Hugh Molson, Baron Molson

Arthur Hugh Elsdale Molson, Baron Molson, PC (29 June 1903 – 13 October 1991) was a British Conservative politician and member of the Molson family of Montreal.

Life and career
Born in Chelmsford, Essex, he was the only surviving son of Major John Elsdale Molson, Member of Parliament for Gainsborough from 1918 to 1923, and Mary Leeson. He was educated at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, and Dartmouth, at Lancing, and at New College, Oxford.

At Lancing, Molson was a contemporary and close friend of Evelyn Waugh, and known as "Luncher". To the young Waugh, he represented a figure of louche daring, as evidenced by many suggestive but mostly inexplicit references in his published letters and diaries. They were less close from Oxford onwards.

Molson was President of the Oxford Union in 1925 and graduated with first-class honours in Jurisprudence in 1925. He worked as Political Secretary of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India from 1926 to 1929, then he became a barrister-at-law at the Inner Temple in 1931.

He was commissioned on 4 March 1939 and served with the 36th (Middlesex) Searchlight Regiment, Royal Artillery from 1939 to 1941. He was Staff Captain with the 11th Anti-Aircraft Division from 1941 to 1942.

Molson was the unsuccessful Conservative candidate in Aberdare in 1929, then sat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster from 1931 to 1935 and for High Peak, Derbyshire, from 1939 to 1961. He was elected unopposed at the 1939 High Peak by-election, after the death of Alfred Law. He held Ministerial office as Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Works from 1951 to 1953, Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation from November 1953 to January 1957, and as Minister of Works from 1957 until October 1959. He was a Member of the Monckton Commission on Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1960, and Chairman of the Commission of Privy Counsellors on the dispute between Buganda and Bunyoro in 1962.

In 1949, Molson married Nancy Astington, daughter of W.H. Astington of Bramhall, Cheshire. He was appointed a Privy Counsellor in 1956, and was created a Life Peer on 21 February 1961 as Baron Molson, of High Peak in the County of Derby.

In later life, Molson was Chairman (1968–71) and President (1971–80) of the Council for the Protection of Rural England. He died at Westminster in 1991, aged 88.

Notable quotations

 * "I will look at any additional evidence to confirm the opinion to which I have already come."