Rt Hon Jack Straw MP

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a politician. Brought up on an Essex Council estate, he won a scholarship to a local boarding school, went to Leeds University, and became President of the National Union of Students. Nearly twenty years ago, he entered Parliament as the MP for Blackburn, and after long years in opposition, he's now in government, where it's clear that his attitude to his job is deeply informed by his personal experiences: a single parent for a mother, a friend's suicide at school, a divorce, and, most publicly, his son's involvement with drugs. These are the things which help him know where he stands. I want to enable people to live their lives more securely, he says, with greater freedom. He is the Home Secretary, Jack Straw. You finally arrived then, Jack Straw, aged fifty, out of the wilderness to, you know, whether wittingly or unwittingly, perhaps the job that you are always heading towards. How has it changed your life?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP1:23

Um it's changed my lives in some ways quite profoundly, and in other ways not at all.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP1:29

Life's changed because I have to make loads and loads of decisions and I think one of the the things that's different about being Home Secretary from most other ministerial jobs is that you have to make decisions day by day, week by week, which affects people's liberty directly.

Presenter1:44

And you cover a huge range, actually.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP1:45

Huge range, but you have to decide whether to let this person out of prison, whether this person should be detained on the Prevention of Terrorism Act, whether this person should be detained in an immigration centre, this person should live in the country, that person excluded.

Presenter1:58

But do you feel a kind of calm about that having arrived, that that now you're actually doing something after eighteen years of if you'll forgive me not doing anything, because that's the nature of opposition? Or is there a kind of angst of this this is now it, I better deliver?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:09

No, this this is

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:12

No, no, I I feel very calm about it. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but uh

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:16

Somebody said to the other other day that I look younger.

Presenter2:19

But it's relentless. It's completely changed your life. You are busy every minute of the day. The phone never stops. You've got huge offices, an entourage.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:19

That was

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:21

Now you are busy every minute of the day. The phone never stops. You've got huge offices, an entourage. No. It's much calmer day by day than ever it was in opposition. The phone very, very rarely rings if you're the Home Secretary.

Presenter2:33

Why? Because you've got other people to answer.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:34

Because other people answer it. In opposition. It was...

Presenter2:37

Awful.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:38

The phone was ringing all the time.

Presenter2:38

Yeah.

Presenter2:39

So life is more ordered, and what you've said, or how it's been characterized, is that that you'd like the Home Office to become a kind of ministry of peace and quiet. That that that's what you want for us, is it? That we should be safe in our beds, safe in our parks. I mean, to sum up roughly where you're here, that's what you're after.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:52

Exactly where you're hearing that.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP2:54

Yes, that you create an environment in which people can get on and enjoy their own lives. Now, that's partly, if you like, a negative agenda of dealing with the things that disrupt people's lives in all sorts of ways, from crime and disorder through to racial and religious discrimination. There's also a positive agenda there, because people often forget that the Home Office has the major responsibility for our Constitution.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP3:21

And one of the things I'm proudest about is piloting through the House of Commons a human rights bill.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP3:27

It is establishing

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP3:28

For the first time in our democratic history,

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP3:32

And that the first thing one has to do is show responsibility and respect for others, and then you'll get back a few rights.

Presenter3:37

Now talking about showing responsibility, obviously at the personal level, one of the things you don't believe in is walking by on the other side because Jack the Jogger has nobbled a few muggers and burglars in his house four, I think, altogether.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP3:51

Yes, four. One got away because he ran faster than me. But I've got three citizens' arrests.

Presenter3:54

Okay.

Presenter3:57

You give chase and then you sit on him until the policeman comes.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:00

Yes, in fact, it it these have all happened by accident. Why are they always out? Uh

Presenter4:05

Yeah.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:05

Uh

Presenter4:05

Uh

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:05

Uh Or

Presenter4:05

Bab.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:05

Yeah. I don't know. I mean the first time it it was a burglar in Blackburn and I'd heard him actually breaking out of the what was then the Nalgo Club behind the constituency office. I went out hoping that he'd gone the other way, but in fact I collided with him and he tore off up the street and I tore after him. And then he stopped in a street appropriately called Nab Lane.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:28

And I thought, what on earth do I do now? No one's ever told me about this. So I grabbed him.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:31

A constituent I've been to interviewing came up wheezing. We took him off to the police station and the desk sergeant came up to and said, What do you want? and I said, Well, I've just arrested this man for for burglary.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:44

And the sergeant said to the chap,

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:47

Is that true? And the man said, Yes. So then the sergeant said, And I quote, Well, you're nicked then.

