Walter Elliot (Scottish Unionist MP)

Walter Elliot Elliot [His full name contained "Elliot" twice over.] MC (19 September 1888–8 January 1958) was a prominent Scottish Unionist Party politician in the interwar years.

The son of a Lanarkshire farmer, Elliot was raised in Glasgow and educated at the Glasgow Academy and the University of Glasgow, where he studied science and medicine. He then became a medical officer to the Scots Greys and served in the First World War where he gained a Military Cross.

Elliot then entered politics and was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Lanark in the 1918 general election. He lost this seat in the 1923 general election but, a year later in the 1924 general election, he was elected as MP for Glasgow Kelvingrove. He was seen by many as a rising star. In 1932 he entered the Cabinet as Minister of Agriculture 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 "Weir Houses" in Clydeside.

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. In the 1945 election, he lost his Kelvingrove seat by just 45 votes. He was returned for the Combined Scottish Universities seat in a by-election in November 1946. When the university seats were abolished, Elliot returned to Kelvingrove where he beat his Labour opponent from 1945, John Lloyd Williams, and Hugh MacDiarmid in the 1950 election.

Elliot married Helen Hamilton in 1919, but she died in a mountaineering accident on their honeymoon. He married secondly, Katharine Tennant (the daughter of Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet and a half-sister of Margot Asquith) on 2 April 1934. The Elliot Library at the Glasgow University Union is named for him.

References

Biblography

*Torrance, David, "The Scottish Secretaries" (Birlinn 2006)
*cite book |last=Boyd-Orr |first= |authorlink= |coauthors=Sir Stephen Tallents |editor= |others= |title=Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Volume 4 |origdate= |origyear=1958 |origmonth= |url= |format= |accessdate= |accessyear= |accessmonth= |edition= |date= |year=1958 |month= |publisher=Royal Society |location=London |language= |id= |doi = |pages= |chapter= Walter Elliot |chapterurl= |quote =

Offices held