Eric Gandar Dower

Who was Eric Gandar Dower?

Eric Leslie Gandar Dower was a Scottish Unionist Party politician and businessman.

He was educated at Brighton College, like his elder brother Leonard, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, and trained for the stage at RADA, touring with a number of theatre companies.

Gandar Dower established Aberdeen Airport and pioneered Scottish Air Lines between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Glasgow, Wick, Thurso, Kirkwall, and Stromness, as well as the first British/Norwegian Air Line between Newcastle and Stavanger in 1937. He served as a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve from 1940-43.

Following the War, he was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Caithness and Sutherland at the 1945 general election with a majority of just 6 in the tightest ever three-way marginal - just 61 votes separated him from the third-placed candidate, Liberal Party parliamentary leader Archibald Sinclair. Sinclair had acted as Secretary of State for Air during World War II and could not spend much time in his constituency, Britain's northernmost mainland seat.

Gandar Dower had based his 1945 election platform on serving as a wartime MP until the end of the conflict with Japan. His election address stated "If I am returned I shall resign when Japan is beaten and stand again at the by-election which will follow, so that you can decide whether you wish me to continue as your representative in peace", and followed this up with an eve-of-poll "special message" stating "Note - Gandar Dower, if elected, has pledged himself to resign at the end of the Japanese war and to stand again at the resultant by-election." In his victory speech at the declaration, he said "Don't regard me as a Unionist. I am a member of the National Party until the end of the Japanese war, when you will then have a chance again to put me in or out." After the war's end on 14 August 1945, Gandar Dower did not resign, but pledged to do so "later".