John Wells

Who is John Wells?

Sir John Julius Wells is a former British Conservative Party politician.

Wells was educated at Eton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He served in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during the Second World War, as a seaman in 1942, commissioned in 1943 and in submarines until 1946. He was a marine engineer, company director and farmer, and was a councillor on Leamington Spa Borough Council.

At the 1955 general election, Wells stood unsuccessfully in the Smethwick constituency. At the 1959 general election, he was elected as Member of Parliament for Maidstone, following in the footsteps of a 19th-century ancestor, also John Wells. He held the safe Conservative seat until his retirement at the 1987 general election, when his successor was the future minister Ann Widdecombe.

Throughout his period as a Member of Parliament, Wells was a strong supporter of country interests and the local economy, on one occasion riding his horse through the streets of Westminster and on another loudly eating a Kentish apple during a speech by a Labour Minister of Agriculture, as a protest against the import of cheap, subsidised and, in his opinion, inferior imports from France.