Alport was an assistant secretary for the Conservative Party Education Department between 1937 and 1939. He was Director of the Conservative Political Centre between 1945 and 1950. He was elected as the ConservativeMember of Parliament for the Colchester constituency, in the 1950 general election and held the seat until 16 February 1961, when he was created Baron Alport, of Colchester in the County of Essex, a life peerage.[2] On his elevation to the peerage, the Colchester constituency was held by the Conservatives in a by-election by Antony Buck.
During Alport's tenure as high commissioner, he came under suspicion from the United Nations over his questionable actions before and after the plane crash that killed UN Secretary-GeneralDag Hammarskjöld. Alport was present at Ndola Airport when Hammarskjöld's plane was supposed to land and when it did not, he inexplicably closed the airport, later testifying that the plane must have 'gone elsewhere'. When the crash was discovered, Hammarskjöld's CX-52 Hagelin cipher was confiscated by the Northern Rhodesian authorities and Alport refused to return it to the UN. Aside from this, a second CX-52 was reported to have been found by looters who reached the crash early. These looters, three local charcoal burners, who testified that the crash happened at night and reported hearing and seeing an explosion in the sky, going against the official story of the crash happening later the next day, were suspected to have been mistreated by Northern Rhodesian authorities and it is suspected that the looted CX-52 never existed and was invented to discredit the men. Alport's behavior was scrutinized further in 2015 after a new investigation, led by Mohamed Chande Othman, said that his actions suggest 'that he had a reason to seek to refuse to return United Nations property, including Hammarskjöld's CX-52, to the United Nations, although this was eventually done'.[3]
