She was the chairman of the Consultative Council on Highlands and Islands [1] As the Marchioness of Tullibardine she was an opponent of female suffrage, with Leah Leneman describing her as 'a key speaker at the most important Scottish anti-suffrage demonstration', which took place in 1912.

[2] Despite this opposition to women gaining the right to vote in parliamentary elections, she went on to be the Scottish Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for Kinross and West Perthshire from 1923 to 1938, and served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education from 1924 to 1929, the first woman other than a mistress of the robes to serve in a British Conservative government.

[5] The fact that, prior to 1918, Atholl had been opposed to women's suffrage led to her being criticised in parliament by her Conservative colleague Nancy Astor.

[6][7] Baxter also suggests that she placed her political allegiance ahead of any concept of gender unity, noting her campaigning for the male Unionist candidate in Edinburgh South at the 1922 general election against the Liberal Catherine Buchanan Alderton, contrasting this with Labour and Liberal women refusing to campaign against Lady Astor in Plymouth.

Resuming the Whip, she resigned it again in 1938 in opposition to Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement of Adolf Hitler and to the Anglo-Italian agreement.

[9] In 1936, she was involved in a long-running battle in the pages of various newspapers with Lady Houston after the latter had become notorious for her outspoken support of Benito Mussolini.

Stewart-Murray had taken issue with Houston calling in the pages of the Saturday Review for Edward VIII to become a dictator in imitation of European interwar dictatorships.

Her book Searchlight on Spain resulted from the involvement, and her support for the Republican side in the conflict led to her being nicknamed by some the Red Duchess.

She was instrumental in persuading the British government to accept child refugees fleeing the combat, 4,000 of which arrived on the SS Habana which sailed from Bilbao to Southampton in May 1937.

[14] Her role in the Spanish Civil War, however, was years later criticized by George Orwell, who saw the Duchess as the "pet of the Daily Worker", and someone who "lent the considerable weight of her authority to every lie the Communists happened to be uttering at the moment.