‘In Blackburn, we don’t like career women who use their maiden name,” a young Barbara Betts was told by the local Labour Party agent, minutes after she was chosen to fight the forthcoming 1945 General Election for Labour.

“You will [from now on] be Mrs Barbara Castle”.

So she was.

Come June 1977, the local agent told me: “In Blackburn, you could damage your chances if your Alice is in town when the local party decides who should succeed Barbara.

“You are living over the brush. Some party stalwarts would see Alice’s presence with you as a brazen display of immorality”.

So my then girlfriend Alice stayed away – waiting with friends in Bury to discover whether her life as well as mine was going to change.

I had to search a completely deserted town centre to find a working ‘phone box to tell her that I had won the ballot. In case you are worried, we married 15 months later!

Career women, our private lives, mobile phones – how attitudes, and technology, have changed even more in the 35 years since I became MP, than in the previous 35 years when Barbara represented our town. But so too has the method by which political parties (of all persuasions) choose their Parliamentary candidates.

Barbara and I were chosen by the party’s elite – its management committee; in my case by just 45 delegates from ward and trade union branches.

In sharp contrast, over eight times that number were at last Sunday’s selection conference when council leader Kate Hollern was chosen as Labour’s prospective candidate to succeed me, because all party members were able to take part, and 386 did so.

Among them were three delegates who’d been at my selection in 1977, all former Mayors – Gordon Toole, Sylvia Liddle, and Michael Madigan. Sylvia and Mike told me the new system is overall better than the one by which I was chosen. “More rules this time” Sylvia told me, but “more opportunity to ‘suss’ the candidates out – including Googling them!”

“But Jack,” both added “we’d still have chosen you”.

Phew!