Barbara Castle Barbara Castle Barbara Anne Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn, PC, GCOT ("née" Betts; 6 October 1910 – 3 May 2002) was a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1945 to 1979, making her the longest-serving female MP in the history of the House of Commons until that record was broken in 2007 by Gwyneth Dunwoody. She later became the Member of the European Parliament for Greater Manchester from 1979 to 1989 and subsequently a member of the House of Lords, having been granted a life peerage in 1990. One of the most significant
1869 Blackburn by-election misconduct, long after the alleged misconduct had occurred. The nominations were made on 29 March 1869, before a gathering of 15,000 people in Blakey Moor, Blackburn. The Liberal Party nominated John Gerald Potter, who had contested Blackburn in 1865 and 1868, and John Morley, a barrister who had taken up journalism and become the editor of the "Fortnightly Review". Potter told meeting that if the working classes of Blackburn were allowed to vote freely, he and Morley would both be returned, and that the longer he lived, the more he saw the need for voting to be conducted by secret