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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Castle

    Barbara Castle was ahead of her time. She also introduced seat belts and speed limits despite great opposition.

    In February 1966, Castle addressed Parliament, calling for “a profound change in public attitudes” to curtail increasing road fatality figures, stating: “Hitler did not manage to kill as many civilians in Britain as have been killed on our roads since the war”. The statistics bore out; between 1945 and the mid-1960s approximately 150,000 people were killed and several million injured on Britain’s roads.

    She introduced the breathalyser to combat the then recently acknowledged crisis of drink-driving. Castle said she was “ready to risk unpopularity” by introducing the measures if it meant saving lives. She was challenged by a BBC journalist on The World This Weekend, who described the policy as a “rotten idea” and asked her: "You’re only a woman, you don’t drive, what do you know about it?" In the 12 months following the introduction of the breathalyser, Government figures revealed road deaths had dropped by 16.5%.