Sir James Hutchison, 1st Baronet

Sir James Riley Holt Hutchison, 1st Baronet, DSO, TD, JP (10 April 1893 – 24 February 1979) was a British army officer, company director and politician.

He was the son of a Scottish shipowner and spent his commercial life in the same field and as a director of shipbuilders, but fought in both World Wars during a long military career.

He distinguished himself as the principal British liaison officer with the French Resistance during the Second World War in which he needed plastic surgery to disguise his appearance from the Germans; he was nicknamed the "Pimpernel of the Maquis".

At the end of the Second World War he was elected as a Unionist Member of Parliament in Glasgow, and although the city was turning against his party he enjoyed a 14-year Parliamentary career.

So effective was Hutchison that he was nicknamed the "Pimpernel of the Maquis"; he was not captured during four months in France, and at the end of the war he received the Distinguished Service Order from the British.

[1] Conservative Party leader Winston Churchill (who was somewhat late arriving) addressed a mass meeting at Blythswood Square in the division and received a warm reception from a large crowd.

[11] In July 1946 Hutchison reminded Prime Minister Clement Attlee that there were hundreds of ex-officers who had trained with the resistance movements, and suggested using some to help defeat terrorism in Palestine by both Arabs and Jews.

[4] His shipbuilding connections led to an appointment as Parliamentary chairman of the Dock and Harbour Authorities Association, which was regarded as a successful choice.

[2] Hutchison was well-enough known to be referenced in Soviet propaganda of the time, being given as one of four examples of the "industrial magnates, landowning aristocrats, dealers and professional politicians" making up the Conservative Party in an article in Trud.

[17] At the 1950 general election, Hutchison found his undersized constituency expanded to the east, taking in mostly Labour voters, but he was thought to be in much more difficulty from the abolition of the vote for business premises.

[27] After his return to the backbenches, Hutchison resumed making partisan speeches; in December 1954 he attacked Labour MPs for politicising military subjects in order to seek political kudos.

[4] When diver Commander "Buster" Crabb disappeared near the ship carrying Nikita Khrushchev and other Soviet leaders, Hutchison appealed for realism and noted that the Russians seemed more prepared to allow the matter to fade than were the British opposition.

[4] He also held some political appointments, including as a member of a small committee examining applications from servicemen to be released from the forces in order to fight Parliamentary byelections.

[41] Hutchison's work was honoured when he was made an Officer of the Venerable Order of Saint John in 1972, and he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Glasgow in 1973.