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David Steel was born in KirkcaldyKirkcaldy District 1975-96 Kirkcaldy is a town in Fife, Scotland. Known as The Lang Toun it has a population of about 47,000. It is on the North side of the Firth of Forth a large river estuary leading into the North Sea. Kirkcaldy sits between Dundee, an, FifeThis article is about the area in Scotland. For other uses, see Fife (disambiguation). Fife is a unitary council region of Scotland situated between the Firth of Tay and the Firth of Forth. It was originally one of the Pictish kingdoms and is still known, ScotlandScotland or in Scottish Gaelic, Alba is a country and former independent kingdom of northwest Europe, and one of the four nations comprising the United Kingdom. Scotland occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. Scotland took part in a p the son of a Church of ScotlandThe Church of Scotland is the national (established) church in Scotland. It does not regard itself as a " state church", having fought for centuries to prevent government interference in its affairs. It is commonly known as the Kirk ( Scots for church . minister also called David Steel, who would later serve as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland . He was brought up in Scotland and KenyaKenya (pronounced KEN-ya; the pronunciation KEEN-ya is archaic) is a country of eastern Africa, bordering Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda and the Indian Ocean. Nairobi is its capital and largest city. Republic of Kenya ( In Detail) (Full size). He first took an active part in Liberal politics at the University of EdinburghThe University of Edinburgh was founded in 1583 in a period of rapid development in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is one of the ancient universities of Scotland, has more students than any other university in Scotland and is amongst the largest in the United Ki, and after graduating in Law worked for the Scottish Liberal Party and then the BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation BBC is primarily a national publicly-funded broadcaster based in the United Kingdom, which also has some international services. Some of the international services (such as BBC cable TV in America, Canada and elsewhere before being elected to the House of Commons at the Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles by-election of 1965. He represented this seat until 1983, when he became member for Tweedale, Ettrick and Lauderdale, a new constituency covering some of the same territory.

As an MP he was responsible for introducing, as a Private Member's Bill, the Abortion Act 1967 (see Abortion in the United Kingdom). He also became the Liberal Party's spokesman on employment, and in 1970 its Chief Whip.

After the downfall of Jeremy Thorpe he won the Liberal leadership in 1976, by a wide margin over fellow MP John Pardoe. In 1977 he led the Liberals into the " Lib-Lab Pact" by which they agreed to keep the Labour government in power. The unpopularity of the Labour government rubbed off on the Liberals, and Steel's first election as leader, the 1979 general election, saw a decline in Liberal fortunes.

In 1981 a group of Labour moderates left their party to form the Social Democratic Party, and joined the Liberals in the SDP-Liberal Alliance, an electoral alliance which was so promising in its early days that Steel was able to tell the Liberal Assembly to "prepare for government". After the 1988 merger with the SDP, of which he was the chief proponent, Steel was briefly joint interim leader of the Social and Liberal Democrats (as the new party was at first called), before becoming the party's Foreign Affairs spokesman. He was knighted ( KBE) in 1990.

He retired from the House of Commons at the 1997 general election and was made a life peer in the same year. He campaigned for Scottish devolution, and in 1999 was elected to the Scottish Parliament as a Liberal Democrat member for Lothians . He became the first Presiding Officer (speaker) of the Scottish Parliament on May 12, 1999. In this role he used the style "Sir David Steel", despite his peerage, and had no party allegiance. He stepped down as an MSP when the parliament was dissolved for the 2003 election, but remained as Presiding Officer until he had supervised the election of his successor George Reid on May 7 of that year.