Labour Party praises 'mentor and tormentor'

The late Barbara Castle's talismanic place in Labour Party history and mythology was displayed for one last time yesterday at a meeting to pay tribute to her memory.

Tony Blair cast her in a New Labour light as "one of the first to modernise our party", and the former Labour leader Michael Foot invoked her commitment to narrowing the gap between rich and poor, saying: "You can't have a successful Labour government unless it is successful in the distribution of wealth."

Mr Blair and former party leaders joined six cabinet ministers, dozens of MPs and peers, family members and constituents in Central Hall, Westminster, to remember Baroness Castle of Blackburn, who died in May aged 91.

Speakers hailed her campaigns for equal pay for women, child benefit, higher pensions, overseas aid and to cut road deaths. But they said her failed attempt to reform industrial relations laws had divided the party and almost destroyed her career. There was also a frank admission of the mixture of the passion and candour that charmed, and frustrated, colleagues.

The Prime Minister acknowledged his run-ins with her. Five months before her death she accused him of "self-love" and of presiding over the "deliberate destruction" of cabinet government.

But he added: "More than 50 years after she entered Parliament, she was still the darling of our annual conference, still bringing our people to their feet, still campaigning, still fighting for her ideals.Britain has lost one of its great political figures, the Labour movement a great heroine. She is, indeed, irreplaceable."

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, who had his own tangles with Lady Castle over pension levels, confessed she was both his "mentor and tormentor".He said: "She kindly asked me to be present at her 90th birthday party. She said that in return she would not speak about pensions at the party conference. I attended the party. She spoke at the conference."

Neil Kinnock said: "As a woman driven by a lifetime pursuit of justice, her brilliant relentlessness often brought progress that was greater and faster than most realists thought possible."

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary who succeeded her as MP for Blackburn, said: "What made Barbara a great minister was, to put it figuratively, she had balls. She did have a profound framework of belief, but belief was the basis for action, not its substitute."