Toby Low, 1st Baron Aldington

Brigadier Toby Austin Richard William Low, 1st Baron Aldington, Baron Low, (25 May 1914 – 7 December 2000), known as Austin Richard William Low until he added "Toby" as a forename by deed poll on 10 July 1957, was a British Conservative Party politician and businessman. He was however best known for his role in the forced handover of Cossack collaborators and the Bleiburg repatriations. After he was accused of war crimes in the late 1980s, he successfully sued his accusers for libel. and Lucy Atkin, daughter of the Lord Atkin. He was educated at Winchester College (where he later became Warden, i.e. chairman of the governing body), and at New College, Oxford where he studied law. He qualified as a barrister in 1939.

Family Aldington married Felicité Ann Araminta MacMichael (died 2012), a daughter of Sir Harold MacMichael, on 10 April 1947. They had a son, Charles Low, 2nd Baron Aldington, and two daughters, Jane, Lady Roberts (Curator of the Print Room at Windsor Castle and Royal Librarian; married Sir Hugh Roberts), and Lucy Ann Anthea (married Alasdair Laing).

Libel case In 1989 Lord Aldington initiated and won a record £1.5 million (plus £500,000 costs) in a libel case against Nikolai Tolstoy and Nigel Watts, who had accused him of war crimes in Austria. The accusation stemmed from his involvement in the forced handover of Cossacks at Lienz, part of the mandatory repatriation of Soviet citizens at the end of the Second World War.

Nigel Watts, who was in a business dispute with Sun Alliance, one of Lord Aldington's former companies, used this information to further his own cause, printing 10,000 leaflets about Aldington's role in the matter and circulating them to politicians and other figures. Tolstoy avoided paying the damages by declaring himself bankrupt,

In July 1995, the European Court of Human Rights decided unanimously that the British Government had violated Tolstoy's rights in respect of Article 10 of the Convention on Human Rights, describing the damages as "excessive and not necessary in a democratic society".

This decision referred only to the amount of the damages awarded against him and did not overturn the judgement in the libel action. The Times commented:

Subsequently, allegations were made that Aldington had been materially assisted by friends at the Ministry of Defence, who had suppressed crucial documentation, but Tolstoy and Watts were refused Leave to Appeal on the basis of those findings. Nigel Watts was jailed for 18 months in April 1995, after repeating the libel that Aldington was a war criminal in a pamphlet. The sentence was reduced to nine months on appeal. In June 1995, Watts was released from prison after issuing a public apology to Aldington.