Jones, Peter William Warburton (1946–2001), barrister and political activist, was born 5 December 1946 in Belfast, second son of Sir Edward Jones (1912–93), unionist MP and lord justice of appeal in the NI supreme court 1973–84, and Margaret Jones (née Smellie). His mother died in January 1953 and later that year his father married Ruth Smellie, his late mother's sister. Jones was educated at Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire, at Madrid University, and later at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he read law. After graduation he took a job with a South African newspaper and in 1966 witnessed the assassination of the nationalist party prime minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, from a distance of twenty yards. After a brief return to England, he set off once more to travel the length and breadth of South America.
On his return from Amazonia, Jones began reading for the bar and was called by Gray's Inn in 1969. He joined chambers in the Temple and embarked on an unconventional and colourful career as a barrister. In 1976 he was one of four barristers who travelled at their own expense to Angola to defend a group of British and American mercenaries who had been charged with perpetrating massacres during the civil war. Four of the mercenaries were executed by firing squad but Jones's client, John Nammock, escaped relatively lightly with eight years in prison. In 1979 Jones flew to Uganda to offer himself as a defence lawyer for Bob Astles (the British-born aide to the ousted president, Idi Amin), who had been charged with murder and armed robbery. Having failed to obtain immigration papers and permission to practice at the Ugandan bar, however, he was forced to return home. While living in Brixton, Jones was affectionately known by his West Indian neighbours as ‘the white bwana’ because of his efforts on behalf of local youth clubs and, in particular, his organisation of a trip to the West Indies for local Jamaican children.
Having stood as a local conservative councillor in Brixton, Jones decided to contest the general election of 1979 as the conservative candidate for East Flint. Although he came a considerable second, he did not seek reselection as his political outlook subsequently moved to the left.
He married Emma Rogers (1976), and soon afterwards travelled to Nigeria to take up a senior position in Voluntary Services Overseas. He returned to London and the bar, however, within a year. In the early 1990s his marriage broke down and, after an acrimonious divorce, he returned to Northern Ireland (1994) to build a new practice as a barrister. Far from utilising his late father's connections as a high-court judge and unionist MP, however, Jones followed his own convictions and became a member of the SDLP. An active member of the East Belfast branch of the party, he stood unsuccessfully for this constituency in the election to the new NI assembly in 1998.
He was engaged to be married a second time, to Marie White, in June 2001, but collapsed suddenly while addressing an industrial tribunal. He suffered a brain haemorrhage and died a short time later on 29 March 2001 at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. He was survived by his fiancée and the two children from his first marriage, Ruth and Patrick. Although he did not hold strong personal religious convictions, Jones had a catholic funeral service and was subsequently interred in Carnmoney cemetery outside Belfast.