Geoffrey Bing


Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing was a British barrister and politician who served as the Labour Member of Parliament for Hornchurch from 1945 to 1955.

Education and career

Born at Craigavad near Belfast, Bing was educated at Rockport School and Tonbridge School before going on to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he read history. He graduated with a second-class degree in 1931, before attending Princeton University, where he was a Jane Eliza Procter Visiting Fellow between 1932 and 1933. He was called to the Bar from the Inner Temple in 1934.
Always a radical and a member of the socialist left, Bing was active in the Haldane Society and the National Council for Civil Liberties. During the Spanish Civil War, he joined the International Brigades as a journalist, barely avoiding capture at Bilbao. He was also an early anti-Nazi.
During World War II, he served in the Royal Signals, attaining the rank of major. A 1943 experiment with parachutes at the GSO2 Airborne Forces Development Centre left him disfigured and he bore the scars for many years.
At the 1945 general election, Bing stood for Labour in Hornchurch, winning the seat. He was re-elected in 1950 and 1951, serving until 1955. He served briefly as a junior whip in 1945-46 but this was widely thought to have been the unintended result of confusion on the part of Clement Attlee, who confused him for another Labour MP of a similar name.

Backbencher

On the backbenches, Bing was, according to his Times obituary, "the unrestrained leader of a small group of radicals, never fully trusted by their colleagues and known as 'Bing Boys'".
He took a particular interest in the cases of Timothy Evans and John Christie, and he supported the campaign to overturn the conviction of Evans, which was ultimately successful.
He supported Communist China and took a keen interest in Northern Ireland, the brewers' monopoly and parliamentary procedure.
He was also a lawyer, building up a practice in West Africa. He became close to Kwame Nkrumah, the first post-colonial president of Ghana and was appointed Ghana's attorney-general, a post he held until 1961. When Nkrumah was ousted in 1966, Bing was arrested and ill-treated, before being sent home some months later. His memoir of Nkrumah's Ghana, Reap the Whirlwind, was published in 1968.

Personal life

In 1940, he married, as her second husband, Christian Frances Blois, former wife of radio producer Edward Archibald Fraser Harding and daughter of Sir Ralph Barrett Macnaghten Blois, 9th Baronet. They had one son, Inigo Bing, before divorcing in 1955.
In 1956, he married, secondly, Eileen Mary Cullen, with whom he had two more children.