by Simon Harrison

Adjacent to Pield Heath Road, not far from Hillingdon Hospital, there is a road named Peel Way. Whilst road names can be deceptive, it seems likely the road is named after Colonel Sidney Peel, who was Conservative MP for the Uxbridge division of Middlesex from 1918 to 1922.

Sidney Cornwallis Peel was born on 3 June 1870 at 70 Eaton Place, Pimlico, London, into a distinguished political family. His father, Arthur Wellesley Peel (1829-1912) was a Liberal politician, who later became Speaker of the House of Commons, a post he held from 1884 to 1895. Arthur Peel was the youngest son of Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850), the former Tory Prime Minister. Sir Robert is perhaps best remembered today for having founded the Metropolitan Police, when he was Home Secretary in 1829. Sidney received a privileged education which befitted a man of his class. At Eton College he was a King’s Scholar, winning a scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he took a First Class Honours degree in Greats. In 1893, he was elected a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.

Almost by natural progression, he was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn in 1898. Two years later, he began his military career, serving in the Boer War as a trooper in the Oxfordshire Imperial Yeomanry. For his service he was awarded the Queen’s South Africa Medal with three clasps. He recounted his experiences in his book Trooper 8008: Experiences in the Boer War, published in 1901. In 1902, he joined the Bedfordshire Yeomanry as an officer.

Over the next ten years or so he became involved in various financial activities. Having reported on Egypt for a newspaper and befriended a useful contact, he became chairman of the London Committee of the National Bank of Egypt, and also a vice president of the Morocco State Bank. He also joined the National Discount Company, becoming a company director in 1911. In the same year Lord Curzon, then chancellor of Oxford University, appointed him to the University Chest (an archaic name for the finance department).

In 1914, now aged 43, he married Adelaide Margaret Delia Spencer (1889-1981), who was the daughter of Charles Robert Spencer, 6^th Earl Spencer (1857-1922). The wedding took place on 18 February at the Spencer family seat, Althorp in Northamptonshire. Less than six months later Britain was at war.

As a member of the officer class with previous military experience, Sidney was destined and expected to play a leadership role, as were many of his fellow Old Etonians and Oxford alumni. At the start of the war he was still with the Bedfordshire Yeomanry, holding the rank of major. In May 1915 he was promoted to colonel, and in June took the Yeomanry to France as part of the 1^st Cavalry Division. There he was mentioned in dispatches, and was awarded the DSO. As his brother later recalled “he infused a certain humour which appealed to all ranks…a splendid regiment was the result”. He might have remained in France for the war’s duration, but the Foreign Office, aware of his financial acumen, removed him from active service in November 1917 to become one of their financial advisers. In this role he was to attend the Peace Conference in 1919, being given the task of scrutinising the Bulgarian settlement.

When the fighting ceased on 11 November 1918 there was an urgent need for a general election in Britain, the most recent one having been held in December 1910. The prime minister, David Lloyd George, was keen to seek a new mandate for the coalition government, which had run the country and the war since 1915. The electorate had expanded too. Virtually all adult males and most women over the age of thirty now had the vote. The election was arranged for 14 December, which gave little time to select candidates. We don’t know how many commissioned officers put themselves forward for parliamentary seats, but it’s likely a good number did so from a sense of patriotic duty, having survived a war in which so many of their class lost their lives. Sidney Peel was doubtless one of these, and his political lineage would also have helped him to secure the Conservative nomination in Uxbridge.

So, less than two weeks before Christmas Britain went to the polls. As expected, Sidney Peel won in Uxbridge, with a comfortable majority of more than 3500 votes over the Labour candidate, Harry Gosling (1861-1930). The Liberal candidate, Norman Mackenzie Snowball, polled just 545 votes, an indicator of his party’s sharp decline since its Edwardian high summer before the Great War. Harry Gosling won a seat for Labour a few years later and in 1924 was briefly Minister for Transport and Paymaster General in Ramsay MacDonald’s government.

Sidney Peel served just one term in Parliament, choosing not to contest Uxbridge again at the general election of 1922. He made few parliamentary interventions, and perhaps sensed he was not really a politician, added to which he was hardly a local man, residing as he did in an expensive part of London. So, he resumed his varied and successful career in finance, which included trips to India and China. At some time he was honorary treasurer of the National Trust. His brother George referred to his ability to “master any subject with accuracy…and…width”. In 1936, his services were rewarded with a baronetcy.

Sir Sidney Peel died at his home, 26 Hill Street, off Berkeley Square, Mayfair, on 19 December 1938, aged 68, following a long illness. His funeral service was held at St Michael’s, Cornhill in the City of London. He had no children, so his baronetcy became extinct. Lady Delia Peel (as she was generally known) lived on until 1981, when she died, aged 91. In 1939, she became a lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mother), a role she held until 1952. As it happens, Diana, Princess of Wales was her grandniece.

Obituaries of Sir Sidney were published in The Times, and also in The New York Times, which highlighted his service to the British government “on many important political, financial and economic missions all over the world”. In 2004, an entry for Sir Sidney was included in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. This refers to him as “soldier and financier”, but not as politician. So, his four years as MP for Uxbridge may have been something of a footnote in his career, but we can also say he was one of the ablest men to have represented the constituency.

Note: a studio photograph of Sidney Peel, dating from 1920, is held by the National Portrait Gallery, and can be viewed on their website.