Constituency : Inverness Burghs 1906-18
So now at last we come to the Liberals' greatest triumph, their landslide victory at the 1906 election. The Liberals won nearly 400 seats, trouncing the Unionists after three years of their opponents' bitter division over the Tariff Reform issue. Balfour himself went down in the rout. In addition, the Labour Representation Committee won 29 seats as a result of the pact agreed between Herbert Gladstone and Ramsay McDonald. The Liberal Unionists' seat total more than halved. Chamberlain's Birmingham stronghold held firm but elsewhere they were shredded, reduced to a scattered handful of pocket boroughs. It's only surprising that it took another six years before their absorption into the Conservative party was finalised.
John ousted the Liberal Unionist, Robert Finlay, at Inverness.
John was the brother of Aberdeen South MP and former minister James Bryce. He was educated at Oxford and the University of Glasgow. He was a merchant operating in India and part of the Rangoon Chamber of Commerce. He also conducted explorations into remote regions of Burma and Siam. He was subsequently on the Council of the Royal Geographical Society. He subsequently held directorships in banking, railways , insurance and electricity supply.
John served for two years on the Royal Commission for Congestion in Ireland.
In 1908 James campaigned for land access and declared that "the people should not have this access to mountains on sufferance but as a right" . The following year his Access to Mountains ( Scotland ) Bill got to a second reading.
John constructed Ilnacullin tropical gardens near Cork which remain a tourist attraction to this day.
During World War One John and his wife ran a home for convalescent soldiers in Ireland.
John stood down in 1918 when his seat was abolished.
John and his wife protested about army reprisals in Ireland during the independence struggle.
He died in 1923 aged 81.
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