Red queen

Macmillan

2003

499 p.

9780333905111

Born in 1910, before women had the vote, Barbara Castle was a Labour activist from childhood. She was at the heart of the Party from the early 1930s, both as a political journalist and as a participant in the sectarian struggles that characterized Labour debate for decades. In 1945 she took her seat in the House of Commons, the youngest woman MP. Twenty years later she was the unexpected success of Harold Wilson's first administration, rising from a junior position to the inner Cabinet in less than five years. Entrenched opinion was her natural enemy and from the British Empire to equal pay, from the motoring lobby to the trade unions, no bastion of established power was sacred. But her radicalism, her flamboyant style and ultimately perhaps her gender caught up with her and she was frozen out. Yet she remained unflinchingly committed to Labour's traditional values and was, until the end, a scourge of Tony Blair and New Labour." "Castle was also one of a generation of assiduous diarists. She kept a vivid record of events that shaped the lives of Britons in the second half of the twentieth century. Drawing on much previously unpublished material, this warm and human portrait of one of the most vivid personalities of the post-war era examines the battles she fought and the weapons she used in what was less of a career than a crusade. Anne Perkins's biography is the inside story of what it was really like for a woman in twentieth-century British politics and public life.

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