Richard Kidston Law, 1st Baron Coleraine, PC (27 February 1901 – 15 November 1980) was a British Conservative politician.
Early life
He was the youngest son among six children born to businessman and Conservative politician Bonar Law (who would go on to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1922 to 1923) and Law's wife, the former Annie Pitcairn Robley, a daughter of Harrington Robley, a merchant from Glasgow.
Richard's brother Charlie, a lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, was killed at the Second Battle of Gaza in April 1917, followed by brother James, a captain in the Royal Fusiliers, who was shot down and killed on 21 September 1917. His sister Isabel married Sir Frederick Sykes, and another sister Catherine married The 1st Baron Archibald in 1961.
He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Oxford.
Political career
Law was elected as Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston upon Hull South West in the general election of 1931 and held the seat until 1945. In 1940 he was appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office. He was then transferred to the post of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs until 1943. While in the latter post he took part in the Bermuda Conference on the fate of European Jewry and was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1943 New Year Honours.
He was then Minister of State, also at the Foreign Office, until 1945, when he served briefly as Minister of Education in Churchill's caretaker government. In a by-election in November 1945 he became MP for Kensington South, which he held until February 1950.
Law was again elected as an MP in the election of 1951, this time for Haltemprice, but he resigned this seat in January 1954 and in February was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Coleraine of Haltemprice in the East Riding of the County of York. After his elevation to the peerage, he went on a two-week lecture tour in the United States, following two weeks in Russia at the invitation of the Russian government.