John Peel (Leicester MP)
Sir William John Peel was a British Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament for Leicester South East from 1957 to 1974.
He attended Wellington College and Queens' College, Cambridge. His first career was in the Colonial Service; he survived imprisonment by the Japanese during the Second World War, when he was stationed in Singapore, to later serve terms as British Resident in Brunei and then Resident Commissioner in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony before retiring in 1951. His father Sir William Peel had been Governor of Hong Kong.
Peel was elected as a member of the House of Commons at a by-election in 1957. In 1959, he provoked an angry response from both sides of the House when he reacted to the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya by saying: "There are obvious risks in dealing with desperate and sub-human individuals." In the resulting debate, Peel's remarks were denounced by Enoch Powell, and it was emphasised that Britain needed to accord the same standards of human rights to all continents. Though Peel's tenure of minor government positions was uninterrupted, he never reached the Cabinet.
He was a zealous advocate of British involvement in Europe, through the Council of Europe, the Western European Union, and eventually membership—of which he was a leading advocate—in the European Communities. In 1972, he was chosen President of the North Atlantic Assembly. In the following year he was knighted, and also became one of the first British members of the European Parliament.
