50 years ago today, Barbara Castle guided the Equal Pay Act into legislation, making it illegal to pay women less than men for the 1st time in British history. Women MPs had campaigned for this for decades, but it was Castle who acted on it when Labour was in power. (1/6) 
After a strike at the Ford car factory in Dagenham in 1968, as First Secretary of State Castle took up the issue of equal pay in government & met the machinists for tea in her office to negotiate (and - when the photographers had left - ‘a real drink’). (2/6)
Castle promised the machinists she would deliver legislation on equal pay. Two years later, she had done that. (3/6)
Castle wrote in her diary of her ‘determination to force the macho male chauvinists in the Treasury to accept the principle of equal pay.’ (4/6)
And she argued that this was a socialist cause, as much as a feminist one: ‘It may not seem overtly so, but this is above all a Socialist Bill, because it is about poor women. It is about... working women who earn less than 5s. an hour.’ (5/6)
The battle on equal pay for equal work was won, but a big gender pay gap remains. In 2019, women were paid on average 17.3% less than men. The next Labour government will take up this issue and champion the rights of women workers. We will make Castle proud. (6/6)
