Lady Platt of Writtle obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/12/lady-platt-of-writtle

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Beryl Platt, Lady Platt of Writtle, who has died aged 91, chaired the Equal Opportunities Commission between 1983 and 1988. She was also one of the first female aeronautical engineers, and played a vital part in the design of aircraft pivotal to the allied victory in the second world war.

She was only 20, and a new Cambridge graduate, when in 1943 she joined Hawker Aircraft in its experimental flight test department at Langley, Berkshire, in top-secret work on fighter aircraft: the Hurricane, Typhoon, Tempest and Fury. She was present when the Last of the Many, the final Hawker Hurricane – an aircraft that had shot down more enemy aircraft in the Battle of Britain than the rest of UK air and ground defences combined – rolled off the production line in July 1944.

The ceremony was also attended by Sir Sydney Camm, the Hurricane’s chief designer, and Sir Tommy Sopwith, Hawker’s chairman, innovators whose courage and ingenuity, in the face of Air Ministry dithering over costs and contracts, Platt never ceased to praise. She recalled: “Without a contract, Tommy Sopwith and the Hawker board put in hand tooling and jigs for 1,000 aircraft. He took a considerable risk, but the result was that, of the 55 RAF squadrons ready to defend Britain at the start of the battle of Britain, 26 squadrons flew Hurricanes, compared with the 20 which flew Spitfires.”

She was born in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, daughter of Dorothy (nee Wood) and Ernest Myatt, a bank clerk, and was educated at Westcliff high school for girls, Southend, where an inspirational headteacher, Miss Wilkinson, determined that she should go to Cambridge. She studied mechanical sciences at Girton College. She had intended to read mathematics, but was asked by the government to choose a subject that would make a greater contribution to the war effort. She opted for aeronautics, and in 1943 was recruited by Hawker as a technical assistant, joining 60 other engineers, all men, working on the Tempest fighter. They were, she said, “staggered” when they discovered their new colleague was a young woman.

After the war, she joined the research and development unit of British European Airways (BEA), working on air safety, but, as was customary in those days, gave up her job in 1949 when she married Stewart Platt, a textiles manufacturer, whom she had known since childhood. They settled at Writtle, near Chelmsford, and had two children.

Beryl then became active in local government and Conservative politics. She had started a young wives’ club in Writtle, and was quickly spotted as leadership material, being voted in 1958 on to the then Chelmsford rural district council. She was elected to Essex county council in 1965, and during 20 years with the authority chaired the education committee and the coordinating and finance committee, and became vice-chairman of the council. She was also a deputy lieutenant of Essex.

In 1978 she was made CBE and in 1981 a life peer, taking her title from the village for which she had so much affection, and where she was not above sallying forth with a sack to clean up the village green.

Two years later, Platt was appointed chair of the Equal Opportunities Commission. As a member of the Engineering Council, she particularly stressed the need for more female engineers. As patron of Women in Science and Engineering – Wise – Platt expressed her concern that not enough girls were taking science subjects at A-level, and voiced the view that engineering did not involve spending a life in dirty overalls. It was said that she always carried a screwdriver in her handbag. Among other appointments, she was a fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Platt was proud of her home county and described herself as “an Essex girl made good”.

Her husband died in 2003; her son, Roland, died in 2014. She is survived by a daughter, Victoria, and six grandchildren.

• Beryl Catherine Platt, Lady Platt of Writtle, engineer and politician, born 18 April 1923; died 1 February 2015