David Anderson (judge)

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David Anderson
Anderson in 1961
Solicitor General for Scotland
In office 1960–1964
Member of Parliament for Dumfriesshire
In office 12 December 1963 – 25 September 1964
Personal details
Born	8 September 1916
Died	31 December 1995
Political party	Unionist

David Colville Anderson

invasion.

Early life and RNVR service

From a

degree.

His studies were interrupted by the outbreak of war. Anderson was well prepared, because he had enjoyed

Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve

in 1935, commissioned Sub Lieutenant 20 April 1938. He was a member of the Inter-Services shooting team at Bisley from 1936 to 1938.

Wartime and legal career

During the

promoted to Lieutenant-Commander 20 April 1948, he retired from the RNVR in 1960.

Resuming his studies at Edinburgh, he obtained a Distinction in his LLB in 1946. He won the Maclagan and Dalgety Prizes at Edinburgh. Qualifying as an Advocate in the same year, he became a lecturer in Scots Law at Edinburgh from 1947 while also practising. Anderson concentrated on government instructions and became Standing Junior Counsel to the

Queen's Counsel

in 1957.

Political career

Already interested in politics, Anderson had been the Unionist candidate in the safe Labour seat of Coatbridge and Airdrie in the 1955 general election and in the more marginal seat of East Dunbartonshire in 1959. He continued trying to find Unionist nominations in winnable seats.

Although not a member of parliament, Anderson was appointed Solicitor General for Scotland on 11 May 1960.^[5] This was a junior ministerial post within the government (advising the Scottish Office on legal matters) which was considered acceptable for an appointment from outside Parliament. He was also an ex-officio Commissioner for Northern Lighthouses, becoming vice-chairman in 1963.

When

through its Standing Committee stage in Parliament led to a decision that the Solicitor-General would be useful to have as a member of parliament. He kept the seat with a much-reduced majority of 971 after a low-key campaign.

Anderson was taken ill in March 1964 and was forced to announce his resignation from the government and from the

and under-secretary for the Scottish Office from 1972.

Anderson's legal career ended when he was fined £50 for accosting two 14-year-old girls, and asking them to walk on him and beat him up. He had been in Troon on 18 December 1972, presiding over the first major public inquiry of his new post. The prosecution claimed that Anderson, finding himself out of his home town, had approached the girls and asked them to go to a quiet place with him.

The case was controversial, as the girls failed to identify Anderson, and he received an alibi from one of the staff members of the hotel where he was staying. The identification, in particular, had numerous inconsistencies. For example, the initial report described a "well-built" man with white or blonde hair, whereas Anderson was considered slight and had dark hair. Additionally, the girls described the car as having an Edinburgh registration plate with the digits 4, 5, and another digit, while Anderson's car had an Edinburgh plate "555" and was of a different make, colour, and body type.^[6] Anderson, who feared that the KGB had framed him in an act of revenge by using a lookalike to impersonate him and compromise him, appealed against the conviction but lost. He was dismissed from his posts in 1974.

Such were the inconsistencies and poor process^[6] that several high-profile, but unsuccessful attempts were made to clear Anderson's name, including debates in the Lords and Commons and an investigation by the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission. He continued to press his innocence and in 1980 the playwright John Hale wrote The Case of David Anderson QC which was sympathetic to his position. The play was put on in Manchester, Edinburgh and at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith. Anderson had not succeeded in clearing his name by the time of his death, aged 79, on 31 December 1995. In September 2002 it was announced that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission was looking into the case, but it concluded in February 2005 that the conviction should stand.

In her 2010 autobiography Lady Judy Steel, wife of Scottish politician David Steel, claimed that a man had made an almost identical indecent proposal to her when she was a teenage student at Edinburgh University. When she later learned of the 1972 case she concluded that the two assailants must have been the same man, and named Anderson on the presumption of guilt.^[7]

• List of United Kingdom MPs with the shortest service

• M. Stenton and S. Lees, "Who's Who of British MPs" Vol. IV (Harvester Press, 1981)
• Who Was Who
• Dennis Straughan, Marcello Mega, "Was QC really framed by the KGB?", Scotland on Sunday, 8 September 2002.
• Kirsty Scott, "'KGB revenge' case to be reviewed after 30 years", The Guardian, 9 September 2002, p. 8.
• Marcello Mega, "No pardon for QC over 1973 verdict", Scotland on Sunday, 6 February 2005.

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by David Colville Anderson

Legal offices
Preceded by William Grant	Solicitor General for Scotland 1960–1964	Succeeded by Norman Wylie
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Niall Macpherson	Member of Parliament for Dumfriesshire 1963–1964	Succeeded by Hector Monro