John Whitaker Straw was born on 3 August 1946 and is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
68 Facts About Jack Straw
2.
Jack Straw held two of the traditional Great Offices of State, as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair.
3.
Jack Straw was a Member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015.
4.
Jack Straw was born in Essex and educated at Oaklands School, where his mother worked as a teacher, and later at Brentwood School.
5.
Jack Straw studied Law at the University of Leeds before having a career as a barrister.
6.
Jack Straw served as an adviser to cabinet minister Barbara Castle and was selected to succeed her as MP for the Blackburn constituency when she stood down at the 1979 United Kingdom general election.
7.
Jack Straw is one of only three individuals to have served in Cabinet continuously during the Labour governments from 1997 to 2010, the others being Brown and Alistair Darling.
8.
Jack Straw was educated at the school at which his mother taught, Oaklands, and when she left there, at Staples Road Primary School, Loughton, then Brentwood School and the University of Leeds.
9.
Jack Straw was alleged by the Foreign Office to have disrupted a student trip to Chile to build a youth centre.
10.
Jack Straw was then elected president of the Leeds University Union, during which time he reluctantly supported a sit-in lasting four days in June 1968.
11.
Jack Straw is a member of The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple and remains active in lecturing to fellow members and students.
12.
Between 1971 and 1974, Jack Straw was a member of the Inner London Education Authority, and Deputy Leader from 1973 to 1974.
13.
Jack Straw served as a political adviser to Barbara Castle at the Department of Social Security from 1974 to 1976, and as an adviser to Peter Shore at the Department for the Environment from 1976 to 1977.
14.
From 1977 to 1979, Jack Straw worked as a researcher for the Granada TV series World in Action.
15.
Jack Straw stood unsuccessfully as the Labour parliamentary candidate for the safe Conservative Tonbridge and Malling constituency in the February 1974 election.
16.
Jack Straw won the seat at the 1979 general election.
17.
When Tony Blair became leader after Smith's death, he chose Jack Straw to succeed him as Shadow Home Secretary.
18.
Jack Straw garnered particular attention for comments condemning "aggressive beggars, winos and squeegee merchants" and calling for a curfew on children.
19.
In June 1997, Jack Straw appointed Lord Justice Stuart-Smith to conduct a review of the need for a new public inquiry into the Hillsborough disaster.
20.
Jack Straw indicated to the judge at the outset that in the view of his officials "there was not sufficient evidence to justify a new inquiry".
21.
Jack Straw apologised in both 2012 and 2016 for the failures of his review.
22.
On 31 July 1997, Jack Straw ordered a public inquiry, to be conducted by Sir William Macpherson and officially titled "The Inquiry into the Matters Arising from the Death of Stephen Lawrence".
23.
Jack Straw commented in 2012 that ordering the inquiry was "the single most important decision I made as Home Secretary".
24.
Jack Straw later apologised to the House of Commons for his misleading comments, but the d'Hondt formula stayed in place.
25.
In 1998, Jack Straw declined to pardon the Pendle Witches, hanged in 1612 for committing murder by witchcraft.
26.
In March 2000, Jack Straw was responsible for allowing former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to return to Chile.
27.
Pinochet was placed under house arrest in Britain while appealing the legal authority of the Spanish and British courts to try him, but Jack Straw eventually ordered his release on medical grounds before a trial could begin, and Pinochet returned to Chile.
28.
Jack Straw was appointed Foreign Secretary in 2001 to succeed Robin Cook.
29.
Jack Straw was initially seen as taking a back seat to Tony Blair in Her Majesty's Government's prosecution of the "war against terrorism".
30.
Later on, British officials and Jack Straw were forced to apologise to The Observer after categorically denying they had prior knowledge of the coup plot.
31.
Jack Straw was re-elected, and following his victory called MPAC an "egregious group", and criticised their tactics during the election.
32.
At the 2005 Labour Conference, the then Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was heckled by Walter Wolfgang, a German Jew who had suffered persecution under the Nazis, and a prominent Labour Party member.
33.
At a point when Jack Straw claimed his support for the invasion of Iraq was solely for the purpose of supporting the Iraqi government, 82-year-old Wolfgang was heard to shout "Nonsense", and was forcibly removed from the auditorium by several bouncers.
34.
On 13 October 2005, Jack Straw took questions from a public panel of individuals in a BBC Newsnight television special on the subject of Iraq, addressing widespread public concerns about the exit strategy for British troops, the Iraqi insurgency and, inevitably, the moral legitimacy of the war.
35.
On several occasions Jack Straw reiterated his position that the decision to invade was in his opinion the right thing to do, but said he did not 'know' for certain that this was the case.
