1026 Donald Crawford

Constituency : North  East Lanarkshire  1885-95

Donald  was  the  first  MP  for  North  East  Lanarkshire.

Donald  was  educated  at  Oxford  and  became  a  barrister. He  was   political  secretary  to  the  Lord  Advocate  Sir  John  Balfour  in  the  1880s. In  1884  he  was  appointed  by  Charles  Dilke, a  distant  relative, to  the  Scottish  Boundary  Commission. The  Tory  leader  Stafford  Northcote  objected  to  his  appointment  on  the  grounds  that  he  was  a  partisan  Liberal,  an  objection  seemingly  borne  out  by  his  standing  for  and  winning  one  of  the  new  seats  created.

Donald  was  a  lukewarm  supporter  of  the  crofters'  cause.

Donald's  biggest  impact  on  the  party  was  entirely  negative. In  1886  he  sued  his  much-younger  wife  Virginia   for  divorce  and  named  Dilke  as  her  lover. He  was  successful  in  gaining  his  divorce  but  the  publicity  around  the  trial  ended  Dilke's  ministerial  career.

Donald  stood  down  in  1895.

He  died  in  1919  aged  82.