Walter Elliot (Scottish politician)

For other people named Walter Elliot, see Walter Elliot (disambiguation).

Walter Elliot Elliot MC (19 September 1888 – 8 January 1958) was a prominent Scottish Unionist Party politician in the interwar years.

Early life

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.

Political career

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.

On 29th 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.

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 SNP candidate Hugh MacDiarmid in the 1950 election.

Personal life

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.

Bibliography

• Torrance, David, The Scottish Secretaries (Birlinn 2006)
• Boyd-Orr; Sir Stephen Tallents (1958) [1958]. "Walter Elliot". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Volume 4. London: Royal Society. 

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Walter Elliot

Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency	Member of Parliament for Lanark 1918 – 1923	Succeeded by Thomas Scott Dickson
Preceded by William Hutchison	Member of Parliament for Glasgow Kelvingrove 1924–1945	Succeeded by John Lloyd Williams
Preceded by John Boyd Orr John Anderson Sir John Graham Kerr	Member of Parliament for Combined Scottish Universities 1946 – 1950 With: John Anderson Sir John Graham Kerr	Constituency abolished
Preceded by John Lloyd Williams	Member of Parliament for Glasgow Kelvingrove 1950 – 1958	Succeeded by Mary McAlister
Political offices
Preceded by Frederick Pethick-Lawrence	Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1931 – 1932	Succeeded by Leslie Hore-Belisha
Preceded by John Gilmour	Minister of Agriculture 1932 – 1936	Succeeded by William Morrison
Preceded by Godfrey Collins	Secretary of State for Scotland 1936 – 1938	Succeeded by John Colville
Preceded by Sir Kingsley Wood	Minister of Health 1938 – 1940	Succeeded by Malcolm MacDonald
Academic offices
Preceded by Arthur Keith	Rector of the University of Aberdeen 1933 – 1936	Succeeded by Sir Edward Evans
Preceded by John Boyd Orr	Rector of the University of Glasgow 1947 – 1950	Succeeded by John MacCormick