A scholar of Italian literature and Carnegie research fellow at the University of Glasgow, he later entered the electricity industry where he became a senior economist and statistician and advocated the greater use of Scottish hydro-electric power distributed through the newly constructed National Grid.

He saw the potential for power from Scottish hydro-electrical sources, distributed by the newly built National Grid (1928–33), to play a major role in the reorganisation of British industry that was also one of the themes of Rotha's film.

[5][7] Quigley was associated with the Labour Party and an advocate generally of central planning and government intervention, arguing in respect of housing for instance that the planned city was a "necessity of the modern world; it takes the place of an economic scheme based on laissez-faire, which has been unequal to the task of maintaining the population, absorbing its natural increase and creating a higher standard of living".

[6] It drew up plans for the nationalisation of the Bank of England, and these were put into practice in 1946 when the Attlee ministry, a Labour government, came to power immediately after the End of World War II in Europe.

[9] In 1934 he wrote, with Ismay Goldie, on Housing and Slum Clearance in London, comparing the developments of the London County Council at Kennington and Stamford Hill, the Duchy of Cornwall's building at Kennington, the development at Somers Town by the St Pancras House Improvement Society, and others favourably with the new schemes built in Austria, Germany and the Netherlands.

"[10] His topographical works included a study of Lombardy, the Tyrol and the Trentino (1925), a book about the Rhône (1927), and two on his native Scotland: an anthology of Lanarkshire (1929) and a volume on the Scottish Highlands in Batsford's The Face of Britain series (1936).