Only Woman In Cabinet

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30575, 19 October 1964, Page 2

Only Woman In Cabinet

Mrs Barbara Castle, aged 52, who has been announced as the new British Minister for Overseas Development, is the only woman in the Labour Party’s Cabinet.

At first her work will be based on the existing Department of Technical Co-opera-tion, but it will have responsibilities linked with the specialised agencies of the United Nations. Mrs Castle has been Labour member of Parliament for Blackbum since 1945. She was bom on October 6, 1911, a daughter of Frank Betts, a poet and scholar who devoted himself to educational and cultural work and was for many years editor of the Bradford “Pioneer." She began her career as a journalist and became inter-

ested in local government In 1937 she was elected to the St. Pancras Borough Council in London, one of its youngest members.

She quickly surprised older members of the council with her knowledge of housing conditions and welfare services. She led a demand in the council for the formation of an efficient civil defence organisation as the Second World War loomed near and during the war served as an air-raid warden. She married in 1944 and in 1945 gave up her other works to campaign for the General Election. She has always been known as a radical and her place in the party has been described

as “well to the left.” During her early years in Parliament she was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Sir Stafford Crips while he was President of the Board of Trade.

Later she was private secretary to Mr Harold Wilson when he succeeded Sir Stafford Cripps in that position. Mrs Castle is keenly interested in international affairs and in 1949 and 1950 she was an alternate British delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Since 1945 she has also visited Germany, Canada and the Middle East and was a member of a Labour Party group which visited China in 1956. She has also visited South Africa and Jugoslavia and has been on fact-finding journeys to various parts of the Commonwealth including Kenya, Central Africa and Cyprus.