Talk:Walter Elliot (Scottish politician)

Guest of André L. Simon

Not worthy of comment in the main article, but perhaps of interest to a passing researcher, might be his being mentioned in Tables of Content (1933), André L. Simon, #75: “Luncheon at the Office. 7 January 1932”, “Guests: Major Walter Elliot, Yeats Brown (Bengal Lancer), Louis Gautier, Francis Berry and Donald Wardley”. The vintage Ports—my interest—were exceptional. (My picture 9866.) JDAWiseman (talk) 20:28, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 8 September 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No consensus for the move proposed (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 01:01, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

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• Walter Elliot (Scottish politician) → Walter Elliot (Unionist Party politician)
• Thomas Hunter (Scottish politician) → Thomas Hunter (British politician)
• John Mackie (Scottish Unionist politician) → John Mackie (Unionist Party MP)

– All these MPs belong to the Unionist Party, a party expressly committed to the principle that Scotland is British. It is therefore not proper to describe them as "Scottish" in the first instance. These were people whose preferred or primary political identity will have been British. "Scottish Unionist" is not their party's name, but the name of a completely different party, the Scottish Unionist Party (1986). The designation "Scottish Unionist" MP is thus very wrong and actively misleading, while simply "Scottish politician" misses the point altogether and would surely have the articles' subjects spinning their graves in exactly the same way as if we started calling Nicola Sturgeon or Sean Connery British. The fact that there are other unionist parties (e.g. Liberal Unionist Party) that had MPs is irrelevant; none of these parties was called the "Unionist Party" and none had MPs of the same name, so not further disambiguation (i.e. the interpolation of "Scottish" into the articles' names) is necessary or helpful. More to the point, the sources of the articles do not describe them as "Scottish" so that label is utterly original research. We know however, that they were in British politics, were British citizens, and that they campaigned for the unified Britishness of Great Britain and/or the British Isles. Other reasonable suggestions are welcome (John Mackie, for instance, could be described as "MP for Perth" or "Perth MP" or whatever). NB this template has been re-added because it failed to summon the bots correctly. GPinkerton (talk) 19:53, 8 September 2020 (UTC) GPinkerton (talk) 19:53, 8 September 2020 (UTC)—Relisting. —usernamekiran (talk) 21:02, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Survey

• Comment - Should be all changed to British politicians, as they were all members of the British Parliament. GoodDay (talk) 19:24, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

@GoodDay: In the case of John Mackie, that would be ambiguous because of the existence of another British politician, John Mackie, Baron John-Mackie, while the same is true for Walter Elliot, given the existence of Walter Elliot (Conservative MP) (and the oddly titled Walter Elliot (naturalist), who in his time was acting Governor of the Madras Presidency. Thomas Hunter is a common name, but among politicians of the British Isles there's only the risk of confusion with Thomas Hunter (Irish politician), so "British" is the most natural disambiguator in this case. GPinkerton (talk) 19:46, 8 September 2020 (UTC)

• Comment There's a general problem that the Unionist Party was a separate organisation in the country but the MPs were part of a single Conservative Party in Parliament. (Also the "Unionist" in the Scottish party's name actually referred to the Union with Ireland - it was a legacy of the merger with the Liberal Unionist Party which was disproportionately a stronger element of the Conservative & Liberal Unionist alliance in Scotland than in England. Scotland's place in the Union simply wasn't a significant political issue in 1912.) To add to the confusion the single party was initially still often called "Unionist" until the First World War and this label survived in a good number of sources for many years afterwards - The Times was especially reluctant to change it, particularly in listings. (There were also individual areas in England & Wales where the Liberal Unionist tradition was strong - Birmingham most notably - and the local party continued to use the label.) This leads to a lot of confusion over which element takes precedence in descriptions, disambiguations and tables. I don't think "Conservative" and "Unionist" are particularly useful ways to distinguish between MPs with the same name who could both be described as "Conservative" (and possibly also both as "Unionist"). Timrollpickering (talk) 12:22, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

@Timrollpickering: I agree with most of this and think it's all the more reason why "Scottish" and "Unionist" are misleading when put next to one another, in these instances. While it's true the minister in Chamberlain's cabinet could be called both Conservative and Unionist (capitals), the obscure MP can really only be called a unionist (small u) and a Conservative (big C). The Scot is described as the foremost exponent of the Unionist cause, so I've proposed that he be called "politician" rather than just "MP". "Scottish" isn't good for disambiguating, because the other Walter Elliot (the 19th century polymath and governor) was also from Scotland and also in politics (most notably the events of 1857-8). Party affiliation is surely the best option in this case, since he was so significant in the Unionist faction and the sources usually describe him as "Unionist", "coalition Unionist" or the like. GPinkerton (talk) 16:50, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as proposed. In general, we use for Westminster MPs, in order of preference, "British politician", "Scottish [etc] politician", "[Party] politician". Elliot was unquestionably Scottish, despite his political allegiances, so to disambiguate him from the English politician of the same name the current disambiguator is fine. I agree that Hunter should be moved to Thomas Hunter (British politician), as there are no other British politicians by that name. Mackie should be moved to John Mackie (Unionist politician), as the other one was Labour (both Scottish, so British and Scottish are not valid disambiguators). -- Necrothesp (talk) 12:51, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.