Career
Born in Limavady, Elder worked in a bakery and joined the Northern Ireland Labour Party. He then defected to the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and ran the Welfare and Advice Centre of the Ulster Unionist Council. In 1967, he attended the founding meeting of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association as a representative of the UUP, but he walked out of its founding meeting after failing to convince the organisation that the murder of a police officer merited the death penalty.
Following the abolition of the Senate, Elder was elected at the Northern Ireland Assembly election, 1973, in Belfast South.
On the Assembly, he served as the secretary of the backbench group of Pro-Assembly Unionists.
