Castle, Barbara Anne 1911 - . British Labour politician. Baroness Castle (born Betts) A cabinet minister in the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s. She led the Labour group in the European Parliament 1979-89. Baroness 1990. Castle was minister of overseas development 1964-65, transport 1965{nd}68, employment 1968-70 (when her White Paper "In Place of Strife", on trade union reform, was abandoned because it suggested state intervention in industrial relations), and social services 1974-76, when she was dropped from the cabinet by Prime Minister James Callaghan. She criticized him in her "Diaries", 1980.