Walter Elliot (Scottish politician)

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While in medical training at university he was President of the Glasgow University Union and served in the First World War, winning the Military Cross on two occasions. In the course of his career he was Member of Parliament for the constituencies of Lanark, Glasgow Kelvingrove, and Combined Scottish Universities. He was also Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Rector of the University of Aberdeen, and Rector of the University of Glasgow.

Early life

He was born in Lanark the eldest son of William Elliot, of the livestock auctioneers' firm Lawrie and Symington, and his wife, Ellen Elizabeth Shiels.<ref name="The Royal Society of Edinburgh">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name=":0" /> His mother died during the birth of his youngest sibling. The children were thereafter raised by the mother's relatives in Glasgow.<ref name="gla">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> They appear to have had a company, Shiels, Elliot and Nelson, who made farming equipment including the Shiels patent milking machine.<ref>Glasgow Post Office Directory 1900</ref> Elliot was raised in Glasgow and educated at the high school in Lanark and The Glasgow Academy. One of his friends from the academy, through university and beyond, was the playwright Osborne Henry Mavor.<ref name="gla" />

From 1905 he studied science and medicine at the University of Glasgow. In the election for Rector of the University of Glasgow in 1908, Elliot assisted the Liberal Club campaign to elect the Liberal David Lloyd George, supported the candidacy of George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, and according to Henry Mavor, ultimately voted for Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour Party.<ref name=":0" /> In 1909–10 he was editor of the Glasgow University Magazine.<ref name=":0" /> He co-wrote the university song "Ygorra".<ref name=":0" /> Elliot graduated BSc in 1910.<ref name=":0" /> As a postgraduate he was President of the Glasgow University Union, 1911–12.<ref name=":0" /> While in the British Army's Glasgow University Officers' Training Corps, he befriended John Boyd Orr.<ref name=":0" /> He graduated MB ChB in 1913.<ref name=":0" />

In 1913–14 he was houseman (a newly qualified doctor) at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary.<ref name=":0" />

First World War

At the onset of the First World War the Special Reserve of the Royal Army Medical Corps was mobilised and in December 1914 Elliot was attached as a medical officer to the Royal Scots Greys on the Western Front.<ref name=":0" /> He won a Military Cross for his actions at Wancourt during the Battle of Arras in April 1917.<ref name=":0" /> He won a second Military Cross in the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, adding a bar to the original medal.<ref name=":0" /> Walter received a leg wound in the final month of the war, but returned home safely. His younger brother Dan Elliot was killed in 1915, during the Gallipoli campaign.<ref name=":0" />

After the war, Elliot refused his father's urging to enter the family business, Lawrie and Symington, and instead began a political career after being asked to stand for election while recovering from his war-wound.<ref name=":0" /> The invitation came from the governing Lloyd George ministry, a coalition government of the Liberal Party with the Conservative Party and their allies the Unionist Party.<ref name=":0" /> Elliot was indifferent to party-political divisions, and was reputed to have agreed to stand before asking which party's ticket he should stand for.<ref name=":0" />

Member of Parliament

Elliot then entered politics and was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lanark in the 1918 general election, standing as a Unionist. In 1919 he was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Liberal Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health for Scotland, John Pratt.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite ODNB</ref> During his first stint in parliament he shared a house in Westminster with Liberal MP Colin Coote, who was later to write a biography of Elliot.<ref name=":0" /> In the same period Elliot met Blanche "Baffy" Dugdale niece and biographer of Arthur Balfour, whose Zionism Elliot came to support.<ref name=":0" /> Elliot also undertook scientific research during parliamentary recesses; his friend John Boyd Orr invited him to work at the Rowett Research Institute.<ref name=":0" /> In the Commons, Elliot supported the Government of Ireland Act 1920, which established the Partition of Ireland into Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland as an attempt at Home Rule.<ref name=":0" /> At the pivotal Carlton Club meeting on 19 October 1922, he supported the Conservative Party's ongoing coalition government of the Lloyd George ministry, but the Party favoured ending its involvement.<ref name=":0" />

From Elliot's research emerged a doctoral thesis on nutrition in pigs submitted to the University of Glasgow and for which Elliot was made Doctor of Science in 1923.<ref name=":0" /> He lost this seat in the 1923 general election but regained a place in the House of Commons months later in the 1924 Glasgow Kelvingrove by-election, a seat he held until July 1945.<ref name=":0" />

Junior Minister

In January 1923 Elliot was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health for Scotland in the government of Stanley Baldwin.<ref name=":0" /> He briefly lost the post during the Labour Party's 1924 first MacDonald ministry, but regained it after Baldwin's return to power that same year.<ref name=":0" /> In July 1926 Elliot was made to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, a role he filled until 1929.<ref name=":0" /> He made an official visit to Colonial Nigeria in 1927.<ref name=":0" /> He was involved in the passage of the Local Government Act 1929, as well as reforms to administration in Scotland in 1928 and changes to Scottish ministers' positions in 1926.<ref name=":0" />

