Walter Elliot

Walter Elliot Elliot (19 September 1888 – 8 January 1958) was a politician of Scotland's Unionist Party prominent in the interwar period. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1918, and besides an interval of months in 1923–24 and 1945–46, remained in parliament until his death. His Cabinet roles were as the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the National Government (1931–1935) of Ramsay MacDonald; as the Secretary of State for Scotland in the National Government (1935–1937) of Stanley Baldwin; and as Minister of Health in Neville Chamberlain's National Government (1937–1939) and the short-lived Chamberlain war ministry.

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. They appear to have had a company, Shiels, Elliot and Nelson, who made farming equipment including the Shiels patent milking machine. 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. 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. 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. 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.

He was elected Rector of the University of Aberdeen in 1933, serving until 1936.

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. Westminster Hall (built 1097) is the largest remnant of the medieval palace; its roof greater span than any timber roof in England, built by Hugh Herland (begun 1393).

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.

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. The same year, Elliot undertook a journey to the newly established State of Israel to report for The Daily Telegraph.

Family Elliot married Helen Arabella Hamilton (the daughter of David Livingstone Hamilton) on 27 August 1919 at St. Margaret's Church, Westminster. She tragically died on 8 September in a mountaineering accident on their honeymoon on the Isle of Skye's Cuillin hills.

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.