Charles Delacourt-Smith, Baron Delacourt-Smith

Born in Windsor and named after his father, he was the only son of Charles Smith and his wife Ethel.[2] He was educated at Windsor Grammar School and went then to Wadham College, Oxford, graduating with a Master of Arts[3] At Oxford he was elected Librarian of the Oxford Union.

After university, he became employed at the New Fabian Research Bureau as a research assistant.[2] In 1939, he came to the Civil Service Clerical Association and was an assistant secretary until 1953.[2] Subsequently, he joined the Post Office Engineering Union, serving as its general secretary 1967.[1] In 1960, he was nominated a justice of the peace, assigned to the County of London.[2]

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Delacourt-Smith entered the Royal Engineers in July 1940.[2] He was commissioned in January 1943 and was transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps, where he was promoted to captain and was mentioned in despatches.[3] After the end of the war Delacourt-Smith was admitted to the British House of Commons in 1945, having been elected for Colchester.[3] He represented the constituency until 1950 and during this time was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Philip Noel-Baker in the latter's capacity as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations.[3] In 1947, he was chosen as an executive member of Labour's Research Department, a position he held for the next four years.[2]

Delacourt-Smith was created a life peer as Baron Delacourt-Smith, of New Windsor, in the Royal County of Berkshire in 1967 and thus was enabled to a seat in the House of Lords.[4] Two years later he was appointed Minister of State for Technology and on this occasion sworn of the Privy Council.[1] In 1970, when the Conservative Party took office he was replaced as Minister.[1]

In 1939, he married Margaret, the daughter of Frederick Hando.[5] They both had one son and two daughters.[5] Together with his wife and younger daughter, he assumed the additional surname Delacourt by a deed poll in 1967.[6] He died, aged 55, at the Westminster Hospital, London in 1972, after suffering a stroke while making a speech in the House of Lords, being survived by his wife.[5] Two years after his death she received a life peerage in her own right.[7]

• Democratic Sweden (1938), Smith, G. and Cole, M. (eds), Routledge
• Britain's Food Supplies in Peace and War (1940), Smith, C., Routledge
• Modern Turkey (1940), Parker, J. and Smith, C., Routledge

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Charles Delacourt-Smith, Baron Delacourt-Smith
• Portraits of Charles Delacourt-Smith, Baron Delacourt-Smith at the National Portrait Gallery, London