Archibald Noel Skelton was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 Unionist

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 politician, journalist and intellectual.

Early life

The son of Sir John Skelton KCB

Order of the Bath

The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...

 LLD, Skelton was born on 1 July 1880 at Hermitage of Braid in Edinburgh and was educated at Glenalmond College

Glenalmond College

Glenalmond College is a co-educational independent boarding school in Perth and Kinross, Scotland, for children aged between 12 and 18 years. It is situated on the River Almond near the village of Methven, about west of the city of Perth. The school's motto is Floreat Glenalmond...

, Edinburgh University and at Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church, Oxford

Christ Church or house of Christ, and thus sometimes known as The House), is one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England...

, to which he won a history scholarship. He was placed in the Second Class in the School of Modern History in 1902 and in 1906 he was called to the Scottish Bar and therefore joined the Faculty of Advocates

Faculty of Advocates

The Faculty of Advocates is an independent body of lawyers who have been admitted to practise as advocates before the courts of Scotland, especially the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary...

. Skelton was respected as a lawyer, but dealt mainly with divorce cases and those involving disputed wills. In 1920 he was appointed Junior Counsel to the Post Office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

, and to the Board of Inland Revenue in 1921. In the First World War, Skelton served with the Scottish Horse

Scottish Horse

The Scottish Horse was a Yeomanry Regiment of the British Territorial Army from 1900 to 1956 when it was amalgamated with The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry....

 as a Lieutenant

Lieutenant

A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...

, Captain

Captain (British Army and Royal Marines)

Captain is a junior officer rank of the British Army and Royal Marines. It ranks above Lieutenant and below Major and has a NATO ranking code of OF-2. The rank is equivalent to a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and to a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force...

, and latterly a Major

Major

Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

, in Gallipoli

Gallipoli

The Gallipoli peninsula is located in Turkish Thrace , the European part of Turkey, with the Aegean Sea to the west and the Dardanelles straits to the east. Gallipoli derives its name from the Greek "Καλλίπολις" , meaning "Beautiful City"...

, Salonika, and France, where he was seriously wounded in the last weeks of the war.

Political career

Skelton first stood for Parliament at the second general election of 1910, but he lost the East Perthshire Division

East Perthshire (UK Parliament constituency)

East Perthshire was a county constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1885 to 1918...

 to his Liberal opponent. Despite his defeat, Skelton remained active in politics, speaking frequently from Unionist platforms across Scotland. He was opposed to Irish Home Rule but was more progressive on issues like land reform, industrial relations and the use of the referendum. At the end of the Great War Skelton stood aside and allowed the Coalition candidate in East Perthshire to be elected unopposed. But he was elected Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 for the new Perth

Perth (UK Parliament constituency)

Perth was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1832 to 1918, 1918 to 1950, and 1997 to 2005. From 1832 to 1918 it was a burgh constituency. From 1918 to 1950, and 1997 to 2005, it was a county constituency...

 Division in 1922, although he lost the constituency a year later to a Liberal.

Constructive Conservatism

Skelton was a talented journalist and wrote frequently for The Spectator

The Spectator

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...

, including four articles in April and May 1923 under the heading 'Constructive Conservatism'. These lively articles set out Skelton's political philosophy - chiefly the pursuit of a 'property-owning democracy', the division of land into small-holdings, co-partnership and share options to improve industrial relations, and finally, the use of referendums to resolve disputes between the House of Commons and House of Lords - as well as urge the Unionists to compete with Labour on more typically Socialist issues like pensions and housing. The four Spectator articles were republished as a pamphlet in 1924 which had a lasting influence, particularly among younger Tory MPs.

The YMCA

Skelton was re-elected for Perth in 1924 and again in 1929. He quickly struck up friendships with the Conservative MPs like Anthony Eden

Anthony Eden

Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...

, Harold Macmillan

Harold Macmillan

Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, OM, PC was Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963....

, Robert Boothby

Robert Boothby

Robert John Graham Boothby, Baron Boothby, KBE was a controversial British Conservative politician.-Early life:...

, John Buchan

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir was a Scottish novelist, historian and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the 15th since Canadian Confederation....

 and Oliver Stanley

Oliver Stanley

Oliver Frederick George Stanley MC, PC was a prominent British Conservative politician who held many ministerial posts before his early death when it was expected he would soon assume higher office....

, and became the intellectual leader of a Parliamentary grouping dubbed the 'YMCA' by cynical older Parliamentarians. The group lobbied to make sure that Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, KG, PC was a British Conservative politician, who dominated the government in his country between the two world wars...

, the prime minister, resisted the influence of reactionary elements in the Conservative Party and instead implemented progressive legislation. Baldwin was sympathetic, and it was soundings with the YMCA which prevented Baldwin backing a controversial Political Levy Bill which would have had disastrous consequences for UK trade union relations.

Skelton also maintained the group's journalistic presence, writing several articles for the Spectator, the Quarterly Review

Quarterly Review

The Quarterly Review was a literary and political periodical founded in March 1809 by the well known London publishing house John Murray. It ceased publication in 1967.-Early years:...

and the English Review.

The Scottish Office

Skelton switched to the Scottish Universities constituency in 1931 and was returned unopposed. That same year he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland

Under-Secretary of State for Scotland

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland is a junior ministerial post in the United Kingdom government, supporting the Secretary of State for Scotland...

 with responsibility for health, housing and education. He was a talented administrator but occasionally pedantic when intervening in Commons debates.

By 1935 Skelton was terminally ill with cancer and after several weeks in a nursing home died in Edinburgh on 22 November 1935. The declaration for the Scottish Universities constituency was made three days later, and Skelton was re-elected posthumously.

Skelton's influence

Although Skelton died at the relatively young age of 55, he had once been seen as a potential Conservative leader, and certainly as a senior Cabinet minister. And although he was quickly forgotten among the wider public, his influence, as Harold Macmillan wrote in his memoirs, 'on politics and political thinking must have grown steadily year by year'. His thinking on property ownership as the fundamental basis of modern conservatism proved particularly attractive, and Anthony Eden personally revived the phrase as a political slogan at the 1946 Conservative Party conference. Macmillan then used it as the intellectual basis for the 1950s house-building boom, while his successor as prime minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, owed his early political career to Skelton, as his PPS from 1931-35.

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990...

's first government and her popular policy of giving council house tenants the Right to Buy while promoting share ownership among the public sector workforce, not to mention her emphasis on the individual, perhaps saw Skeltonian principles at their height. And even today, with the focus having shifted from a 'property-owning democracy' to 'affordable housing', Skelton's influence is still profound.

External links

• Let us at least give house-room to property tax idea – The Herald article, dated 9 November 2006
• Prices on the up but homes ideal has its downside – Edinburgh Evening News article, dated 16 November 2006