In 1924 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Sir Robert Blyth Greig, Frederick Orpen Bower, Arthur Crichton Mitchell, and William Archer Porter Tait.<ref name="The Royal Society of Edinburgh" />

Elliot was involved in the Empire Marketing Board from October 1927, having been appointed president of the Imperial Research Conference in Westminster Hall.<ref name=":1">Template:Citation</ref> and with John Boyd Orr began a project that conducted experiments in 1927 proving the value of feeding free milk to children in schools, and this persuaded Elliot to extend the pilot scheme to all Scotland's schools by legislation.<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":2">Template:Cite ODNB</ref> Elliot was a supporter of the Empire Marketing Board Film Unit and its work on documentary films, particularly those of John Grierson, including Drifters in 1929.<ref name=":0" />

In May 1928, Elliot and Arthur Samuel, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury were reported to be working together in helping the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill in the budget debate.<ref name=":1" />

After the formation of the first National Government (1931), Elliot was appointed Financial Secretary to the Treasury, a post he retained in the following second National Government (1931–1935).<ref name=":0" /> Early in 1932 Elliot was made a Privy Counsellor.<ref name=":0" />

Cabinet Minister

Political dispute over the British Empire Economic Conference held in Ottawa in summer 1932 – in which the British Dominions' governments discussed solutions to the Great Depression – eventually caused the replacement of the then Home Secretary Herbert Samuel with Sir John Gilmour, 2nd Baronet.<ref name=":1" /> In the same cabinet reshuffle, it was generally anticipated that Elliot would be appointed Secretary of State for Scotland, including by Elliot himself and by the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, but unexpectedly Elliot was appointed to replace Gilmour as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food while Godfrey Collins became the Scottish Secretary after the departure of Sir Archibald Sinclair, 4th Baronet.<ref name=":1" />

He was seen by many as a rising star. In 1932 he entered the Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and subsequently served as Secretary of State for Scotland and Minister of Health. Amongst his achievements were the Agricultural Marketing Act which sought to protect food producers from going bankrupt amidst massive surpluses and collapsing prices, the introduction of free milk for school children and formation of the National Housing Company which built prefabricated steel-based "Weir Houses" (produced for industrialist William Weir, 1st Viscount Weir) in Clydeside.

While Minister of Agriculture, Elliot asked John Boyd Orr, who advocated a national food policy, to prepare a report on nutrition and public health, though it went unpublished because of their political ramifications.<ref name=":2" /> Orr published the report himself as Food, Health and Income in early 1936, advocating national and international co-ordination on nutrition.<ref name=":2" /><ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

He was elected Rector of the University of Aberdeen in 1933, serving until 1936.<ref name=":0" /> Elliot was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1935.<ref name=":0" />

On 29 March 1939, Elliot passed the Cancer Act 1939 – "An Act to make further provision for the treatment of cancer, to authorise the Minister of Health to lend money to the National Radium Trust, to prohibit certain advertisements relating to cancer, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid". All provisions in the Act for improving the treatment of cancer nationally have since been stripped, leaving only the prohibition against advertisements relating to cancer treatments.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 1938 Elliot's career reached a turning point when he came close to resigning over the Munich Agreement but decided against. Consequently, his political stock began to fall and when Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister in 1940, Elliot was dropped from the government. He later served as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

Walter Elliot helped save the Palace of Westminster's great hall during the Blitz.

Second World War

Churchill did not include Elliot in the Churchill war ministry during the Second World War; instead, Churchill offered him the post of Governor of British Burma (the "Scottish Colony") in October 1940, which Elliot refused.<ref name=":0" /> Since leaving government, Elliot become deputy assistant adjutant-general at Chester.<ref name=":0" /> There he dealt with refugees from The Blitz.<ref name=":0" /> After refusing the governorship of Burma, in January the following year he accepted the role of director of public relations at the War Office.<ref name=":0" /> He also sat on the Scottish Council of State established by Churchill's Secretary of State for Scotland, Tom Johnston, since Elliot was himself a former Scotland Secretary.<ref name=":0" />

In May 1941, during the London Blitz, Elliot chanced to be nearby the Palace of Westminster during a heavy air-raid which damaged the building. In the fire that followed, he was able to direct the London Fire Brigade to focus their efforts on saving the centuries-old Westminster Hall, with its unrivalled medieval hammerbeam roof, rather than on the Victorian Gothic chamber of the House of Commons, which was destroyed.<ref name=":0" /> During his time at the War Office, Elliot commissioned war artists in co-operation with Kenneth Clark, the Surveyor of the King's Pictures, director of the National Gallery, and instigator of the War Artists' Advisory Committee.<ref name=":0" /> He also commissioned war-work from writers, including Eric Linklater.<ref name=":0" /> At the end of the year Elliot left his job at the War Office; he retired from the British Army having been promoted colonel.<ref name=":0" />

He was chair of the Public Accounts Committee, a powerful House of Commons select committee, in 1942.<ref name=":0" /> During his chairmanship, he handled an inquiry examining deals between the Marconi Company and the Air Ministry; the investigation ended in the company forfeiting the proceeds.<ref name=":0" />

