Patricia Ford (politician)

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Patricia Ford, Lady Fisher (née Smiles; 5 April 1921 – 23 May 1995), was briefly an Ulster Unionist Party politician in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. She was the first woman Member of Parliament from Northern Ireland, and the second woman to be returned to a seat in Westminster from a constituency on the island of Ireland (the first to take her seat).^[1]

She was born at Donaghadee, County Down, and educated at Bangor Collegiate School, Glendower Preparatory School, London, and abroad. Her father was Ulster Unionist MP Sir Walter D. Smiles and her mother, Margaret Heigway.^[1]

Ford returned from living in Cheshire upon her father's death in the MV Princess Victoria disaster in January 1953 and was returned unopposed to Parliament from his North Down constituency. In her maiden speech to the House she was required to apologise for an article she had written in the Sunday Express in which she mentioned that Bessie Braddock and Edith Summerskill had been snoring whilst asleep in the lady members' room. The matter was referred to the Committee for Privileges.^[1]

Ford was a strong proponent of equal pay between the sexes and rode in a horse-drawn carriage to Parliament to draw attention to the matter. She retired at the 1955 general election. In 1972 she founded and was co-chairman of the Women Caring Trust, now Hope for Youth Northern Ireland. She was expelled from the Ladies Orange Benevolent Association (L.O.B.A.) for attending a wedding at the Brompton Oratory.^[1]

In 1941, she married cricketer Neville Montagu Ford, son of the Very Rev. Lionel George Bridges Justice Ford and grandson of 4th Lord Lyttelton. They had two daughters: Sarah, who married Sir Michael Grylls and whose son is explorer Bear Grylls, and Mary Rose, who is married and has two daughters.^[1]

Patricia Ford was divorced from her first husband and married Sir Nigel Fisher, MP, in 1956, becoming stepmother to Mark Fisher, later a Labour Party MP.^[1] She acquired the title of Lady Fisher when her husband was knighted in 1974.

• Hope for Youth Northern Ireland (official website). Accessed 23 November 2022.
• Image, npg.org.uk. Accessed 23 November 2022.
• Patricia Ford MP - first woman to sit for a Northern Ireland constituency, ukvote100.org. 15 September 2016.