Barbara Castle

Barbara Anne Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn, (''née'' Betts; 6 October 1910 – 3 May 2002), was a British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1979, making her one of the longest-serving female MPs in British history. Regarded as one of the most significant Labour Party politicians, Castle developed a close political partnership with Prime Minister Harold Wilson and held several roles in the Cabinet. She remains to date the only woman to have held the office of First Secretary of State.

A graduate of the University of Oxford, Castle worked as a journalist for both ''Tribune'' and the ''Daily Mirror'', before being elected to Parliament as MP for Blackburn at the 1945 election. During the Attlee Government, she was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Stafford Cripps, and later to Harold Wilson, marking the beginning of their partnership. She was a strong supporter of Wilson during his campaign to become Leader of the Labour Party, and following his victory at the 1964 election, Wilson appointed Castle to the Cabinet as Minister for Overseas Development, and later as Minister of Transport. In the latter role, she proved an effective reformer, overseeing the introduction of permanent speed limits for the first time on British roads, as well as legislating for breathalyser tests and compulsory seat belts.

In 1968, Wilson promoted Castle to become First Secretary of State, the second-most senior member of the Cabinet, as well as Secretary of State for Employment. In the latter role, Castle fiercely advocated for the passage of the ''In Place of Strife'' legislation which would have greatly overhauled the operating framework for British trade unions. The proposal split the Cabinet, and was eventually withdrawn. Castle was also notable for her successful intervention over the strike by Ford sewing machinists against gender pay discrimination, speaking out in support of the strikers, and overseeing the passage of the Equal Pay Act. After Labour unexpectedly lost the 1970 election, some blamed Castle's role in the debate over trade unions for the defeat, a charge she resisted.

Upon Labour's return to power after the 1974 election, Wilson appointed Castle Secretary of State for Health and Social Services, during which time she was responsible for the creation of Carer's Allowance and the passage of the Child Benefit Act. She was also a prominent opponent of Britain's continued membership of the European Economic Community during the 1975 referendum. When Castle's bitter political rival, James Callaghan, replaced Wilson as Prime Minister in 1976, he sacked her immediately from the Cabinet; the two would remain bitter towards each other for the rest of their lives. Opting to retire from Parliament at the 1979 election, Castle quickly sought election to the European Parliament, representing Greater Manchester from 1979 to 1989; during this time, she was the Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party from 1979 to 1985, and publicly reversed her previous stance of Euroscepticism. She became a member of the House of Lords, having been granted a life peerage, in 1990, and remained active in politics until her death in 2002 at the age of 91.

Early life

Barbara Anne Betts was born on 6 October 1910 at 64 Derby Road, Chesterfield, the youngest of three children to Frank Betts and his wife Annie Rebecca (''née'' Ferrand). Raised in Pontefract and Bradford, Castle grew up in a politically active home and was introduced to socialism from a young age. Her older sister, Marjorie, later became a pioneer of the Inner London Education Authority, while their brother Tristram (almost always called Jimmie) engaged in field work with Oxfam in Nigeria. She joined the Labour Party as a teenager.

Her father was a tax inspector, exempt from military service in the First World War due to his high rank in a reserved occupation. It was because of the nature of the tax-collecting profession, and the promotions he received, that the family frequently moved around the country. Having moved to Bradford in 1922, the Betts family swiftly became involved with the Independent Labour Party. Although her father was prohibited from formal political activity because of his role as a civil servant, he became editor of the '' Bradford Pioneer'', the city's socialist newspaper, after William Leach was elected to Parliament in 1935. Castle's mother ran the family home while also operating a soup kitchen for the town's coalminers. After Barbara had left home Annie was elected as a Labour councillor in Bradford.

Education

Castle attended Love Lane Elementary School, then Pontefract and District Girls High School. After moving to Bradford at the age of twelve, she attended Bradford Girls' Grammar School. She became involved in acting at the school and developed oratorical skills. She excelled academically, winning numerous awards from the school. She also organised mock elections at the school, in which she stood as the Labour candidate. There were some aspects of the school that she did not like, notably the presence of many girls from rich families. In her last year she was appointed head girl.

Her education continued at St Hugh's College, Oxford, from which she graduated with a third-class BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. She began serious political activity at Oxford, serving as the Treasurer of the Oxford University Labour Club, the highest position a woman could hold in the club at the time. She struggled to accept the atmosphere of a university that had only recently begun to question its traditionally sexist attitudes. She was scornful of the elitist nature of some elements of the institution, branding the Oxford Union "that cadet class of the establishment".

