Norvela Forster

Norvela Felicia Forster (25 July 1931 – 30 April 1993) was a United Kingdom businesswoman, exporter and politician.

In 1960 she was made an assistant to Richard Beeching, the technical director who ran the company's Development Department. She recalled that at one point the Department had the idea of filling a railway carriage with all their latest products and taking it around the country to demonstrate to customers; when Beeching asked where to get such a carriage, she did not know. The next day she heard of Beeching's appointment to the British Transport Commission overlooking British Rail. In the mid-1960s she worked on licensing plastics produced at the ICI plant in Welwyn Garden City. She also served on Hampstead Borough Council as a Conservative from 1962 to 1965.

She also became more involved in politics as a member of the Bow Group council. At the 1979 European Parliament election she was elected as Member of the European Parliament for Birmingham South, a marginal constituency which had been expected to go to the Labour Party. Her instinctive support for free trade came under pressure, when she saw that only state subsidies would maintain competition involving private companies competing against nationalised steel companies.

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