Topping, Walter William Buchanan (1908–78), barrister, judge, and politician, was born 13 January 1908 in Belfast, second son of Walter W. Topping, a manager of a linen warehouse, and his Scots wife, Jane. There were also at least two daughters in the prosperous household. He was educated at Rossall School and QUB before being called to the Northern Ireland bar in 1930, taking silk in 1946. His legal career was interrupted, however, by the second world war, with Topping serving as a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Artillery (1939–44). In March 1945 he entered politics for the first time when he sought the Unionist nomination for the constituency of Larne, Co. Antrim, in the Stormont parliament. At the selection process he was successful, securing the position ahead of a future prime minister of Northern Ireland, Capt. Terence O'Neill (qv). The vacancy had been caused by the death of the sitting MP, Maj. Harold Robinson, who was also Topping's father-in-law. In the ensuing by-election in April, and in the general election that followed in June, he comfortably defeated a candidate from the Northern Ireland Labour Party to serve as MP for Larne 1945–59. As his constituency covered large rural areas as well as the town and port of Larne, he based his electoral appeal on a combination of issues, promising to ensure that the agricultural sector would be protected and new industry attracted to the area by his return as part of a strong unionist government; he also stressed the need to introduce social welfare reform into Northern Ireland. Within a short time Topping had established himself as a loyal backbench MP; this led to his appointment (June 1947) to the position of parliamentary secretary to the Ministry of Finance; he also assumed the role of chief whip (1947–56). As a committed unionist he made few friends among the minority community, and some of his more hard-line comments on the political situation in Northern Ireland were used in anti-partition propaganda in the postwar period.
In a government reshuffle in October 1956 he found himself being invited to become minister of home affairs by the then prime minister, Lord Brookeborough (qv). Within weeks the responsibilities of the new position were substantially increased by the start of a new IRA campaign along the border in December 1956. He moved quickly to try to ensure that the security forces were provided with the resources to combat the threat, but his handling of the crisis attracted little praise from the minority community, who saw the solution to the current difficulties in political rather than security terms. His handling of the contentious issue of Orange parades through nationalist areas proved problematic. His decision to allow an Orange parade at Easter 1958 through the predominantly catholic Longstone Road area in Co. Down, as well as one through the town of Dungiven, Co. Londonderry, was greeted with enthusiasm by unionists and condemnation by nationalists. All of this changed a year later when he chose to ban a parade from marching along the main street of Dungiven on the grounds that on the last occasion this had happened (1953) serious disturbances had broken out. On this occasion (1959) Topping banned the march and as a result he was jeered at the main 12 July parade in Belfast. A couple of months later he opted to retire from politics when he accepted the offer to become recorder of Belfast in February 1960. As recorder, Topping attracted little attention until the outbreak of widespread sectarian violence at the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s. His background was used by members of the newly established SDLP to support their claims that the justice system in Northern Ireland actively discriminated against nationalists. In a debate in May 1971 a motion was tabled calling for the dismissal of Topping from his post; although this was defeated, it allowed opposition MPs to recall some of his bitter criticisms of the past against the danger and threat posed by opposition groups to Northern Ireland's constitutional position. He died suddenly on 26 July 1978, while still recorder, on a family holiday in Italy.
He married (1933) Maureen Gallagher, stepdaughter of Maj. Harold Robinson; she survived him, together with their two sons.