Katharine Elliot, Baroness Elliot of Harwood

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Lord Temporal
Life peerage
26 September 1958 – 3 January 1994
Personal details
Born
Katharine Tennant

(1903-01-15)15 January 1903
Mayfair, London, England
Died3 January 1994(1994-01-03) (aged 90)
Hawick, Roxburghshire, Scotland
Political partyConservative (Unionist until 1965)
Spouse
(m. 1934; died 1958)
Parent(s)Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet
Marguerite Miles
OccupationPolitician

Katharine Elliot, Baroness Elliot of Harwood,

public servant and politician
.

Early life

Born Katharine Tennant in 1903, she was the daughter of the

10 Downing Street, the home of her much older half-sister, Margot Asquith, the wife of then Prime Minister H. H. Asquith
. Tennant when visiting her sister, threw her teddybear out the window of 10 Downing Street at the protesting Suffragettes.

Tennant was educated at home by

George V as a debutante but later stated 'I was more interested in politics than parties' and grew up with strong Liberal ideals.[1] Later studying at the London School of Economics, she was also an accomplished violinist, organist, equestrienne, golfer and fluent in French
.

Marriage

On 2 April 1934, Tennant married

Walter Elliott, a doctor and Unionist Party MP who was at that time the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the National Government of Ramsay MacDonald. At the height of his career Elliot was probably the most significant Conservative politician of Scotland. She was his second wife; his first had died on their honeymoon fifteen years earlier. Elliot was the son of a livestock auctioneer and she became an expert in trading farm animals and agricultural equipment. Their friends and the local farmers had collected money towards a wedding present, from which she purchased a tractor
.

Politics

Elliot then became involved in Conservative affairs, wrote speeches for, and campaigned in elections for, her husband, as well as promoting his enactment of the

Suez crisis in 1956, she made a speech denouncing the Soviet invasion of Hungary during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1946, awarded the Grand Silver Cross of the Order of Merit of Austria
in 1963.

In a 1958 episode of the BBC television programme The Brains Trust she described herself as an "unrepentant defender of votes for women".[3]

Following the death of her husband in 1958, Elliot took over from him as chair of the family auctioneering firm and stood in his place as parliamentary candidate of Glasgow Kelvingrove, but lost by a narrow margin of votes to the Labour candidate Mary McAlister in the 1958 Glasgow Kelvingrove by-election.

House of Lords

In 1958, Elliot was promoted as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire

House of Commons
, making the bill the first to be taken through both houses by women).

Death

At the

Church of St. Margaret, Westminster
, on 14 April.

Arms

Coat of arms of Katharine Elliot, Baroness Elliot of Harwood
Coronet
A Coronet of a Baroness
Escutcheon
Two coats per pale, dexter Gules on a bend Or between a holly leaf Proper in chief and a portcullis in base of the second a baton Azure (Elliot), sinister Argent two crescents in fess and a lymphad in the base Sable on a chief Gules a boar's head couped of the first within a bordure company of the second and first (Tennant).
Supporters
Dexter a Black-faced ram Proper horned Gules gorged of a collar Argent charged with two crescents Sable, sinister a horse Argent hooves, bridle and reins Sable.
Motto
Velis Plenis (Under Full Sail)[7]
Lord Lyon in 1885. Katharine bore these and impaled them with arms posthumously granted at her behest in 1962 to her late husband and to other descendants of his grandfather.

Arms of Walter Elliot, granted posthumously 1962.

Her motto ‘Velis plenis’ (‘With full sails’) alludes to her father’s crest of a sail and the family motto, ‘God fills my sails’. The wand azure was a charge used by many Elliots, the holly leaf represented the Elliots of Hollybush near Galashiels (his branch of the family), and the portcullis signifies his forty-year parliamentary career. She was granted her own supporters, a black-faced ram Proper horned Gules, and a horse Argent, symbolising her love of rural life.[7]


Footnotes

  1. ^ The Scotsman, 18 November 1989
  2. ^ CWO. "Past CWO Chairmen". Conservative Women's Organisation. Archived from the original on 1 October 2011. Retrieved 9 July 2011.
  3. ^ BBC Archive [@bbcarchive] (20 July 2018). "#OnThisDay 1958: "Are British women any better off than Swiss women?" The Brains Trust considered what getting the vote had done for British women" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  4. ^ "No. 41404". The London Gazette (Supplement). 3 June 1958. p. 3521.
  5. ^ "No. 41507". The London Gazette. 29 September 1958. p. 5887.
  6. ^ House of Lords Debates 4 Nov 1958, col 161.
  7. ^ a b Duncan Sutherland. "Arms and the Woman" (PDF). The Heraldry Society. Retrieved 2 March 2023.

References

External links