William Robert Wellesley Peel, 1st Earl Peel, (7 January 1867 – 28 September 1937), known as 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 and later became the leader of the London locally-organised Municipal Reform Party and was later 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. Early life and career The eldest son of Arthur Peel, 1st Viscount Peel, and Adelaide Dugdale, William Peel was born in London in 1867. His father was the fifth and youngest son of Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel. Peel was educated at Harrow and Balliol College, Oxford, where he was secretary of the Oxford Union. In 1893, he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple and practised as a barrister before taking the position of special correspondent for the Daily Telegraph during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897. Political career In 1900, Peel was appointed a member of the Royal Commission that was formed to inquire into the operation of the Port of London. In February the same year, he began his political career when he was elected in a by-election to fill a vacant seat for Woolwich in the London County Council to which he was re-elected in the ordinary election the following year. He was a member of the pro-Conservative grouping on the council that became the Municipal Reform Party. He was leader of the party from