Sir Albert McQuarrie

Died: January 13, 2016

SIR Albert McQuarrie, who has died aged 98, was latterly a robust Scottish Tory MP, but made his name – and indeed his fortune – following the great storm of 14 January 1968, which devastated the west coast of Scotland. He was standing at his sitting room window when he saw dustbins blowing down the street. Turning to his wife, he said: “There’s money in this for somebody.”

That “somebody” turned out to be Albert McQuarrie. Then running a small builders’ supplies business in Johnstone, he bumped into the council surveyor the next day and asked, half jokingly, if he needed any slaters. “I need all the slaters you can give me,” he replied. Sir Albert went straight to the local employment office and recruited everyone who could climb a ladder. There were only 13. Paisley Town Council then contacted him, also needing slaters.

Sir Albert found 80 more between Aberdeen and Blackburn, and within a few weeks he was employing almost 1,000 men. Glasgow Corporation called upon them to put temporary, and later permanent, coverings on thousands of tenement roofs, while the Scottish Office supplied four wartime caravans that became “command posts” thoughout the city. Thereafter Sir Albert referred proprietarily to “my storm” and the two-and-a-half year bonanza he reaped as a result.

Albert McQuarrie was born in Greenock on 1 January 1918, the son of Algernon Stewart McQuarrie, a building contractor, and Alice Maud Sharman. He was educated at Highlanders Academy Primary and Greenock High School, before progressing to the Royal College of Science and Technology (University of Strathclyde), graduating in 1945 after serving with the Royal Engineers during the Second World War.

In 1945 he married Roseleen McCaffery, a Gibraltarian, which proved a huge influence on his life and politics. Their only child, Dermot Hugh Hastings, was born in 1948. Professionally, Sir Albert became a consultant and chairman of his own building contractors, later known as A McQuarrie & Sons (Great Britain) Limited, from 1946-88.

Although his family were apolitical, Sir Albert had joined the Young Unionists in 1934 and served on Gourock Town Council in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, becoming Dean of Guild. In 1966 he took on Labour’s Scottish Secretary Willie Ross in the Kilmarnock constituency, and was selected as the Conservative candidate for Rutherglen before withdrawing to live and work in Gibraltar from 1968. He also campaigned against David Steel’s Abortion Bill in the late 1960s.

After returning to the UK, Sir Albert was selected as the Conservative candidate for Caithness and Sutherland in August 1974, describing government support for Ferranti as a disgusting piece of election bribery the following month. Coming fourth in an unwinnable seat, he was selected for East Aberdeenshire in May 1975. A gifted self-publicist, he successfully urged a 50-mile exclusive zone for British fisherman at the 1977 Tory conference.

Sir Albert took the seat from the SNP’s Douglas Henderson by just 558 votes, and called in his maiden speech for “all tax to be removed from all widows’ pensions”. Although a loyal Thatcherite, in March 1981 he led a rebellion against government proposals to increase petrol duty by 20 pence, and also threatened to resign from the Scottish Tory Backbench Committee if Ravenscraig was closed. He also introduced a Bill to control dangerous dogs in May 1981.

Gibraltar, however, was Sir Albert's dominant political passion in the House of Commons. He was chairman of the British/Gibraltar All-Party Group from 1979-87 and defended the right of Prince Charles and Princess Diana to embark from Gibraltar, despite Spanish protests, in July 1981; he campaigned to give Gibraltarians British citizenship; and he railed against the closure of Gibraltar’s dockyard in 1983. Fittingly, he became a Freeman of the City of Gibraltar in 1982.

After the 1983 general election Sir Albert was MP for Banff and Buchan, earning the nickname “The Buchan Bulldog” such was his tenacity in pursuing particular causes. He sponsored an amendment so that convicted terrorists could be hanged, and also demanded abolition of parole for killers. Socially conservative, he also opposed contraceptives for under-16 girls without their parents’ permission, and backed the use of homicide laws against those aborting otherwise healthy foetuses.

A proud Commons man, Sir Albert was a member of the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs from 1979-83, on agriculture from 1983-85, and on private bill procedure in 1987. He also served on the Speakers’ Panel of Chairmen between 1986-87. Although warm and popular in the House, Sir Albert was not to everyone’s taste, one Tory colleague accusing him of having “delusions of grandeur”.

Sir Albert was a tenacious champion of his constituency, particularly its fishermen, but in 1987 he was defeated by a young Alex Salmond. Less than gracious in defeat, Sir Albert refused to congratulate the future SNP leader at the count, announcing for all to hear that he would not “shake hands with scum”. Sir Albert was knighted shortly after, but remained active in local politics, contesting the Highlands and Islands region in the European Parliament elections of 1989.

Kintara House in Mintlaw remained Sir Albert's personal and political base, and in 1999 he became vice-chairman of Mintlaw Community Council. His hobbies included golf, swimming, bridge and horticulture; he was an enthusiastic orchid grower and became president of the Gourock Horticultural Society in 1993, having been honorary vice-president since 1954 and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Horticulture since 1952.

His memoir A Lifetime of Memories was published in 2013.

Sir Albert McQuarrie's first wife, Roseleen, predeceased him in 1986 and he is survived by his second, Rhoda Annie Gall, and one son, Dermot, from his first marriage.

DAVID TORRANCE