Born in July 1880, Noel Skelton was a Scottish Unionist politician, a lawyer, journalist and intellectual, whose death at the age of 55 deprived the Conservative Party of a reforming and progressive spirit. Skelton advocated a Constructive ConservatismA , in which he eschewed the party's more reactionary elements in favour of a progressive line on traditionally socialist issues. His thinking on property ownership, in particular, became the cornerstone of at first Macmillan's, then Eden's, and even Douglas-Home's policy making on housing in the post-war era. Skelton's principles can even be traced forward to Margaret Thatcher's governments of the 1980s and beyond.