19 Facts About Dingle Foot

Sir Dingle Mackintosh Foot, QC was a British lawyer, Liberal and Labour Member of Parliament, and Solicitor General for England and Wales in the first government of Harold Wilson.

Isaac Dingle Foot was an active member of the Liberal Party and was Liberal Member of Parliament for Bodmin in Cornwall between 1922 and 1924 and again from 1929 to 1935, and a Lord Mayor of Plymouth.

Dingle Foot was educated at Bembridge School, a boys' independent school on the Isle of Wight, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was President of the Oxford Union in 1928.

Dingle Foot had four brothers: Michael, a prominent figure in the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1980 to 1983; John, a Liberal politician; Hugh, Governor of Cyprus and British Ambassador to the United Nations and Christopher, a solicitor who joined the family firm.

Dingle Foot married Dorothy Mary Elliston, who died in 1989.

Dingle Foot was admitted to Gray's Inn on 19 November 1925 and called to the bar on 2 July 1930.

Dingle Foot became a Master Bencher in 1952 and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1954 Dingle Foot had been in active practice after having qualified a Barrister of England both in England and in several Commonwealth countries.

Dingle Foot was called to the Bar or admitted as a solicitor or practitioner in Ghana, Sri Lanka, Northern Rhodesia, Sierra Leone, Supreme Court of India, Bahrain and Malaysia.

Dingle Foot appeared regularly in the Courts of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Nyasaland and Pakistan.

From 1931 to 1945 Dingle Foot was Liberal Member of Parliament for Dundee.

Dingle Foot was Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Economic Warfare in Winston Churchill's wartime coalition, and a member of the British delegation to San Francisco Conference in 1945.

Dingle Foot visited Washington in June 1944, and secured an agreement with the US State Department, the new War Refugee Board and the Foreign Economic Administration to supply 550 tons of aid parcels a month over a three-month period to 'unassimilated civilian internees' in war-zones in Europe.

At the 1950 general election Dingle Foot defended the formerly Liberal seat of North Cornwall, following the defection of its member Tom Horabin to Labour in 1947, but he again lost, to the Conservative Harold Roper.

Dingle Foot stood for the seat in 1951, losing again but by a narrower margin.

Dingle Foot left the Liberals and joined the Labour Party in 1956.

Dingle Foot was Labour MP for Ipswich from a 1957 by-election until 1970.

Dingle Foot served in this post for almost 3 years, from 18 October 1964 until 24 August 1967, until he was replaced by Arthur Irvine following a major government reshuffle.

Dingle Foot's publications included Despotism in Disguise and British Political Crises.

Dingle Foot died on 18 June 1978 in a hotel in Hong Kong, after choking on a sandwich.