François Lafitte (3 August 1913—21 November 2002) was a French-born British political activist, social researcher, professor and abortion lobbyist.
In the 1930s, he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but left to join the elite think-tank, the Political and Economic Planning (PEP).
As a member of the editorial board of The Times, Lafitte developed a close relationship with the Attlee ministry as an advocate of Keynsian economics and the welfare state.
His mother had returned to London to live with Havelock Ellis, noted eugenicist and sexologist, who founded the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology.
[3][4] Lafitte's real break came when his application to work as a research assistant at the Political and Economic Planning (PEP) think-tank was accepted.
[4] The German invasion of the Netherlands sent the coalition government of the Churchill war ministry into a panic with the fear of a Nazi invasion of Britain and as part of the British anti-invasion preparations of the Second World War, "enemy aliens" were interned, as part of Churchill's "collar the lot" policy in regard to people in Britain originating from Axis nations.
Lafitte, familiar with some of the far-left refugees from Austria from his Communist Party days, wrote the indignant work The Internment of Aliens (1940), criticising this approach, it was published as one of the Penguin Specials.
[4] With the Conservatives keeping the welfare state in place after the government changed, Lafitte sought out new challenges and was appointed to the University of Birmingham in 1958.
[3][4] Lafitte had been a founding member of BPAS when it was known as the Birmingham Pregnancy Advisory Service, along with the sexologist Martin Cole and Nan Smith.