The Best Man

Prime Minister Harold Wilson once called her "the best man in the Cabinet." That did not bother Barbara Castle. Being petite and auburn-tressed, she resembles a man--or some men--only in her determination to get a job done well. A left-wing Laborite from the cotton-milling town of Blackburn in Lancashire and the only woman in Wilson's Cabinet, Mrs. Castle, 56, has just been handed a job that would test the mettle of any male. After seven weeks as Wilson's new Minister of Employment and Productivity (she was formerly Minister of Transport), she now faces the unenviable task of persuading British businessmen and union leaders to pursue at least 18 more months of wage and price restraints.

So far, both groups have stayed pretty well in sight of Wilson's guidelines, which date from the 1965 sterling crisis; they are now supposed to limit wage and price hikes to an annual 31% increase. Businessmen, however, are constantly tempted to raise consumer prices by an extra dollop, using as their understandable excuse the fact that devaluation brought on an automatic increase in the cost of imported raw materials. On their side, unions are girding for a series of major contract negotiations this summer and autumn with wage-rise demands totaling more than a billion dollars. Among the demands: 3,000,000 heavy-machinery workers asking a 10% increase; 1,250,000 construction men seeking 15%, and 750,000 retail-distribution employees demanding 10%. To head off such damaging boosts, Wilson last week maneuvered his bill renewing wage and price controls through its decisive second reading in Commons. But it passed by only a narrow, grudging margin of 35 votes. The fact is, many Britons are simply not convinced that the way to maintain the competitive advantages of devaluation abroad is to hold the line on prices and wages at home.

Barbara Castle's job is to convince them--or at least see that they hew the line. She can refer violators to the Prices and Incomes Board, which can revoke and fine them, but plans to use discipline only "in the nature of reserve powers." Instead, she has already announced her own positive "interventionist", policy, inviting unions to negotiate wage increases of any size--as long as they are based on equal gains in productivity. She was quick to applaud just that kind of an agreement recently (even though it will boost some wages 46% over three years) between Rootes Motors and two unions. She also hopes to encourage companies to establish management-labor committees on productivity. Her plan has some merit: British productivity has for years been the despair of economists, who equally blame rigid labor attitudes and casual management policies for the laggard pace of modernization in industry.

Stiletto Tongue. The Castle blend of imagination and efficiency has made Barbara the highest-ranking woman politician in British history and won applause from bastions of business such as London's Financial Times, which called her "one of the few really effective ministers in the present government." A lifelong socialist and a cause-carrying M.P. for more than two decades, she served as an evangelist for the Beveridge report, which blueprinted Britain's postwar welfare state. She has a tongue like a stiletto when she needs it, and once goaded Tory M.P. Peter Walker into comparing her to Dickens' Madame Defarge. "Madame Guillotine," he called her. "All that's missing is the knitting." As her friends from Labor's left have learned, she is first and foremost a Wilson loyalist, having served him as parliamentary private secretary when he was Board of Trade president from 1947 to 1951 and as a member of his Cabinet since 1964. He can use her support now more than ever before. The discontent with Wilson is ubiquitous: last week a pint-sized delegation from the under-five generation picketed No. 10 Downing Street demanding more nursery schools.

Married to a Fleet Street picture editor, she often works 14-hour days, relaxes on weekends by gardening at their country cottage. Anyone who doubts her zeal for "interventionism" should talk to Britain's pub owners. After she pushed through legislation as Minister of Transport making a Breathalyser test mandatory for drunken-driving suspects, they sarcastically introduced a new drink called "the Bloody Barbara": pure tomato juice and tonic. No matter; her plan worked. Since it began, road deaths in Britain have dropped nearly 25%.

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