Bonar Law

Who was Bonar Law?

Andrew Bonar Law, commonly called Bonar Law, was a British Conservative Party statesman and Prime Minister. Born in the colony of New Brunswick, he is the only British Prime Minister to have been born outside the British Isles. He was also the shortest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, spending 211 days in office. He had a much longer tenure as Conservative Party leader, November 1911 to March 1921 and October 1922 to May 1923, where he used his business background to good advantage in promoting better organisation and efficiency. His lack of aristocratic family connections helped him broaden the base of the party to include more businessmen.

Law was born to a rural preacher and his wife in New Brunswick, where he spent his early life. A few years after his mother's death in 1861, his father remarried, and in 1870 Law moved to Helensburgh, Scotland, to live with his mother's sister Janet and her family, who ran a successful merchant bank. After an education at Larchfield School, a preparatory school in Hamilton and the High School of Glasgow, Law left school aged sixteen to gain a "commercial education" at the family firm. A few years later the firm was sold to the Clydesdale Bank, putting Law's career in jeopardy until his uncles loaned him the money to buy a partnership in an iron merchants firm. Through hard work and his business acumen the firm flourished under Law, and by the time he was thirty he was a comparatively rich man.