Book - The Castle Diaries by Barbara Castle
I had no interest in politicians until 5 years ago when I was forced to take sides. I’ve had a grudging concern since then. I knew of Barbara Castle because of her pivotal role in the brilliant Made in Dagenham film about the Ford women paid dispute, so I grabbed this when I saw it in a charity sale.
Straight off, there is more intelligence shining from the first two paragraphs than I've heard in the last 5 years since I've been paying attention.
‘It seemed as though the Tory hold on the electorate would never be broken’ from the opening page is familiar today but I don’t expect the current Labour party would be recruiting ‘a bright young journalist’ from The Sun because they shared the Minister’s beliefs.
Off the time
Much of these diaries from the 1960s and 70s convey a mindset that is frowned upon today such as terming holding an African baby as a 'cuddle in the sun'. And, at the time of just 26 MPs, being called ‘little Barbara’ or ‘little Minister’ by the PM which she takes as affection, as I probably would have done as a teen.
The endless day time drinking in their ‘room’, as offices seem to be called, is seen as medicinal to calm the nerves and her preference for shorts rather than wine or beer. I kept thinking she was asking people up to her bedroom.
The press does not report news, it invents it.
Some phrases shocked me. Calling Enoch Powell to sort out an issue 'he is always civil to me' and 'he remains intellectually sophisticated'. This is several years after rivers of blood. There’s a tasteless joke about suffragettes being force-fed and 'I was so angry I could have killed the writer' after an attacking press article.
Her favourite phrase ‘it went like a bomb’, describing an achievement, is littered throughout the book. Then there’s 'I would have to blackmail him into resigning', 'I'll destroy him yet’, ‘he's despicable and dangerous' and finally 'I dedicate myself to his destruction' referring to her PM Harrold Wilson.
I thought they only had two weeks holiday in the 1970s but apparently 'holidays always bore me after a couple of weeks'.
The best successes are always snatched from the jaws of disaster
There is criticism of someone for being a bully and then self-congratulation for bullying behaviour which got results. In this era of politics, they give a person (man) a job and tell him to get on with it and sack him if he fails. The attitude is prevalent in football management and looking at the UK currently, probably the government. I was gripped though, by the saga of trying to appoint Peter Parker to BR chair and him holding out for industry-standard salary £17,500 rather than national industry, £12,500.
On feminism, despite acknowledging that she had to get up early to do the things a man doesn't have to, she was not a supporter of the movement. They were different times and feminism had a different image. It took me a long time to acknowledge the movement’s role today. Back in the day, I’d call myself an equalist as I felt people who called themselves feminists were too quick to have women-only things when we’d fought for centuries against the men-only establishment. I get it more now but still won’t entertain things like businesswoman of the year or women only business clubs. Maybe my aversion is mostly within the business world. Barbara Castle states she ‘must be getting feminist in my old age’ and was pleased that Margaret Thatcher becoming the leader of the opposition stating ‘men haven't done a very good job so far’. True. A few little boys are pretending to do grown-ups work in privileged places on high salaries. It’s worse today.
She was against coalition governments and proportional representation because Labour wouldn't then win, going into the EU, the Euro Tunnel and contributing to the construction of Concorde.
On the one hand, Barbara Castle proposed to ban lorries from the fast lane and on the other, she wanted more private flights available for ministers to be much more efficient. (I hadn’t realised till almost the end that this sometime Transport Minister didn’t drive and I suspect then it was because women didn’t). This was decades before mobile phones & Skype. However, there were also laws brought in regarding seat belts, breathalyser tests, the Tachometer and the 70mph speed limit. Also, the Sexual Offenses Bill to legalise homosexuality.
I got halfway through when I realised the memoirs had a tingle of arrogance and there was no mention on constituents until the dying pages. Not even during the Conservative government when she was not a minister - these years were glossed over in a few pages. I was looking out for these stories, ones that remind politicians of the real world outside chauffeured cars and umpteen trips to meet her beloved royals, ‘I don’t curtsey’.
I thought politicians used to be good in the past and they've got worse. Maybe it was just a small minority as now. They were just not scrutinised like they are now via social media, although they are still accepted.
Despite a lot of ‘my programme and ‘my whitepaper’ and threatening to resign seemingly every other day, Barbara Castle went on to be an MEP and write a book about the suffragettes, so she clearly did evolve.