Edward Alfred Alexander Baldwin, himself a son of Worcestershire, was born on January 3 1938. His father, (Arthur) Windham, a businessman and author (known widely by the affectionate nickname, Bloggs), inherited the title in 1958 from his homosexual elder brother, Oliver, who as a Labour MP had sat opposite his father Stanley Baldwin in the Commons, the only prime minister to endure such an experience.<\/p>\n
Edwards mother (Joan) Elspeth, ne Tomes, was recalled by James Lees-Milne as a beauty with keen blue eyes and the transparent skin of the very frail. Lees-Milne adored her husband for his enchanting dry sense of the ludicrous.<\/p>\n
After Eton, and National Service in the Intelligence Corps, where Edward became a second lieutenant in 1957, he read Modern Languages and Law at Trinity College, Cambridge.<\/p>\n
A gifted linguist, he taught French and German at Christs Hospital in Sussex and later at Hemel Hempstead School, a large comprehensive. He would prove a firm supporter of the comprehensive model during a 10-year stint (1978-88) in education administration, working first in Leicestershire and subsequently in Oxfordshire, where he was area education officer.<\/p>\n
An accident to his knees while hill-climbing, one of his passions (along with tennis and ski-ing), turned him into an ardent advocate of alternative medicine, after Harley Street failed to relieve the pain.<\/p>\n
He described what happened in an article published in 2003: Hobbling with knee bandages and a mindset of incurability, I was directed by a colleague to a spiritual healer in a back street in Cambridge. He spent half an hour waving his hands over my knees while discoursing on his life as a schoolmaster and Harold Wilsons politics I shall never forget my astonishment at levering myself out of bed the next morning to find the pain had vanished.<\/p>\n
While not promoting this particular remedy widely, Baldwin became convinced that conventional healthcare practitioners should become familiar with complementary and alternative therapies. They should, he thought, be partners, not opponents.<\/p>\n
It was a theme that recurred frequently in his quietly, but effectively, argued speeches in the House of Lords, where he took his seat on the cross-benches in 1988. So good to see a Baldwin in Parliament again, Lord (Alec) Home said to him, a comment that gave him great pleasure.<\/p>\n
Baldwin was a member of the Research Council for Complementary Medicine from 1989 to 1991. Between 1992 and 2002 he was joint chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on alternative and complementary medicine. He pressed for high professional standards maintained by inspection and regulation.<\/p>\n
Throughout the 1990s, Baldwin chaired the British Acupuncture Accreditation Board, established to authorise degree-level acupuncture courses. He felt that the reputation of alternative medicine gained useful recognition in a report of a Lords select committee in 2000, in which he played a leading part.<\/p>\n
The improved regulatory structures for which it called reflected his thinking. Only slightly less important to him was the campaign against fluoridation, in which he was prominent.<\/p>\n
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See the article here:<\/p>\n
Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, defender of his grandfather Stanleys political reputation and advocate of complementary medicine obituary - Telegraph.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Edward Alfred Alexander Baldwin, himself a son of Worcestershire, was born on January 3 1938. Continue reading