Geoffrey Bing, Born

Geoffrey Henry Cecil Bing (24 July 1909 – 24 April 1977) was a British barrister and politician who served as the Labour Member of Parliament for Hornchurch from 1945 to 1955.

He was also Attorney General of Ghana.

Born at Craigavad near Belfast, Bing was educated at Rockport School (of which his father was the founding headmaster) 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[