A FORMER Solicitor-General for Scotland, whose career as a Tory MP, Scottish Minister, and a QC was effectively ruined after accusations of sexual scandal, has died.
Mr David Anderson fought in vain for years to clear his name after being convicted of accosting two young girls but died aged 79 without ever achieving the Royal Pardon. His campaign received support from some high-profile MPs, including Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and Shadow Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.
He had resigned his post as Solicitor-General nine years before his conviction amid rumours of sexual misconduct.
Mr Anderson served as Solicitor-General for Scotland under Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir Alec Douglas Home from 1960 to 1964 but was forced to resign his post in March 1964, along with his seat as Conservative MP for Dumfries, which he had won four months earlier, citing health reasons amid rumours of sexual misconduct.
Mr Anderson later claimed that his resignation was demanded by a Government eager to avoid scandal in the wake of the Profumo affair. He denied allegations said to be contained in a confidential police file accusing him of improper conduct towards young women. The case was never tested in court.
In 1973, when he had just rehabilitated himself to the point of becoming chief reporter for public planning inquiries in Scotland, he was accused of accosting two 14-year-old girls and asking them to take part in judo exercises with him.
It was during his first assignment as chief reporter that the two girls were accosted by a man in Ayr who asked them to jump on him and perform judo kicks to his body.
Police arrested Mr Anderson and he was convicted at Ayr Sheriff Court. He was fined #50 and lost his job.
In the intervening years between 1964 and 1973, he had returned to his former career at the Bar - having previously lectured in law at Edinburgh University from 1947 to 1960, where he gained two law degrees and was made a QC - and served as chairman of Scotland's industrial tribunals in 1971 and 1972.
Although the conviction was described in some quarters as a ``travesty of justice'', Mr Anderson exhausted the Scottish appeals procedure without having the case retried because of restrictions on appeals against summary justice in Scotland, a system which has since been reformed.
He launched a one-man campaign to clear his name and demanded a Royal Pardon. Three parliamentary debates - one in the Commons and two in the Lords - also demanded a public inquiry into the circumstances of his conviction. However, successive Secretaries of State, advised by Scottish Office civil servants, refused to act.
Edinburgh MPs including Mr Rifkind, Mr Cook, and Mr Alex Fletcher, the former Conservative MP for North Edinburgh, lent their weight to his campaign which was also supported by Justice - the British section of the International Commission of Jurists - and author Ludovic Kennedy, who organised a petition calling for an inquriy.
Mr Anderson also co-operated in a play about his plight, The Case of David Anderson QC, which played to audiences in his home town of Edinburgh, as well as Manchester and London. It claimed that he had been the innocent victim of a conspiratorial web of intrigue involving the KGB.
He maintained that a secret mission behind enemy lines during the Second World War, which he led, could have motivated clandestine KGB activity to sully his name.
He is survived by his wife, Juliet, and their two sons, and a daughter.
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