It is fifty years since Chesterfield’s Barbara Castle introduced a famous White Paper that effectively scuppered her chances of becoming our first female Prime Minister. Godfrey Holmes reports.
ASK ANYONE to name the most famous woman Labour politician of all time: Bessie Braddock? Betty Boothroyd? Ellen Wilkinson? – and they’ll be struggling. Ask them which woman came nearest to being the first female Prime Minister before Margaret Thatcher actually did – and they’ll be totally lost… until they recall Chesterfield’s own Dame Barbara Castle (1910–2002)…