Person    | Male  Born 3/2/1952  Died 5/10/1999

A civil servant with the Northern Ireland office who had helped draft the Good Friday Agreement. He created the new human rights and equality commission in the province. Killed in the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster, aged 47.

Andrew Behan has kindly carried out further research: Anthony Clifford Beeton was born in Tottenham on 3 February 1952, the son of Clifford Ernest Beeton and Yvonne E. Beeton née Richard and the family lived at 73 Mount Pleasant Road, Tottenham. In 1975 he married Margaret A. Clegg in Worthing, Sussex and they had two children, Piers Anthony Amedee Beeton, born in 1989 and Olivia Grace A. C. Beeton, born in 1992. In the 1980's he was a Labour Party broadcast officer. The family lived in Didcot, Oxfordshire and he was a civil servant and adviser to Mo Mowlem, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, working  as the head of the human rights division at the Northern Ireland Office in Thames House, 11 Millbank, Westminster, where he had been involved in framing legislation for the Good Friday agreement. His wife was a Didcot local councillor. He died, aged 47 years, on 5 October 1999 in the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster after boarding the 6.03am First Great Western High Speed Train from Cheltenham Spa, Gloucestershire to Paddington at Didcot, and taking his normal seat in a rear carriage. On the approach to Paddington he walked to the front of the train, as he did every morning, and when it collided with the 8.06am Thames Trains Turbo train from Paddington to Bedwyn, Wiltshire, his body was thrown from the front coach into the power car. The subsequent inquest was informed that his death was instantaneous being caused by head and pelvic injuries and that he was identified by his dental records.

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