Jack Straw

Jack Straw (1946- ), British Labour Party politician, Secretary of State for the Home Office (1997-2001), Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (2001-2006), Leader of the House of Commons (2006-2007), and Secretary of State for Justice and Lord Chancellor since 2007, in the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He was born in Buckhurst Hill, Essex, and was educated at Brentwood School and the University of Leeds, where he studied law. He was elected president of the university’s students’ union in 1967, and in 1969 he was elected president of the National Union of Students, establishing the union as a major political force on campuses around the country. In 1972 he was called to the bar and practised as a barrister, before becoming a special adviser to Barbara Castle in 1974, then secretary of state for social services in the government of Harold Wilson. At the 1979 general election Straw succeeded Castle as MP for Blackburn.

A supporter of Neil Kinnock in his fight against the militant left wing of the Labour Party, Straw entered the Shadow Cabinet in 1987. Following the 1992 general election defeat, he published a pamphlet, Policy and Ideology (1993), advocating the abolition of Clause IV of the Labour Party constitution, which supported nationalization. After the death of John Smith, Straw managed Blair’s leadership campaign.

Following the Labour Party’s landslide election victory in 1997, Straw was appointed home secretary. On taking office, one of his first actions was to announce an inquiry into the police investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence; the final report by Lord Macpherson in 1999 resulted in wide-ranging changes in the handling of all cases by the police. Following the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in the United Kingdom in 1998, Straw supported proceedings to begin his extradition, but allowed the general’s return to Chile on humanitarian grounds in 2000.

After the 2001 general election, Straw was appointed foreign secretary. In July that year he agreed to restart the Brussels Process with Spain over the negotiation of a deal for joint-sovereignty over Gibraltar, despite the opposition of the islanders. Straw later stated that the status of Gibraltar would not be changed without the consent of its inhabitants. He also supported the military intervention in Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11. In February 2002 a Green Paper was published by the Foreign Office that proposed systems of licensing or regulation for private military companies offering military services abroad. This followed the scandal that had beset Straw’s predecessor Robin Cook when it had emerged that Britain had sold arms to Sierra Leone in breach of sanctions. In January 2003, in an attempt to revitalize the Middle East peace process as the momentum for a US-led invasion of Iraq grew, Straw hosted the first of a proposed series of conferences on reform of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA); Israel refused permission for any Palestinians to travel to London and so communications were established via video link.

Much of Straw’s tenure at the Foreign Office was dominated by the volatile situation in Iraq, where British forces remained stationed after the deposition of Saddam Hussein. The success of the Islamist party Hamas in elections in the PNA in January 2006 presented further obstacles to securing a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine—Straw endorsed the European Union policy that it would suspend financial aid to the PNA while Hamas continued to support violence against Israelis. Although he had supported the US-led invasion of Iraq, Straw publicly declared that he regarded military action against Iran as “inconceivable”, even as the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad aggressively pursued the development of nuclear technology (denying any intention to develop nuclear weapons capability). In May 2006 Straw was unexpectedly moved from the Foreign Office to take over as leader of the House of Commons, with responsibility for overseeing reform of the House of Lords (see United Kingdom Parliament).

After Tony Blair announced that he would resign from office in June 2007, Straw was taken on by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to manage his campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party. In the event, Brown was the only candidate. In June, Straw was appointed justice secretary and Lord Chancellor, leading a new department created out of the Home Office. It was expected that in this role he would continue to have responsibility for carrying through the restructuring of the House of Lords.