Sir Harold Paton Mitchell, 1st Baronet

Harold Paton Mitchell (May 21 1900 – April 8 1983) was a British peer and businessman. He was born in Carnock, Fifeshire, UK, the eldest son of Alexander Mitchell (Scottish entrepreneur) and Meta Mary Graham Paton.

He also served as a member of the British House of Commons for the constituency of Brentford and Chiswick from 1931 to 1945.

He was a director of a number of companies directorships included ones with London and North-Eastern Railway Company, the New Zealand and Australian Land Company Ltd; the Ben Line Steamers (from 1925), the Alloa Glass Works Company (from 1928), the Stirling Brickworks (chairman), the New Main Brick Works Ltd. (from 1938) and the Alloa Coal Company (from 1926). In 1920 he invested in and turned round the failing Mountain Park Coal Company in Canada. This company formed the core of the later Mitchell controlled company Luscar. He was an investor in the Globe and Phoenix Gold Mining Company Ltd. in Southern Africa. He purchased Tulliallan Castle in 1923 from the estate of Sir James Sivewright (and sold it to the Scottish Home Department in 1950 for £9,100). He invested money in a game farm and afforestation projects on the estate.

In the 1920s he was a member of Clackmannan Union Agricultural Society (vice-president from 1927). He was an accomplished downhill skier (he published a book on the subject in) 1931, one of his many leisure activities. He set up a pipe band competition in Alloa in the early 1930s. He became Joint Master of the Lauderdale Hunt (Roxburghshire) with his brother Alex on the death of their father in 1934. He maintained a stable of show horses before World War 2.

When World War Two broke out Harold Mitchell served as a Liaison Officer with the Polish Army then Command Welfare Office for the Anti-Aircraft Command. He was created a baronet in 1945 (1st Baronet Mitchell of Tulliallan) and was Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Party under Winston Churchill.

He left the United Kingdom after his mines and a railway he owned were nationalised after the Second World War circum 1947 and subsequently he refused to keep any of his money in there.

He later became a lecturer and author on Caribbean subjects. He had a number of estates in Bermuda (his main residency in his later years), Jamaica, Honduras, Portugal, Fiji, Brazil and Guatemala. He had extensive mining interests in Canada and the United States (Luscar). He was Honourary Colonel of the Scottish based 61 Signal Regiment TAVR in 1963.

A foundation was set up with his money after his death. It funded various projects including renovation of Tulliallan Graveyard in Fifeshire close to where he had once lived and possibly a donation to University of St Andrews (there is a building named the Sir Harold Mitchell Building housing the School of Environmental and Evolutionary Biology (as it was called in 2007). Harold wrote several books including two on Caribbean economics and politics in 1967.

He married a Mary Pringle in 1947. They had one daughter Mary Jean.