Eric Gandar Dower

Eric Leslie Gandar Dower (1894 – 4 October 1987) was a Scottish Unionist Party politician and businessman.

He was educated at Brighton College, like his elder brother Leonard, and at Jesus College, Cambridge, and trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, touring with a number of theatre companies.

Gandar Dower established Aberdeen Airport and pioneered Scottish Air Lines between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, Glasgow, Wick, Thurso, Kirkwall, and Stromness, as well as the first British/Norwegian Air Line between Newcastle and Stavanger in 1937. He served as a Flight Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve from 1940 to 1943.

Following the War, he was elected as Conservative Member of Parliament for Caithness and Sutherland at the 1945 general election with a majority of just 6 in the tightest ever three-way marginal: just 61 votes separated him from the third-placed candidate, Liberal Party parliamentary leader Archibald Sinclair. Sinclair had acted as Secretary of State for Air during World War II and could not spend much time in his constituency, Britain's northernmost mainland seat.