Frederick Leverton Harris

Frederick Leverton Harris (17 December 1864 – 14 November 1926) was a British businessman and Conservative Party politician. He sat in the House of Commons for three periods between 1900 and 1918.

His role in Parliament was largely insignificant until World War I, when he used his knowledge of shipping to play a crucial role in the United Kingdom's economic warfare against the German Empire, and joined the government in 1916 in a newly created post with specific responsibility for the blockade of Germany. As the war drew to a close, his political career looked set to flourish, but was destroyed by scandal.

Harris was the son of Frederick William Harris and his wife Elizabeth née Wylie, of London and Withyham, East Sussex. He was educated at Winchester College and then Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1884. The following year he became a partner in coal-factoring and ship-owning business of Harris & Dixon in London, and he later became a director of the National Discount Company and the Metropolitan Electricity Supply Company.

In 1886, he married Gertrude Richardson, from Bessbrook, County Armagh. They had no children.

He was elected at the 1900 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) Member of Parliament for Tynemouth, and supported the tariff reform campaign of his friend Joseph Chamberlain. He was appointed to the Tariff Reform Commission.

He was defeated at the 1906 election, but in May 1907 he was selected as the Unionist candidate for a vacancy in the Stepney division of Tower Hamlets, in London, following the resignation of Sir William Evans-Gordon.

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