Barbara Castle (1910—2002) was a British left-wing politician. She was elected to Parliament in 1945 and rose to become one of the most important Labour party politicians of the twentieth century. She was the first, and to date, the only woman to have held the office of First Secretary of State. As Minister of Transport she introduced the breathalyser to combat the then recently acknowledged crisis of drink-driving, made permanent the 70mph speed limit, and presided over the closure of approximately 2050 miles of railways enacting her part of the Beeching cuts. As Secretary of State for Employment 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 – helping to resolve the strike. She then put through the Equal Pay Act of 1970. She Castle lost her place in the government when her bitter political enemy, James Callaghan, became prime minister in 1976; many years later she claimed that the Prime Minister had told her he wanted ‘somebody younger’ in the Cabinet, remarking that perhaps the most restrained thing she had ever done in in her political life was not to reply with: ‘Then why not start with yourself, Jim?’ In 1974her husband was made a life peer but she refused to use this courtesy title, Lady Castle. In 1990 she was made a life peer in her own right as Baroness Castle of Blackburn. She remained active in politics right up until her death,
Made in Dagenham (1974): Dramatises the story of the Dagenham equal pay strike of 1968 and features Miranda Richardson as Barbara Castle. Elizabeth Yianni-Georgiou was the make-up and hair designer.