36.
In February 2006, Jack Straw attracted publicity after he condemned the publication of cartoons picturing Mohammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten.
37.
Jack Straw warned that Israel's military action "could further destabilise the already fragile Lebanese nation", while noting that "Israel has clear rights to defend itself proportionately".
38.
Jack Straw gave evidence to the Iraq Inquiry on 21 January 2010, making him the second member of Tony Blair's cabinet to do so.
39.
Jack Straw told the inquiry that the decision to go to war in Iraq had "haunted him" and that it was the "most difficult decision" of his life.
40.
Jack Straw said that he could have stopped the invasion, had he wanted to.
41.
In October 2012, The Guardian reported on the filing of court papers, which alleged that MI6 alerted Muammar Gaddafi's intelligence services to the whereabouts of dissidents, co-operated in their rendition, sent officers and detailed questions to assist in their interrogation, and that Jack Straw attempted to conceal this from MPs.
42.
Jack Straw had apparently requested a break from high ministerial office after serving in two of the four great departments of state for nearly ten years.
43.
On 25 March 2007, Jack Straw announced he was to run Gordon Brown's campaign for the Labour leadership.
44.
Jack Straw claimed that no women had ever chosen to wear a full veil after this request.
45.
Jack Straw's comments kicked off a wide-ranging and sometimes harshly worded debate within British politics and the media; Jack Straw was supported by some establishment figures and castigated by others, including Muslim groups.
46.
Jack Straw apologised for these comments regarding the veil on 26 April 2010 at a private hustings organised by Engage in the buildup to the 2010 United Kingdom general election.
47.
Jack Straw was appointed Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and Secretary of State for Justice on the first full day of Gordon Brown's ministry, 28 June 2007.
48.
Jack Straw was the first Lord Chancellor since the sixteenth century to serve in the role whilst a member of the House of Commons.
49.
Jack Straw's appointment meant that he continued to be a major figure in the Labour Government.
50.
In February 2009, Jack Straw used his authority as Secretary of State for Justice to veto publication of government documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act: in particular, those pertaining to early government meetings held in the run-up to the Iraq war in 2003.
51.
Jack Straw represented the government on a controversial edition of Question Time on 22 October 2009, against British National Party leader Nick Griffin on his first ever appearance.
52.
Andrew Thorpe-Apps, writing in the Backbencher, states that Jack Straw knew he would be defeated by Gordon Brown in a leadership contest as Brown was 'consumed by this one ambition'.
53.
Jack Straw said he had acted in good faith and had repaid the erroneous claims once he was aware that MPs' expenses were to be made public.
54.
Jack Straw has since described Gordon Brown's leadership as a "tragedy".
55.
In December 2010, ahead of the UK Alternative Vote Referendum 2011, Jack Straw was a signatory to a letter to The Guardian arguing in favour of the alternative vote.
56.
In January 2011, Jack Straw provoked controversy with comments made on Newsnight about Pakistani men.
57.
In late 2011, Jack Straw was appointed to the role of visiting professor to University College London School of Public Policy.
58.
Jack Straw later argued for the abolition of the European Parliament.
59.
On 25 October 2013, Jack Straw announced that he would stand down as an MP at the next election.
60.
In 2013, at a round-table event of the Global Diplomatic Forum at the UK's House of Commons, Jack Straw said, according to Einat Wilf, a former member of Israel's Knesset who was one of the other panelists, that among the main obstacles to peace in the Middle East was the amount of money available to Jewish organizations and AIPAC in the US, which was used to control US policy in the region.
61.
Jack Straw pointed out that Wilf did not claim that he had embarked on an antisemitic diatribe, as had been claimed in many of the media reports.
62.
Jack Straw wrote a statement to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which was described as follows:.
63.
In February 2015, Jack Straw was secretly recorded by journalists from The Daily Telegraph and Channel 4 News, who posed as representatives of a fictitious Chinese company that wanted to set up an advisory council.
64.
Jack Straw voluntarily withdrew from the Parliamentary Labour Party in February 2015 due to allegations from Channel 4 and The Daily Telegraph.
65.
Jack Straw denied any wrongdoing or any breach of the parliamentary rules and voluntarily referred himself to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards and withdrew from the Parliamentary Labour Party pending the Commissioner's inquiry.
66.
Jack Straw told the BBC, "[I have] acted with complete probity and integrity throughout my parliamentary career".
67.
Jack Straw was exonerated by the Commissioner in September 2015 after a detailed investigation.
68.
In 2006, Jack Straw's wife joined the board of the country's largest airports operator BAA, shortly before it was taken over by the Spanish firm Ferrovial.