Peel, William Robert Wellesley Peel, Earl, 1867-1937

William Robert Wellesley Peel, 1st Earl Peel (7 January 1867 – 28 September 1937), styled 2nd Viscount Peel from 1912 to 1929, was a British politician who was a local councillor, a Member of Parliament and a member of the House of Lords. After an early career as a barrister and a journalist, he entered first local and then national politics. He rose to hold a number of ministerial positions but is probably best remembered for chairing the Peel Commission in 1936–1937, which recommended for the first time the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. The grandson of a Conservative prime minister, he was unusual even for his period in the number of political parties for which he was elected. He began as a member of the Moderate Party on the London County Council and later became the leader of the renamed Municipal Reform Party; he was then elected as an MP for the Liberal Unionists and then for the Conservative Party before he inherited his seat in the Lords in 1912. He also served as a minister in governments led by Liberal, Conservative and Labour prime ministers. His ministerial career began as Under-Secretary of State for War in 1919, and he entered the cabinet in 1922 as Secretary of State for India and held a number of other ministerial positions.