Richard Fort (Conservative politician)

Richard Fort (8 August 1907 – 16 May 1959) was a British industrial chemist and politician. He was elected as a Conservative Party Member of Parliament from 1950 and seemed destined for a long Parliamentary career, but was killed in a car accident in 1959 at the age of 51.

Fort's father was second Master of Winchester College; he was himself sent to Eton College from where he went to New College, Oxford. In 1930 he graduated with an honours degree in Chemistry, and went to the Technische Hochschule in Vienna where he studied industrial chemistry.

On his return to England in 1932, Fort was employed by Imperial Chemical Industries as junior works manager in the company's Cheshire alkali factories. He was then promoted and in 1938 became President of ICI (New York) Ltd, but in 1940 he joined the British Purchasing Mission and the British Supply Mission set up by the British government to buy wartime supplies from the United States. He was transferred to the Ministry of Supply in London the next year, working in the small arms ammunition department, where he stayed until the end of the war.

At the 1945 general election, Fort was chosen as Conservative Party candidate for Clitheroe, which his identically-named uncle had represented from 1880 to 1885, and his grandfather from 1865 to 1868. However, Fort lost the election by 2,647 votes. He returned to ICI as a technical consultant, and was readopted for Clitheroe; he spent the term of the Parliament 'nursing' the constituency.

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