Thomas Johnston CH,FRSE,PC (1881 - 1965)

Born 2 Nov 1881 in Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire, Scotland

Ancestors

Husband of Margaret Freeland (Cochrane) Johnston — married 26 Jun 1914 in Blythswood, Glasgow, Scotland

Died 5 Sep 1965 at age 83 in Milngavie, Dunbartonshire, Scotland

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Thomas Johnston CH,FRSE,PC is Notable.

Biography

Tom was born in 1881 in Kirkintilloch, a small town in East Dunbartonshire on the northern outskirts of Glasgow. His parents David Johnston and Mary Johnston owned and ran the Post Office in the town. The Johnston family were well known in the community and prosperous, middle class folk.

He attended the local Kirkintilloch school before going on to Lenzie Academy where he completed his formal education. He then went up to Glasgow University to read Moral Philosophy and Political Economy but failed to complete his Master of Arts degree.

As a young man, Tom was drawn to radical, left wing politics and in 1906 helped launch the left wing journal "Forward". In the same year he was drawn to a particular group of men including Emmanuel Shinwell, known as "the Red Clydesiders". He became a journalist and in 1909 an author when he published his book "Our Scots Noble Families". This book was a scathing attack on the group of Landed Aristocratic Families who owned the vast majority of rural Scotland. In later life in his role as Secretary of State for Scotland, he found himself working closely with many of the current representatives of the families he had been so rude about in his book. He commented upon the fact that none of them seemed to "hold it against him" and he became firm friends with several of them.

At the November 1922 General Election he was elected to Parliament for the first time, serving as Member for the constituency of Stirling and Clackmannan West. As an elected member of the Labour Party, he was among the first to join the House of Commons. Barely 2 years later at the October 1924 General Election he lost his seat but within two months had returned to the House of Commons when he was the victor in the December 1924 by-election for Dundee.

At the 1929 General Election, he returned once again to Parliament as the member for Stirling and Clackmannan West and was appointed to the Government by Ramsay MacDonald for the first time as Under-Secretary of State for Scotland.

Coming from a traditional, conservative family, many members of his family were horrified at his choice of political party and indeed his cousin's widow refused to mention his name until in her eyes he was "rehabilitated" by joining Winston Churchill's War Cabinet in 1941!

Prominent Scottish Politician Secretary of State for Scotland 1941-1945

Sources

Information taken from extracts from the Registers of Births, Deaths and Marriages in Scotland 1855-date, the Old Parochial Registers of Scotland 1553-1854 and assorted transcriptions of graveyard and burial records, held by John M Sutherland-Fisher

Private papers and family correspondence in the collection of John M Sutherland-Fisher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Johnston_(Scottish_politician)