Born Barbara Anne Betts in Bradford, Yorkshire on 6th October 1910, Barbara Castle was described by ex-Labour Party Leader Michael Foot as 'the best Socialist minister we've ever had' and was probably best known as the outspoken campaigning Member of Parliament for Blackburn in Lancashire for 35 years. As a young woman she is reputed to have lived for a time in Hyde, (then in Cheshire, now part of Tameside in Greater Manchester).
Her mother had been a local Labour Councillor and her father was a tax inspector and political activist. A bright girl, she attended Bradford Girls' Grammar School, and later took a degree at Oxford. Later, she determined to be a journalist and a politician, but the Depression forced her temporarily to seek work selling fruit in a Manchester store. At Oxford she had also met Michael Foot with whom she spent many hours discussing social politics at his flat in Bloomsbury - they denied allegations and rumours of an affair. However, in 1937, they helped launch the "Tribune", which set out to reform the Labour Party as a truly socialist party and in 1944 she won election to the Blackburn constituency which she represented until her retirement in 1979.
A clever and single-minded author of some of the best political diaries of her time, she had begun her campaigning against Fascism in pre-World War Two days and rose to be a minister in Harold Wilson's government in the 1960s and 70s. Wilson appointed her to his first cabinet at the Department of Overseas Development, in which she was to become possibly the most effective Cabinet Minister of her generation, despite having no previous ministerial experience. Wilson promoted her to the Department of Transport and in two and a half years she transformed the department and oversaw the introduction of the breathalyser and the seatbelt.
Later he promoted her again to First Secretary in the new Department of Employment and Productivity in an attempt to bring order to the poor state of industrial relations. "In Place of Strife" was the white paper which she produced in an attempt to bridge the chasm which existed between employers and workers, but this proved disastrous and was roundly rejected. Despite its many worthy proposals she was forced to accept a shortened bill which was only to enforce the more penal clauses and industrial dischord was even more deepened. The episode also accelerated alienation between party activists and the leadership, aand although well liked and respected by parliamentary backbenchers, she was nevertheless a controversial figure and was fired by Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan.
Ultimately she left many worthy monuments to her governmental efforts, not least of which was Equal Pay for Women. After retirement from Westminster in 1979, she became the leader of the Labour group in the European parliament for ten years.
Later, party leader Neil Kinnock recommended her to the House of Lords and she was created a Baroness. She and her husband Ted, (who had died in 1979), had no children. Barbara Castle, by then Baroness Castle of Blackburn, died on the 3rd of May 2001.