Richard Adams (British politician)

Captain Harold Richard Adams (8 October 1912 – 25 June 1978), more commonly Richard Adams, was a British Labour Party politician.

Born in Wandsworth, Adams was educated at Emanuel School and studied at the University of London before entering the Middle Temple. From 1938 he worked as a business consultant.

He began his political career on Wandsworth borough council in the 1930s, but this was interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. He joined the East Surrey Regiment in 1940, and saw service with the 25th Army Tank Brigade in North Africa and Italy, before ending the war serving on the staff in Land Forces Adriatic.

He was elected as the Labour member of parliament for Balham and Tooting, part of his home district of Wandsworth, in the 1945 general election. He was an assistant whip from 1947, and became a Lord Commissioner of the Treasury in 1949, a post he held until 1951.

Balham and Tooting was dissolved for the 1950 general election, and Adams stood in the redrawn Wandsworth Central constituency, succeeding Ernest Bevin as its Member of Parliament. He was re-elected for the same seat in the 1951 general election, but chose to stand down in the 1955 election, being succeeded in the now-marginal seat by the Conservative Michael Hughes-Young.

He married twice, once to Joyce Young in 1938, with whom he had two daughters; the marriage was dissolved in 1955, and he remarried P. Fribbins, with whom he had one son. He died in Surrey aged 65.

References

• "ADAMS, (Harold) Richard." In Who Was Who 1897-2006.
• Obituary in The Times, 6th July 1978