Hector McNeil

Who was Hector McNeil?

Hector McNeil PC was a Scottish Labour politician.

McNeil was educated at Woodside School and the University of Glasgow, trained as an engineer and worked as a journalist on a Scottish national newspaper. He was a member of Glasgow Town Council 1932-8. He chaired Glasgow Trades Council and stood for Parliament unsuccessfully in Galloway in 1929 and 1931, in Glasgow Kelvingrove in 1935 and in Ross and Cromarty in 1936. He was elected Member of Parliament for Greenock unopposed in a wartime by-election in 1941.

Following the 1945 election, McNeil became a junior minister at the Foreign Office. He was promoted to Minister of State in October 1946 and appointed a member of the Privy Council. Through his position at the Foreign Office, he was vice-president of the United Nations General Assembly in 1947 and leader of the British delegation to the Economic Commission for Europe, 1948. It was later revealed that his Secretary at the time, Guy Burgess, was a Soviet agent, although McNeil never came under suspicion.

He served as Secretary of State for Scotland from February 1950 until October 1951 in the government of Clement Attlee. McNeil died shortly after keeping his seat in the 1955 election.