| Archibald Henry Macdonald Sinclair, 1st Viscount Thurso (then Sir Archibald Sinclair) (October 22, 1890-June 15, 1970) was leader of the UK Liberal Party from 1935 until 1945.
Sinclair served on the Western Front during the First World War and rose to the rank of Major in the Guards Machine Gun Regiment. He
served as second in command to Winston Churchill when Churchill
commanded the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers
in the Ploegsteert Wood sector of the Western Front in 1915,
Churchill having been disgraced after Gallipoli. They formed a lasting friendship
that would become a significant political alliance in later decades.
In 1922 he entered the House
of Commons as a Liberal MP for Caithness and Sutherland supporting David Lloyd George, defeating the incumbent Liberal supporter of
Herbert Henry Asquith. He rose through the Liberal ranks
as the party shrank in Parliament, becoming Chief Whip by 1930. In 1931 the Liberal Party joined the National
Government of Ramsay MacDonald and Sinclair held the post of
Secretary of State for Scotland. The
following year he, together with other Liberal ministers, resigned from the government in protest at the Ottawa Convention introducing a series of tariff agreements. Sinclair and
the Liberal leader, Sir Herbert Samuel, were thus the last Liberal
politicians to sit in the Cabinet.
In the 1935 general election, Samuel lost
his seat. Sinclair became the party's leader at the head of only twenty MPs. With the party now clearly marginalised as a third
party on the fringe, with few distinct domestic policies, with a parliamentary party that was primarily a collection of
individuals elected as much for themselves as for their party, and with the separate Liberal Nationals offering competition amongst
Liberal inclined voters, Sinclair fought to make the Liberals once more a relevant force in British politics, taking up the
issues of opposition to the continental dictatorships and working worked closely with Winston Churchill who was a backbencher at that time
and generally shunned by his Conservative Party.
When Churchill formed an all-party coalition government in 1940, Sinclair became Secretary of State for Air. However he did not sit in
the small War Cabinet, though he was invited to attend meetings discussing
any political matter. He remained a minister until May 1945 when the coalition ended. In the 1945 general election, he narrowly lost his seat. There
was speculation that he might return to the Commons and the leadership, but he was unsuccessful in his attempt to re-enter
Parliament in 1950. In 1952 he accepted elevation to the House of Lords as Viscount Thurso. He was expected to take up the leadership of the Liberal group in the House of Lords, but
a series of strokes in the mid-fifties left him in a state of precarious health until his death in 1970.
In the 1990s, his grandson, John Thurso entered politics and now sits as MP for Caithness, Sutherland & Easter
Ross.
Preceded by:
New creation |
Viscount Thurso |
Followed by:
Robin MacDonald Sinclair |
|