a British soldier, author, publisher and Conservative politician who served as a member of parliament (MP) for South Norfolk. He is chiefly remembered as the last Member of Parliament to be expelled from the House of Commons by resolution of the House, after his conviction for forgery, and as the inspiration behind the eccentric character of publisher Martin York in Muriel Spark's novel "A Far Cry From Kensington".
Baker's arrest and trial received extensive international media coverage.
Early life and family.
Baker was born on 20 April 1921 in Willesden, north west London. He was the son of Major Reginald Poynton Baker (1896–1985) of Loddenden Manor, Staplehurst, Kent, and his first wife Gwendolyn Emily Christabel Baker née Webb (1897–1962). Baker's father later became a successful movie producer based at Ealing Studios. Baker tried to create a fictional connection with the Tudor Bakers of Sissinghurst Castle, Kent, whose members included Sir John Baker, a Chancellor of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Commons in the 16th century; Sir Richard Baker, an author who was also a Member of Parliament; Sir Samuel White Baker, the discoverer of Lake Albert; and his younger brother, Valentine Baker, a famous soldier who also spent some time in Wormwood Scrubs Prison.
Baker made another bogus claim, mentioning in his memoirs that St. Luke's Chapel, otherwise known as St-Mary-in-the-Marsh and situated inside Norwich Cathedral, had been the site since 1586 of his family weddings and christenings. In fact, it was only used on one occasion by his ancestors, in June 1744 for a quiet wedding. Nevertheless, this Lady chapel was chosen by Baker as the venue for his youngest daughter's christening.
On 5 June 1948, Baker married Gloria Mae Heaton-Armstrong, daughter of Colonel Charles George William Stacpool Heaton-Armstrong, in Kensington.
The Heaton-Armstrong family belonged to the Anglo-Irish Protestant landowning class and were related to soldier and MP Sir Thomas Armstrong. Armstrong was involved in the Rye House Plot.
Education and military service.
Baker was educated at Eastbourne College. He was preparing to study at the University of Cambridge until the imminent outbreak of World War II led him to enlist in the Royal Artillery. Although he could have taken an immediate commission, Baker and a friend who had joined up at the same time determined to serve at least six months in the ranks before accepting a posting to an Officer Cadet Training Unit in Catterick Garrison in March 1940. He was then posted to an artillery regiment based in Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, and served for fourteen months across southern Scotland. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant on 7 September 1940. Considering the job of an artillery officer boring, Baker accepted in October 1941 a posting to be a Staff Captain in Military Intelligence based at the War Office. He hoped that the new appointment would make it more likely that he could obtain an overseas posting. After four months he applied for a transfer, although it took a further six months to persuade his superiors to let him leave.
Phantom.
He was assigned to the GHQ Liaison Regiment (known as "Phantom"), a mysterious unit established by Major-General George Frederick Hopkinson, commander of the 1st Airborne Division. "Phantom" was renowned for the unusual selection of brilliance, nobility and idiosyncrasy, wit, achievements and even criminality exhibited by its officers. Following training and exercises in Britain, Baker was assigned in June 1943 to the Phantom unit in North Africa at camp Bugeaud in Bône, Algeria. The unit consisted of three squadrons (E, K and H) and the Assault Detachment under the command of Major Mervyn Sydney Bobus Vernon (1912–1991) of the Grenadier Guards. Baker joined E squadron, which was headed by Major Hugh Fraser. E squadron was supposed to have followed the Assault Detachment (led by Christopher Mayhew) into Sicily, but the invasion turned out to be much easier than anticipated.
At the end of August, E squadron was ordered to Bizerta to be ready to take part in the invasion of Italy. The squadron's role was to carry out long-range reconnaissance, which it did initially from Taranto. Baker, with a small team, drove an unarmoured and lightly armed jeep up to a hundred miles from the forward base to discover the location of German troops. Late in 1943, the squadron withdrew to Trani, where Baker developed abdominal pains; he was flown back to Britain before Christmas, and was given four weeks' sick leave before being passed as fit for sedentary duty only.
MI9, taken prisoner.
Baker, code named "Harrier", was recruited by MI9 to work with IS9 (WEA) (or Room 900), a unit formed by Airey Neave and Jimmy Langley dedicated to helping downed allied airmen and stranded soldiers escape German-occupied Europe. In 1944, Baker participated in Operation Marathon, led by Neave, that rescued a group of 152 Allied pilots who were hidden in the Fréteval Forest near Châteaudun. Upon their return, they discovered that 10 escapees were unaccounted for, and Baker returned to save the others. Baker accompanied Neave in following the Allied armies to Paris, Brussels, and the Netherlands.
In early October, Neave moved their unit to just west of Nijmegen, and obtained permission to send Baker through enemy lines to make contact with the Dutch Resistance. Baker was ordered to wear his British Army uniform and not leave his safe house during the day. On 11 October, Neave accompanied Baker to the River Waal, where he crossed in a canoe, and eventually made contact with the Resistance. The same canoe was used to bring out Dutch diplomat Herman van Roijen (later Dutch foreign minister) with critical intelligence information for his government in exile.
Baker stayed at a farmhouse where he was hosted by local resistance member Fekko Ebbens and his family. Baker was joined there a day or two later by Private First Class Theodore Bachenheimer (from the 504th Parachute Infantry of the US Army). Baker disobeyed orders by exchanging his military uniform for civilian clothes. Baker and PFC Bachenheimer walked around the area during the day and within sight of German troops.
