Lord Caradon; Ex-U.N. Representative

Lord Caradon, the former British permanent representative to the United Nations, has died in a Plymouth nursing home. Caradon was 82, said his son, Paul Foot.

No cause of death was given.

Caradon, who died Wednesday, was not afraid to differ with the governments he served and once resigned rather than defend a policy he did not support.

He was born Hugh Foot on Oct. 8, 1907, the son of a distinguished political family.

His brother, Michael, was leader of the Labor Party opposition from 1980 to 1983 and remains a Labor member of Parliament.

Caradon was educated at Leighton Park, a Quaker school at Reading, and at Cambridge University. He was president of the Cambridge Union, a student group, in 1929.

Later that year he entered the old Colonial Office, which was responsible for administering Great Britain’s colonies.

In 1943, he was appointed colonial secretary in Cyprus, acting as governor in 1944.

The next 13 years he held a variety of Colonial Office posts, including chief secretary in Nigeria and governor-in-chief of Jamaica. He was knighted in 1951.

From 1957 to 1960, Caradon was governor and commander-in-chief in Cyprus.

He is credited with bringing the island’s rival Greek and Turkish leaders together, and he left Cyprus having completed his mission to forge a new independent republic.

In 1961, Caradon went to the United Nations as British Representative on the Trusteeship Council. But he did not agree with what he considered the British government’s lenient attitude toward the white minority in the colony of Rhodesia and resigned rather than speak for a policy he did not support.

In 1963, he was appointed consultant to the U.N. Special Fund, dealing with the governments of newly independent countries on matters of economic development.

The British government made him a life peer in 1964 and sent him to the United Nations as permanent representative, a post he held until 1970.