 While working as a secretary, he was selected as Liberal Party candidate for City of Chester at the 1935 general election shortly before the poll.Although the seat was reckoned the Liberals' best prospect in Cheshire, Evans came second in a three-cornered fight, 6,699 votes behind the Conservative winner.In January 1936, Evans was Cambridge's delegate to the Conference of University Liberal Societies and proposed a resolution which deplored the League of Nations procedure by which the United Kingdom and French governments drew up the peace settlement in the Italo-Abyssinian War.