Home
People
Organizations
Events
Themes
Oral Histories
Learning Resources
Barbara Castle
‐
Labour Party MP for Blackburn who held several cabinet positions
Other names
Barbara Anne Betts
Baroness Castle of Blackburn
Place of birth
Place of death
Ibstone, Buckinghamshire
About
Barbara Castle spent her formative years in Bradford before attending the University of Oxford where she read philosophy, politics and economics. In 1937, after working for her local Labour Party in Hyde and as a columnist for the left-wing paper Tribune, she became a Labour Party councillor for the borough of St Pancras, where she worked alongside Krishna Menon.
Castle was elected as Labour MP for Blackburn in the 1945 general election, becoming the youngest woman in the Commons and holding her seat for the next thirty-five years. In the 1960s she held several ministerial offices, including Minister of Overseas Development, Minister of Transport, Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity.
Aneurin Bevan, Fenner Brockway, Edward (Ted) Castle, Stafford Cripps (parliamentary private secretary, 1945–7), Michael Foot, V. K. Krishna Menon, Harold Wilson (parliamentary private secretary, 1947–51).
Anti-Apartheid Movement, Independent Labour Party, Labour Party, Movement for Colonial Freedom, Socialist League.
NHS Revisited, Fabian Tract 440 (London: Fabian Society, 1976)
The Castle Diaries, 1974–1976 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980)
The Castle Diaries, 1964–1970 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984)
Sylvia and Christabel Pankhurst (London: Penguin, 1987)
Fighting all the Way (London: Macmillan, 1993)
Brockway, Fenner, What Is the M. C. F.? (London: Movement for Colonial Freedom, 1960)
Crossman, R. H. S., The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, 3 vols (London: Hamilton, 1975–7)
De’ath, W., Barbara Castle: A Portrait from Life (Brighton: Clifton Books, 1970)
Howard, Anthony, ‘Castle, Barbara Anne, Baroness Castle of Blackburn (1910–2002)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2007) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/76877]
Jenkins, R., A Life at the Centre (London: Macmillan, 1991)
Martineau, L., Politics and Power: Barbara Castle, a Biography (London: André Deutsch, 2000)
Perkins, A., Red Queen: The Authorized Biography of Barbara Castle (London: Pan, 2003)
Cabinet Conclusions and Memoranda, CAB 128 and 129, 1964–9, National Archives, Kew, UK
Image credit
Barbara Anne Castle, Baroness Castle, by Walter Bird, bromide print, 17 June 1964, NPG x166427
© National Portrait Gallery, London, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