On the night of 16–17 October, the house was raided by German forces who already had a quisling inside surveilling the goings on at the farm. Baker and Bachenheimer were arrested while sleeping and taken away as prisoners of war. Fekko Ebbens, the head of the Ebbens family, was executed some months later as reprisal for an attack on German troops by the Dutch resistance. Baker's superiors were furious that his disobedience threatened the rescue, Operation Pegasus, of hundreds of British paratroopers stranded in German-controlled territory.
Escape attempt.
After interrogation in a primary school in Tiel, Baker and Bachenheimer were taken to a transit camp at Culemborg, and were then marched 45 km on foot to another transit camp near Amersfoort. From there, a five-day train journey took Baker to Stalag XI-B at Bad Fallingbostel where he was to stay until sent on to Oflag 79 in Braunschweig. During the journey, PFC Bachenheimer escaped, but was shot by German forces near the village of 't Harde on the night of 22–23 October. Baker was forced to abandon his own plans to escape from the train, but on arriving at Fallingbostel noticed that escape was possible there. He joined with a Belgian officer and a Malagasy French liaison officer named Jacques Hannebicque to make plans.
Baker claimed that his group of three passed themselves off as French prisoners and joined a work party which was sent out of the prison camp to collect firewood on the morning of 7 November. When the party got to the wood they broke away and started walking west. Baker claimed that "the most effective way to pass unsuspected was to salute everybody in uniform", whether military or civilian. The three had got 60 km away from their camp after two days, when they were detected by a German soldier, and failed in their bluff of being 'Men of confidence' (who were trusted to take charge of other prisoners of war). Baker decided to reveal his real identity long before he was given over to the Gestapo, to avoid mistreatment in their hands; however he believed they were only saved from being shot as spies when the farmer where they were discovered objected to the shooting happening on his land. He was sent to Stalag X-B at Sandbostel where he was interrogated with violence, and then spent 35 days in solitary confinement in multiple prisons before finally going to Oflag 79. His fellow escapee Hannebicque survived the war and later became a writer and photographer.
Arising out of his escape plans, Baker said he and his colleagues were court-martialed for forging leave passes. The Gestapo and the prosecution initially asked for the death penalty, but later altered it to six weeks in a punishment camp. They were actually sentenced to twenty-eight days' solitary confinement, of which twenty-five days were deducted because they had only previously had a sentence of ten days. During the spring of 1945, rations ran short in the camp as the Allied armies moved closer, and the camp was liberated on 12 April 1945 by the US Ninth Army. Baker gained permission to make his own way home and drove in a requisitioned Mercedes to Venlo, from where he flew to Ghent and then back to London. He weighed 7 stone 2 lbs when he returned to England.
On 2 August 1945, Captain Peter Baker (148257) of the Intelligence Corps, Staplehurst, Kent was awarded the Military Cross in recognition of gallant and distinguished services in North-West Europe.
Post-war.
As early as 1940 Baker had found himself in charge of editing a broadsheet of poems, including some he had written himself. The collection was known as the "Resurgam Poets". Baker later adopted the pseudonym Colin Strang to edit two anthologies and write poetry reviews for newspapers and magazines, until he was posted to Africa. In early 1944, while he was in Britain, Baker's poem sequence "The Land of Prester John" was published, to what he thought was a poor critical reception.
After the war Baker, became a publisher with financial backing from his father; the company he founded, Falcon Press, was named after the armoured car which Baker had used during the war. As wartime paper rationing was continuing and Falcon Press was a newcomer without a large quota, he printed books in several foreign countries instead. The business was initially successful, enabling Baker to build up a "minor business empire" including four publishing companies, printing works, a wine merchants and a whisky distillery, aircraft research company, and a property business. Muriel Spark worked for Falcon Press from 1951. When Falcon Press ran into debt, Baker and Robert Maxwell (then making his name as a leading British publisher) planned to merge their respective publishing businesses; however the plans fell through. Maxwell eventually bought the British Book Centre in New York from Baker in 1952.
He was a frequent visitor at the Thursday Club, a raffish luncheon club located at Wheeler's oyster bar, in Old Compton Street, London, a men's eating and drinking group dedicated to "Absolute Inconsequence"; other members included the actors David Niven, James Robertson Justice and Peter Ustinov, the future Duke of Edinburgh, the intelligence officer Kim Philby, celebrity photographer Stirling Henry Nahum, (known as Baron) and Baker's friend, Colonel Sean Fielding, editor of "Tatler" magazine and later of the "Daily Express". Baker was also a member of the Junior Carlton Club.
Political career.
While a prisoner of war, Baker wrote an essay "in political diagnosis" to explain to a fellow prisoner why he supported the Conservative Party. After the war, he published the essay as "The Silent Revolution". He added an epilogue written late in 1945, giving some of his diary entries for the latter part of the war and reflecting on the impact of peace on the purposefulness of the wartime generation. At the same time, he also completed his war memoirs, which he had begun writing while a prisoner of war; the resulting book was titled "Confession of Faith", and was also published by his own publishing company Falcon Press in 1946.
Persuaded by his friend James Thomas, at the time vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, to enter active politics, Baker agreed to let his name go forward for selection as the Conservative Party candidate for South Norfolk. The South Norfolk division was