Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, defender of his grandfather Stanleys political reputation and advocate of complementary medicine obituary – Telegraph.co.uk

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, defender of his grandfather Stanleys political reputation and advocate of complementary medicine obituary - Telegraph.co.uk