Constituency :Leicester 1910-13
Eliot took over from Franklin Thomasson as Ramsay MacDonald's colleague at Leicester. He topped the poll ( and did so in December ).
Eliot was the son of the former South Glamorgan MP Arthur Williams. He was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery and served in India. He worked for Churchill at the Colonial Office from 1906 to 1908. He stood for Chorley in 1906.
Eliot was appointed PPS to Lloyd George. He resigned in 1913 after being named in a divorce case by fellow MP Hubert Carr-Gomm. Two years later he was divorced and married Carr-Gomm's ex-wife.
Eliot supported proportional representation, female suffrage and nationalisation of the railways.
Eliot served in Egypt and Palestine during World War One. From 1918 to 1920 he worked at the offices of the Northern Command in Egypt. He considered joining the Labour party in 1918 in order to make a comeback but further legal proceedings put paid to the idea.
Eliot later turned to writing and wrote the screen play for Service for Ladies ( 1932 ) as well as plays and novels.
In World War Two, Eliot was Chief Civil Defence Officer in a Welsh village. Nevertheless he wrote to Churchill in 1940 advocating a negotiated peace with Hitler "using our nuisance value while we have one to get the best peace terms available". Churchill's reply was "I am ashamed of you for writing such a letter".
He died in 1962 aged 82.
No comments:
Post a Comment