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 Moderate pro-Conservative grouping on the council that became the
Municipal Reform Party. He was leader of the party from 1908 to 1910 and chairman of the county council from 1914 to 1916. and
lieutenant-colonel of the
Bedfordshire Yeomanry in 1912 and, at the outbreak of the
First World War moved to France with his regiment, but ill health made him return to Britain in 1915. In 1918, he received his first government post as Joint Parliamentary Secretary at the Department of National Service in the coalition government of
David Lloyd George. In 1919, Peel became
Under-Secretary of State for War and a member of the
Privy Council. He entered the cabinet in 1922 as
Secretary of State for India, and, after the downfall of Lloyd George's coalition, continued to hold the post during the premierships of
Andrew Bonar Law and
Stanley Baldwin. The latter's government fell in January 1924, but after a brief spell in opposition, it was returned to power at the
1924 general election. Peel was appointed
First Commissioner of Works in the Conservative administration formed by Baldwin. In 1928, Peel briefly returned to the India Office, but the Conservatives lost power by the
1929 general election. and that same year served as chairman of the Wheat Commission, and in 1934, he chaired the Royal Commission on the
Common Law. In 1936–1937, he chaired the
Peel Commission, which recommended for the first time the partition of the
British Mandate of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. ==Family==