In the
1945 general election, which Labour won by a landslide, Castle was elected as the
Member of Parliament for
Blackburn. 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. 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 ,
Malawi Minister of Finance, 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 the previous 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 interest for up to the first seven years, which she considered to be counter-productive. In August, Castle published the 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 journalist on
The World This Weekend, who described the policy as a "rotten idea" and asked her: "You're only a woman, you don't drive, what do you know about it?" Castle also made permanent the
national speed limit (70 mph). Having been introduced as a four-month trial by outgoing Transport Minister
Tom Fraser in December 1965, Castle first extended the limit period in 1966 and in 1967 made the limit permanent, following a controversial report from the
Road Research Laboratory concluding that motorway casualties had fallen 20% since its introduction. During a tour of New York City in October 1966, where Castle was examining the impact of traffic problems in American cities, she vocalised plans to introduce a
London congestion charge, which was to be introduced as soon as the technical details of fee collection were solved. Castle urged New York's
Transport Commissioner to adopt the same policy, describing plans for more roadways as "self-defeating", stating the solution was "more and better mass transit systems". In late 1965, the Labour MP for nearby
Kingston upon Hull North died,
triggering a by-election. The marginal seat was of critical importance to the government and its loss would have reduced Labour's majority in the House of Commons to just one. One of her most memorable achievements as Transport minister was to pass legislation decreeing that all new cars had to be fitted with
seat belts. Despite being appointed to the Ministry of Transport, a role which she was originally unenthusiastic about, Castle could not actually drive herself, and was chauffeured to functions. (The Labour politician
Hazel Blears recalled driving Castle at one time as a young Labour Party activist in the 1980s.) Despite her lack of a driving licence, while she was the Minister of Transport.
First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Employment, 1968–1970 As
Secretary of State for Employment, Castle was also appointed
First Secretary of State by Wilson, bringing her firmly into the heart of government. She was never far from controversy which reached a fever pitch when the trade unions rebelled against her proposals to reduce their powers in her 1969
white paper, '
In Place of Strife'. This also involved a major cabinet split, with threatened resignations, hot tempers and her future nemesis
James Callaghan breaking ranks to publicly try to undermine the bill. The whole episode alienated her from many of her friends on the left, with the
Tribune newspaper railing very hard against the bill, which they held to be attacking the workers without attacking the bosses. The split is often said to have been partly responsible for Labour's defeat at the
1970 general election. The eventual deal with the unions dropped most of the contentious clauses. Castle also helped make history when she intervened in the
Ford sewing machinists' strike of 1968, in which the women of the
Dagenham Ford Plant demanded to be paid the same as their male counterparts. She helped resolve the strike, which resulted in a pay rise for Ford's female workers bringing them to 92 per cent of what the men received. Most significantly, as a consequence of this strike, Castle put through the
Equal Pay Act 1970. A 2010 British film,
Made in Dagenham, was based on the Ford strike. She was portrayed by
Miranda Richardson. In April 1970, Castle's husband, Ted, lost his position as an alderman of the
Greater London Council. He was devastated and although he was supportive of his wife's achievements, he considered himself a failure compared to her. Upset and concerned by her husband's distress, Barbara persuaded Wilson to grant Ted a peerage. She sought to remove private "pay beds" from the
National Health Service (NHS), in conflict with the
British Medical Association. In the
1975 referendum debate Castle took a
Eurosceptic stance. During a debate with Liberal leader
Jeremy Thorpe he asked her whether, if the vote would be yes, she would stay on as a minister. To this she replied: "If the vote is yes my country will need me to save it." Despite her views she later became a
Member of the European Parliament (1979–1989). Her public support of leaving the EEC infuriated Wilson. Castle recorded in her diary and in her subsequent autobiography that Wilson summoned her to Downing Street where he angrily accused her of disloyalty and that, as he had brought her back into the cabinet against others' wishes and advice, he deserved better from her. Castle claimed she offered to resign, but Wilson calmed down and she continued to campaign for leaving in the referendum. In 1975, Castle introduced the Child Benefit Act, superseding the
Family Allowances Act 1945. The act provided new support for families' first child, unlike the previous system in place, which provided benefit for second and subsequent children. The legislation faced opposition from unions whose male members would receive less take-home pay with the loss of Family Allowance. Castle lost her place as a Cabinet minister when her bitter political enemy
James Callaghan succeeded Wilson as prime minister following a
leadership election. Although he left Wilson's Cabinet virtually unchanged, he dismissed Castle almost immediately upon taking office, in the midst of a complex health bill that she was steering through the House of Commons at the time. Although he had not yet decided on her successor at the time he fired her, Callaghan removed her under the pretext he wanted to lower the average age of his Cabinet, which she regarded as a "phoney reason". In an interview years later, she remarked that perhaps the most restrained thing she had ever achieved in her life was not to reply with "Then why not start with yourself, Jim?" (Callaghan was four years older than Wilson, the man he was replacing, and less than 18 months younger than Castle). Castle was angry to discover that Wilson had broken a private confidence in informing Callaghan that she had intended to retire from the cabinet before the next election. ==European Parliament (1979–1989)==