Early career

Castle was elected to St Pancras Metropolitan Borough Council in 1937 (where she remained until 1945), and in 1943 she spoke at the annual Labour Party Conference for the first time. Throughout the Second World War she worked as a senior administrative officer at the Ministry of Food and she was an Air Raid Precautions (ARP) warden during the Blitz.

She became a reporter on the left-wing magazine ''Tribune'', where she had a romantic relationship with William Mellor, who was to become its editor, until his death in 1942. Following her marriage to Ted Castle in 1944, she became the housing correspondent at the ''Daily Mirror''.

Member of Parliament (1945–1979)

In the 1945 general election, which Labour won by a landslide, Castle was elected as the Member of Parliament for Blackburn. As Blackburn was then a two-member constituency, she was elected alongside fellow Labour candidate John Edwards. Castle had secured her place as a parliamentary candidate through the women of the Blackburn Labour Party, who had threatened to quit unless she was added to the otherwise all-male shortlist.

Castle was the youngest of the handful of women elected. Although she had grown up in similar northern industrial towns, she had no prior connection to Blackburn. Eager not to appear as a parachute candidate, she studied weaving and spinning, and spent time living with a local family. In her maiden speech she highlighted the problems facing servicemen then going through demobilisation.

Immediately upon her entering the House of Commons Castle was appointed Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) to Sir Stafford Cripps, President of the Board of Trade, who had known her as a member of the pre-war Socialist League. Harold Wilson succeeded Cripps in 1947 and retained Castle as his PPS, marking the beginning of the pair's lengthy political relationship. She gained further experience as the UK's alternate delegate to the United Nations General Assembly for 1949–1950, when she displayed particular concerned for social and humanitarian issues. She soon achieved a reputation as a left-winger and a rousing speaker. During the 1950s she was a high-profile Bevanite, and made a name for herself as a vocal advocate of decolonisation and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Cabinet minister

Minister for Overseas Development, 1964–1965

Labour returned to government under Harold Wilson in October 1964 following a general election, defeating Alec Douglas-Home's Conservative government by winning a slim majority of four seats, thus ending 13 years of successive Conservative governments. Wilson had selected his core Cabinet four months prior to the election; Castle knew Wilson intended to place her within his Cabinet, which would make her the fourth woman in British history ever to hold position in a Cabinet, after Margaret Bondfield, Ellen Wilkinson and Florence Horsbrugh.

Castle entered the Cabinet as the first Minister for Overseas Development, a newly created ministry for which she, alongside the Fabian Society, had drawn up the plans for. For the last year she had acted as the opposition spokeswoman on overseas development. Castle's plans were extensive, though the ministry's budget was modest. She set about trying to divert powers from other departments related to overseas aid, including the Foreign Office and the Treasury. She was only partially successful in her aims and provoked an internal Whitehall dispute in the process.

In June 1965 Castle announced interest-free aid loans would be available to certain (not exclusively Commonwealth) countries. She had previously criticised the Conservative government for granting loans that only waived up to the first seven years of interest, which she considered to be counter-intuitive.

In August, Castle published her government white paper ''Overseas Development: The Work of a New Ministry''. The financial commitments of the ministry were omitted from the report, after a protracted clash between Castle and her Cabinet colleagues James Callaghan (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and George Brown (Secretary of State for Economic Affairs). Labour had made a manifesto promise to increase aid spending to 1% of gross national product, almost double Conservative spending. However, the national economy was unstable, public resentment towards the Commonwealth was growing due to immigration, and within Cabinet aid was viewed with either indifference or contempt. Castle grappled with Callaghan and Brown over the department's budgetary allocation; they reached a compromise following Wilson's intervention, but the sum only amounted to a small increase in spending.

Minister of Transport, 1965–1968

Initially reluctant to head up the department, Castle accepted the role of Minister of Transport (23 December 1965 – 6 April 1968) in a Cabinet reshuffle after Wilson proved persuasive.

In February 1966, Castle addressed Parliament, calling for "a profound change in public attitudes" to curtail increasing road fatality figures, stating: "Hitler did not manage to kill as many civilians in Britain as have been killed on our roads since the war". The statistics bore out; between 1945 and the mid-1960s approximately 150,000 people were killed and several million injured on Britain's roads.

She introduced the breathalyser to combat the then recently acknowledged crisis of drink-driving. Castle said she was "ready to risk unpopularity" by introducing the measures if it meant saving lives. She was challenged by a BBC
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