MP Noel-Baker advocated reforms to moderate the influence of outside interests in Parliament. In 1961 he published an article in Parliamentary Affairs warning that "the door, in fact, is wide open for a new form of political corruption, and there is an uneasy feeling in Parliament and outside that its extent could be much greater than the known or published facts reveal". In 1959 his father won a Nobel Peace Prize, and when Harold Wilson became Labour prime minister in 1964, both father and son were led to expect jobs in the new administration. However, the telephone calls never came. Noel-Baker was "bitterly disappointed at being overlooked." In April 1967, the democratic west was shocked by a military coup in Greece. The regime established by "the colonels" was widely condemned, but not by Noel-Baker. Although he had supported the previous democratic government, he maintained that the colonels' rule represented reform from political corruption and a way forward for ordinary Greeks. His undisguised support of the new regime made his political life in Britain increasingly precarious, indeed untenable, and in time affected his health. In 1968 he announced his intention not to contest the 1970 election, and retired from parliament in March 1969, taking the Chiltern Hundreds. Two years later, he left the Labour Party in response to the party's opposition to British membership of the European Economic Community (although he was still permitted to take up the role of vice-chairman of the Labour Committee for Europe in 1976). He later joined the Social Democratic Party (SDP), before abandoning it for the Conservative Party in 1984. Later years In the years following his retirement from the House, he spent an increasing proportion of his time in Greece, becoming active in a range of Cypriot, environmental and charitable activities. As a lordly host with his wife and family at his beloved Achmetaga, he displayed generosity, humour, and loyalty to friends in all walks of life. Nonetheless, his residence there was not without its dangers: having angered many locals by publicly supporting the military junta, numerous attempts were made throughout the 1970s by the post-dictatorship Greek government to seize his land and have him evicted. Only when Noel-Baker found the title deeds to his estate hidden in his father's air-raid shelter, with signatures supplied by both the Greek and Turkish authorities, did the harassment cease. Before his death in 2009 Noel-Baker was one