Barbara Castle (1910-2002)
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Transport secretaries come and go but few are remembered. That cannot be said of Barbara Castle, the flame-haired dynamo from Bradford.
She created the O-licence regime in her massive 1968 Transport Act. To do so, she abolished the A, B and C licences, in place since 1933, and introduced the O-licence, which obliged applicants to show they were fit to run a haulage business and the quality licence (now the CPC) which set standards for transport managers.
The Act introduced the tachograph and cut drivers’ hours to first 10 and then nine a day. It set up the National Freight Corporation, which formed an umbrella for publicly owned operators under the brand of British Road Services. BRS was later privatised by the Tories.
Oh, and our Babs also introduced the breathalyser and the compulsory wearing of seat belts.