Barbara Castle: Dealing with this problem in eight years of cabinet government, and what we did? We set out to make a woman friendly society. First, Equal Pay. My Act of ’70 was far from perfect, we haven’t had a chance to bring it up to date. But it broke through. The ‘Oh, no, no’s’. The ‘It’ll upset the economy. There’ll be inflation. It’ll be this. It’ll be that. It’ll undermine the competitive stand of the big firms!’. The multinationals who are minting it, as a result of the privatisation programmes that are going on.
Then the Sex Discrimination Act. And not least, in that 1974 Labour Government when I was Secretary of State for the Social Services, I was given the job of building machinery that would defend the most vulnerable in our society. From the perils of means testing poverty and insecurity.
Woman-friendly. That is why we got the Child Benefit Act through Parliament. And do you know? You watch what happened as soon as Margaret – ‘The Great Feminist’ – came into office. She set out to destroy one-by-one, every piece of social security with which we had tried to give women a decent life. Child Benefit. Do you realise what that did? It took the Child Tax Allowance, which the Male – the man in the family – got in his wage packet, and turned it positive to Child Benefit payable to the mother. And from every child – including the first one – never before done in all the ages, age-long discussions on family allowance. And so ha – what did Margaret Thatcher do? Well of course, she hated it! It was Government taking responsibility. For seeing that the mother had something in her hands to feed and clothe the children.