In the beginning of 1943, Elliot suffered serious injury in an accident at the railway station at Hawick, while boarding a train on the Waverley Route between Edinburgh and Carlisle.<ref name=":0" /> He took the rest of 1943 to recover.<ref name=":0" /> In this time he was chair of committee on herring fisheries and published a collection of broadcasts he had made the previous year as Long Distance.<ref name=":0" />

In early 1944 Elliot travelled to British West Africa, where he was instrumental in the eventual establishment of universities in the Gold Coast, the Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate, and British Nigeria.<ref name=":0" /> The commission established to deal with higher education in West Africa was chaired by Elliot.<ref name=":0" />

Elliot had a meeting with Joseph Stalin as part of a parliamentary delegation to the Soviet Union, one of the Allies, in spring 1945.<ref name=":0" /> In the 1945 general election which brought the Attlee ministry to power, he lost the Glasgow Kelvingrove constituency to Labour's John Williams<ref name=":0" /> by just 88 votes.<ref>1945 General Election result.</ref>Template:Circular reference

Backbencher

He was returned for the Combined Scottish Universities seat in the November 1946 Combined Scottish Universities by-election, in which he replaced John Boyd Orr, who had resigned to become Director-General of the United Nations' new Food and Agriculture Organization. (This was the last such election.) When the university seats were abolished, Elliot returned to Kelvingrove where he beat his Labour opponent from 1945, John Lloyd Williams, and SNP candidate Hugh MacDiarmid in the 1950 election.

Between 1947 and 1950, Elliot was the elected Rector of the University of Glasgow.<ref name=":0" /> He was a governor of The Peckham Experiment in 1949.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> The same year, Elliot undertook a journey to the newly established State of Israel to report for The Daily Telegraph.<ref name=":0" /> Elliot was a strong supporter of Israel.<ref name=":0" />

In 1954 Elliot led the Parliamentary Delegation of Inquiry into the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya Colony.<ref name=":0" /> He also led the popular Elliot Commission on Higher Education in West Africa whose report informed the creation of the first university colleges in West African countries such as Nigeria and Ghana.

Elliot co-founded the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in 1955, and was its treasurer, often travelling to North America on NATO business.<ref name=":0" /> He frequently attended the Königswinter Conference at Königswinter in West Germany, an Anglo-German meeting of parliamentarians held annually from 1950.<ref name=":0" />

Besides his fellowship in the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Elliot was also fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.<ref name=":0" />

Six universities awarded him honorary Legum Doctor (LLD) doctorates, including all the ancient universities of Scotland (Aberdeen, Edinburgh, St Andrews, Glasgow) and the universities of Leeds and Manchester. He received an honorary Doctor of Science (DSc) degree from the University of South Africa.<ref name=":0" /> He was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1952.<ref name=":0" /> He was also Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1956–1957.<ref name=":0" />

He regularly appeared on the BBC television programme The Brains Trust and the BBC Home Service's radio programme Any Questions?.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref>

Family

Elliot married Helen Arabella Hamilton (the daughter of David Livingstone Hamilton) on 27 August 1919 at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She tragically died on 8 September in a mountaineering accident on their honeymoon on the Isle of Skye's Cuillin hills.<ref name=":0" /> He married secondly Katharine Tennant (the daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet and a half-sister of Margot Asquith) on 2 April 1934.

Arms

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Elliot was posthumously granted arms from Lord Lyon in 1962 at the request of his widow, Katharine Elliot, Baroness Elliot of Harwood. His arms are impaled with the arms of his father-in-law, Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet, in the arms of Katharine Elliot.<ref name="sutherland"/>

Death

He died at the family estate of Harwood (inherited from his father) in Bonchester Bridge on 8 January 1958 of a coronary thrombosis.<ref name="The Royal Society of Edinburgh" /><ref name=":0" /> He was buried in Hobkirk churchyard three days later.<ref name=":0" /> On Elliot's death, his widow stood as a Unionist for her husband's former seat of Glasgow Kelvingrove;<ref name=":0" /> she was defeated in the 1958 Glasgow Kelvingrove by-election by Labour's Mary McAlister. Afterwards she was instead one of the four women initially created a life peer under the Life Peerages Act 1958. As the Baroness Elliot of Harwood, she was the first woman to speak in the modern House of Lords.

Publications

Toryism in the Twentieth Century (1927)
Long Distance (1943)

Recognition

The Elliot Library at the Glasgow University Union is named after him, the main part of which consists of 2,000 books from Elliot's own library at Harwood. The Library was opened by then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1962.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

References

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Bibliography

Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006)
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External links

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Walter Elliot (Scottish politician)

Contents

Early life

First World War

Member of Parliament

Junior Minister

Cabinet Minister

Second World War

Backbencher

Family

Arms

Death

Publications

Recognition

References

Bibliography

External links

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Walter Elliot (Scottish politician)

Early life

First World War

Member of Parliament

Junior Minister

Cabinet Minister

Second World War

Backbencher

Family

Arms

Death

Publications

Recognition

References

Bibliography

External links

Navigation menu

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