Monroe, Walter Stanley (1871–1952), businessman and politician in Newfoundland, was born 14 May 1871 in the family home at 35 Fitzwilliam Sq., Dublin, eldest son of John Monroe (1839–99), barrister, and Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’) Monroe (née Moule), of Elmley Lovett, Worcestershire. His father, a native of Moira, Co. Down, was called to the Irish bar in 1863, became QC (1877), and served as solicitor general for Ireland (June–November 1885), and as a judge of the landed estates court (1885–96); he was made a privy councillor (Ireland) (1886). Educated at Harrow, Walter emigrated to Newfoundland in 1888, where he entered the thriving mercantile business of his Irish-born uncle Moses Monroe (1842–95). Establishing his own fish exporting company in 1904, he was a director of several other companies. He became politically active in the early 1920s as a trenchant spokesman for mercantile interests opposed to the close regulation (including price fixing) of salt fish exports (the mainstay of the island country's economy) by the Liberal Reform government of Richard Squires. Standing as an opposition candidate for the house of assembly in the 1923 general election, Monroe challenged the government party's flamboyant fisheries' minister, William Coaker, in his constituency stronghold, and was defeated only narrowly. Amid the fractious political turmoil surrounding Squires's resignation as prime minister and eventual arrest on corruption charges, Monroe, despite his political inexperience, was chosen leader of a new alliance, the Liberal–Conservative Party. Campaigning as a ‘plain man of business’, outraged by ‘dirty government’, and insistent that public life be ‘swept clean and kept clean’, Monroe was victorious in the general election of June 1924, becoming prime minister and minister of education (1924–8).
Historical assessment of Monroe's administration has been remarkably divided, much of it ideologically based. Though promising to pursue a conservative fiscal policy of ‘wise economy and retrenchment’, he continued the practice of heavy borrowing, eventually conceding that ‘you can't run a government as a private business’ (quoted in O'Flaherty, 324, 338). He thereby funded employment-creating public works schemes, but sowed seeds of future fiscal crisis: by 1928 interest on the national debt of $87 million amounted to half of total government revenue. He financed sorely needed infrastructural development, including improvements to railways, dry-dock facilities, and the ferry service, and construction of the first gravel highways suitable for automobile traffic. He facilitated modest industrial expansion in forestry and mining, and the foundations of a tourist industry. Political and social reforms included the introduction of women's suffrage, and repeal of prohibition of alcoholic beverages. His government's right-wing, pro-business character, however, was typified by its virulently regressive taxation policy. In 1925 Monroe abolished personal income tax, including that on profits (arguing that widespread evasion rendered the tax unworkable and unfair to salaried persons), and reduced taxes on banks. To make up the lost revenue, he increased import duties on certain consumer staples and commodities essential to fishermen; the fact that items thus protected were manufactured locally by businesses owned by certain of Monroe's political associates (he himself had interests in two such firms, manufacturing cordage and tobacco products) generated widespread outrage, and permanently damaged the government's popularity. His administration saw the determination of the long running Labrador boundary dispute with Canada in Newfoundland's favour by the judicial committee of the privy council in London (March 1927). Throughout his political career, Monroe voiced doubts about the fitness of Newfoundlanders for responsible government, a bias for which he was nicknamed ‘Crown Colony Monroe’. He attended the 1926 imperial conference in London, which proclaimed the Balfour definition, decreeing that Great Britain and the dominions were autonomous and equal communities within the empire, and sovereign over their own external affairs; expressing unease with the change in Newfoundland's existing status, Monroe declared that the country had ‘no particular desire to relinquish the watchful protection of the mother country’ (quoted in O'Flaherty, 336).
Resigning as party leader and prime minister (August 1928) – both offices were assumed by his Belfast-born cousin Frederick Alderdice (qv) – Monroe initially retired to the backbenches, but soon returned to cabinet as minister without portfolio, to bolster the government's electoral profile. In the ensuing general election, the controversial but charismatic Squires returned to power, and Monroe lost his assembly seat (November 1928). In 1929 he entered the legislative council, the appointed upper house of the legislature. In testimony before the Amulree royal commission (1933), he joined other leading members of the dominion's mercantile elite in urging temporary replacement of responsible government by a Westminster-appointed governmental commission.
During his 1926 British visit, Monroe received honorary degrees of DCL from Oxford and Edinburgh universities, an honorary LLD from TCD, and the freedom of the cities of London and Edinburgh. His recreations were fishing and golf. He married (1899) Helen Isobel Smith; their one son, Arthur, entered the family fish exporting business. He died 7 October 1952 at his home in St John's.