McNeill, Ronald John (1861–1934), Baron Cushendun , politician and writer, was born 30 April 1861 in Torquay, only surviving son of Edmund McNeill (1821–1915) and his wife Mary (d. 1909), daughter of Alexander Miller of Ballycastle, Co. Antrim. Edmund McNeill was a landowner and high sheriff (1879) of Antrim; he took over a family land agency in Ballycastle, built himself a baronial mansion, Craigdun, outside Ballymena, and administered the family seat at Cushendun, where the McNeills had settled when they came over from Scotland in the seventeenth century. Ronald was educated at Harrow and matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, before transferring to Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated MA (1886). He was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1887 and then described himself as the tallest barrister of his time; he was 6 ft 6 in. (1.98 m), his father had reached 6 ft 7 in (2 m).
McNeill soon abandoned law for politics and journalism. In 1899 he was appointed assistant editor, and in 1900 editor, of the St James's Gazette, a tory literary and political magazine. He relinquished this post in 1904 to devote more time to politics, and the following year found part-time employment as assistant editor of the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, to which over the ensuing six years he contributed 150 articles on diverse subjects ranging from lawn tennis and gymnastics to recent legislation in Australia. His articles on the Fenians and Napper Tandy (qv) were surprisingly sympathetic, given his entrenched unionism. His first book, Home rule: its history and danger (1907), was a polemical attack on Irish nationalism.
He had difficulty gaining a political foothold and unsuccessfully fought four elections, in West Aberdeenshire (1906), South Aberdeen city (1907, 1910) and Kirkcudbrightshire (1910). He blamed his failure to secure the nomination for a Co. Down division in 1910 on his father's connection with the land agency. However, he was finally returned unopposed, at a by-election in July 1911, as conservative member for the east or St Augustine's division of Kent, known since 1918 as the Canterbury division. He held this seat from 1911 to 1927, but resided principally in Antrim, at Glenmona Lodge rather than Cushendun House, which he left unoccupied.
McNeill entered parliament at the time of the home rule crisis and immediately aligned himself with the diehard unionists. Irascible and impulsive, he achieved notoriety by throwing a bound copy of the standing orders at Winston Churchill on 13 November 1912 and grazing him on the forehead. However, he was most important as the movement's historian. His friendship with Carson gave him unrivalled access to the inner workings of the party and in 1922 he published Ulster's stand for union, a classic text of unionist history. Cogent and angry – the loss of the three counties is described as unionism's saddest hour – it blamed loyalist militancy on specific circumstances (the removal of the house of lords' veto) and otherwise defended unionists as loyal subjects. An influential work which strongly informs the History of partition (1936) by Stephen Gwynn (qv), it is still cited by contemporary historians and was a starting point for Alvin Jackson's alternative interpretation of the period in The Ulster party (1997).
After partition, McNeill's interjections in parliament were less violent. Doubts were apparently expressed, even by members of his own party, when he was appointed parliamentary under-secretary for foreign affairs by Andrew Bonar Law in 1922; however, he proved capable and was retained in the same office by Baldwin in 1923 and 1924. On the subject of Northern Ireland, he remained bellicose, and Baldwin had to apologise on his behalf to W. T. Cosgrave (qv) in 1924, after an inflammatory speech on the boundary commission. Privy councillor in 1924, he became financial secretary to the treasury, under Winston Churchill, the following year. In 1927 he was created Baron Cushendun and elevated to the lords. For a short period after this he was chief British representative to the League of Nations, where he delivered (19 March 1928) a ringing denunciation of the Russian scheme for immediate disarmament, which caused the conference to break into unprecedented cheers. While Sir Austen Chamberlain was ill (August–December 1928), McNeill was acting secretary of state for foreign affairs and in this capacity signed in Paris (27 August) the Kellogg-Briand pact, under which war was outlawed. He died at Cushendun on 12 October 1934. He married first (9 October 1884) Elizabeth Maude (d. 1925), daughter of William Bolitho of Penzance, and had three daughters; secondly (29 December 1930) Catherine Sydney Louisa (d. 1939), daughter of Sir Mortimer Reginald Margesson.