[3] Porritt was elected to Heywood and Radcliffe seat at the age of 24 in 1935 and was one of the youngest MPs in the House of Commons.

To commemorate the 1939 Canadian royal tour of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Porritt anonymously founded a $23,400 trust fund to aid Fairbridge schools in Canada.

[5] During World War II he served as a captain in the 1/5th Bn of the Lancashire Fusiliers and was killed in action in 1940 aged 29.

[3] He was killed in the town of Seclin, near Lille during the retreat to Dunkirk one day after the order to evacuate the Allied force from France in the wake of the German offensive.

The British Army were retreating towards the Channel coast at the time trying to establish a defensive line behind which the evacuation was being progressed.