Frederick Scott Oliver

Frederick Scott Oliver (20 February 1864 – 3 June 1934), known as F. S. Oliver, was a prominent Scottish political writer and businessman who advocated tariff reform and imperial union for the British Empire. He played an important role in the Round Table movement, collaborated in the downfall of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith's wartime government and its replacement by David Lloyd George in 1916, and pressed for "home rule all round" to resolve the political conflict between Britain and Irish nationalists.

Education and business career

Oliver was born on 20 February 1864 to Catherine McLaren and John Scott Oliver. His grandfather was Duncan McLaren. His father was a merchant and he attended Edinburgh University. He then went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he became a lifelong friend of Austen Chamberlain and his imperial-minded father, Joseph Chamberlain. Oliver practiced law for three years, but he abandoned this career because he wanted to marry his first cousin Katharine Augusta McLaren. He joined the linen drapery firm of Debenham & Freebody which enabled him to marry. He became a partner in 1904. The company was extraordinarily successful and he was a rich man by 1914.

Major writings and political thought

A lifelong Unionist Party (UK) member, Oliver expressed his political leanings in a series of books, pamphlets, and newspaper articles. In one of his first pamphlets, The Statesman and the Bishop, he came out in favour of Imperial Federation, saying that: "… the union of the British race, the firm and effective federation of our people in all quarters of the earth, appears to me to be of such transcendent importance as a matter of both morals and of politics, that if the achievement of it required a sacrifice instead of a gain, I should be prepared to make it.