Jack Straw
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Right
Honourable Jack Straw MP | |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 28 June 2007 | |
| Prime Minister | Gordon Brown |
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| Preceded by | The Lord Falconer of Thoroton |
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| In office 06 May 2006 – 27 June 2007 | |
| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Geoff Hoon |
| Succeeded by | Harriet Harman |
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| In office 08 June 2001 – 06 May 2006 | |
| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Robin Cook |
| Succeeded by | Margaret Beckett |
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| In office 02 May 1997 – 08 June 2001 | |
| Prime Minister | Tony Blair |
| Preceded by | Michael Howard |
| Succeeded by | David Blunkett |
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Member of
Parliament for Blackburn | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 03 May 1979 | |
| Preceded by | Barbara Castle |
| Majority | 8,009 (19.2%) |
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| Born | 3
August 1946
(1946-08-03)
Buckhurst Hill, Essex, England |
| Political party | Labour |
| Alma mater | University of Leeds |
| Website | http://www.jackstrawmp.org.uk/ |
John Whitaker Straw (born 3 August 1946), most commonly known as Jack Straw, is a senior British Labour Party politician. On 28 June 2007 he was appointed to the offices of Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Secretary of State for Justice.[1]
Previously he was Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 and Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons from 2006 to 2007. He has been the Member of Parliament for Blackburn since 1979.
[edit] Early life
He was born in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, England of part-Jewish background and brought up at Loughton, Essex by his mother, Joan Sylvia Gilbey[2][3] on a council estate after his father Walter Arthur Whitaker Straw,[2] an insurance salesman and the son of Arthur Whitaker Straw, left the family and condemned them to poverty. He was educated at Staples Road School, Loughton, and then boarded at the fee-charging Brentwood School (where he was already expressing political ambitions and took the name "Jack", allegedly after the 14th century peasant leader Jack Straw — although "Jack" is a common diminutive of "John") and read law at the University of Leeds.
Straw was elected chair of the Leeds University Labour Club in 1966. When Straw disrupted a student trip to Chile, he was branded a "troublemaker acting with malice aforethought" by the Foreign Office.[4] Straw was then elected president of Leeds University Union with the support of the Broad Left, a coalition including Liberal, Socialist and the Communist Societies. The Leeds University Union Council recently reinstated Jack Straw's life membership of the union, as a previous motion had removed his life membership and led to the removal of his name from the Presidents’ Board due to personal disagreement with his political decisions.[5] At the National Union of Students conference at the end of 1967 he and David Adelstein, the Radicals leader from the London School of Economics, were defeated in their quest for officership in the NUS. That was repeated in April 1968 when Straw stood for NUS President and was defeated by Trevor Fisk.[6] In 1969 he succeeded in being elected President of the increasingly more radical National Union of Students, having led the campaign to remove the "no politics" clause from the NUS constitution.
He qualified as a barrister and practised criminal law. From 1971 to 1974 Jack Straw was a member of the Inner London Education Authority and Deputy Leader from 1973 to 1974. He served as political adviser to Barbara Castle at the Department of Social Security from 1974 to 1976 and then to Peter Shore at the Department for the Environment to 1977. He then worked as a researcher for the Granada TV current affairs series, World in Action.
During his time as political adviser, Straw was asked by Castle to examine the social security file of Norman Scott, who had claimed that the Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe was behind an attempt to murder him. Castle had been asked by Harold Wilson to investigate Scott's file to see if it contained any evidence that he was involved in a security conspiracy against Thorpe. Straw informed Castle that when he went to examine Scott's file, he found it was missing. The journalist Barrie Penrose has alleged that Straw subsequently leaked details from the file to the media. Straw remains silent on that matter. He has denied allegations by Joe Haines, Wilson's press secretary, that Wilson asked for Scott's file to be viewed for party political purposes, in the hopes of gaining information that could be used to damage Thorpe if he attempted to form a coalition government with Edward Heath. By the time he was asked to view the file, Heath had ceased to be leader of the Conservative Party. At the time of the scandal, the general view, promoted in particular by Private Eye, was that Wilson was using his influence to help and protect Thorpe and certainly not to smear him. Thorpe was cleared of any involvement in the attempt on Scott's life.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Member of Parliament
for Blackburn 1979–present |
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| Political offices | ||
| President of the National
Union of Students 1969–1971 |
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| Shadow
Secretary of State for Environment 1992–1994 |
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| Shadow Home Secretary 1994–1997 |
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| Home Secretary 1997–2001 |
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| Foreign
Secretary 2001–2006 |
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| Leader
of the House of Commons 2006–2007 |
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| Lord Privy Seal 2006–2007 |
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| Lord Chancellor Justice Secretary 2007–present |
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| Order of precedence in England and Wales | ||
| Gentlemen Lord Chancellor |
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| Order of precedence in Scotland | ||
| Gentlemen Lord Chancellor |
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| Order of precedence in Northern Ireland | ||
| Gentlemen Lord Chancellor |
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