Stories of Women in the 1960s by Cath Senker

Author:Cath Senker [Senker, Cath]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Capstone
Published: 2015-02-11T00:00:00+00:00

Through publicity like this, Barbara raised the profile of overseas development in the United Kingdom. She also achieved real change. In June 1965, Barbara announced that in the future, the poorest developing countries would receive loans interest-free. They had to pay back the loan, but without an extra fee. She had persuaded the Treasury (the department that controls public money) that it would not lose any money, because the poorest countries could not pay interest on their debt anyway.

Barbara enjoyed working with the ODM but was nevertheless pleased when Harold Wilson promoted her to the Ministry of Transport in 1965.

This department handling transportation was an extremely male environment. Barbara was the first female to run it. When she arrived, there wasn’t even a ladies’ restroom that she could use. In addition, Barbara was criticized because she could not drive a car. People asked how she could possibly understand the needs of drivers. Yet she and Ted owned a car, so she felt this was rather unfair.

Barbara understood the challenge of transportation. The number of private cars had risen from 2 million in 1947 to 8 million and was forecast to increase to 18 million by 1975. The Ministry of Transport was dominated by highway engineers who were eager to expand the road network. Yet the growing number of vehicles created traffic and environmental problems.

Barbara wanted to achieve a balance between road and rail. But she faced a struggle to protect the railroads. Chairman of British Railways Richard Beeching wanted to drastically reduce the rail network. She found Beeching tough to argue against and realized:

I was in a man’s world all right, and I had to impose my will on it.

She reached an agreement that reduced the railroad network considerably less than Beeching originally intended.

Barbara also negotiated a plan to encourage the transport of goods by rail, to cut down the number of trucks on the roads. She set up a system for goods to be collected in containers at assembly points and carried on high-speed trains.

The safety of travel was another key issue for Barbara. At that time, it was acceptable to drink alcohol and drive a car, which frequently led to terrible accidents. In 1965, 8,000 people died in road crashes. Barbara made it illegal to drink and drive. Police could stop drivers who had committed a road offense, such as going through a red light. They could make them take a Breathalyzer test to detect if they had been drinking alcohol. The penalty for offenders was tough—they would be banned from driving for a year.

The Breathalyzer was hugely controversial, and Barbara received many nasty, abusive letters on the subject. Drivers did not appreciate changing their habits, and country pub (bar) owners lost money, especially on weekends. One angry driver wrote, “We’ll get you yet, you old cow!”

Not all were so negative. One woman wrote to Barbara:

Thank you for giving my husband back to me. He used to leave me at home when he went to the pub, now he takes me with him to drive him home.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.