Presenter4:54

Tell me about your first record.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP4:56

Well, my first record is a piece of Monteverdi from Selva Moralia Spirituale. It's just a very beautiful

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP5:06

Piece of spiritual music.

Presenter6:07

Lesare Florissant, performing part of Montevede's Selve Morale Espirituale, directed by William Christie. I see, Jack Straw, that you list making puddings under Recreations in Who's Who. I presume that as the son of a single mother you were very domesticated as a kid.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP6:23

Yes, we were v very domesticated indeed actually. Uh I didn't by the way I b the kind of pudding I cook these days is a souffle, where I didn't ever know what a souffle was when I was a kid.

Presenter6:31

A politician's pudding, I think.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP6:32

It's your joke, full of whatever. Yeah, full of food, yeah, but it's very tasty.

Presenter6:35

And the

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP6:38

But the effect doesn't last very long.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP6:41

But

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP6:42

You know, there are good things and bad things about the kind of childhood I had. The good things are that you become self-reliant, you don't take things for granted, and also you just learn a lot of survival skills.

Presenter6:53

Hmm. What did you live at you lived on a council estate? Live on a council estate.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP6:56

We lived on a council estate. We lived uh in a council masonette. It w w wonderfully constructed. They had coal bunkers actually between the sitting room and the kitchen, which caused major problems when we first moved in because the the coalmen had to bring these sacks of coal.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP7:11

up the internal staircase, and so there were lines of of of coal on either side of the uh of the staircase. It always struck me that there was something really negligent about designing a

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP7:23

How do you think that's a good idea?

Presenter7:24

So you thought that then, did you?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP7:25

I d I did really, because it really was pretty insulting.

Presenter7:28

Yeah.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP7:28

To do that. There wasn't any need to put coal bunkers between the s the kitchen and the sitting room, unless you were saying to people, This is really second class housing.

Presenter7:34

And your mother was a nursery school teacher. Yeah.

Presenter7:38

But money was short.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP7:40

Money was short. We weren't in poverty, but money was very, very short.

Presenter7:43

Your father had gone. How old were you anyway?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP7:45

He went when I was ten and my mother then had to bring up five of us between the age of my youngest sister was three months and my elder sister was twelve.

Presenter7:53

You've often made the point, though, that you if your income was working class, you were culturally middle class. What do you mean when you say that?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:00

Well, my father worked for an insurance company. My mother was a teacher.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:05

So we were

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:06

I think

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:07

say some of the neighbours might have said, slightly stranded on this estate. We were the scholarship kids.

Presenter8:13

Did that create tensions?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:14

A little bit. A little bit. I can f you know, I can see it there. I we all went to the local primary school. But then I got a boarding scholarship off to a distant and what appeared to be a posh diary grant school.

Presenter8:24

Direct Grant

Presenter8:25

I mean, I'm I'm I'm sure you've come across the uh the the much repeated quote from a neighbor of yours at the time that d who characterizes you as being a a toffy nosed boy who reprimanded the ice cream man for sounding his chimes after seven in the evening.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:37

Well, there was a reason for reprimanding the ice cream man for signing his chime very late after seven o'clock, and that was when he he was he was waking up my

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:43

Baby sister.

Presenter8:44

So you took action.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP8:46

So I went and yeah, I I took action. I think people should d do these things. They should engage in the kind of uh environment in which they live. I mean the other experience uh that I had, we had, uh, was of some extremely difficult neighbours. And in the end my mother very courageously uh took them to court and

Presenter9:04

Well they'd assaulted her or something. Yes.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP9:06

Yes. Well, there was a neighbour dispute uh and it culminated, as I recall, in an assault. It also culminated in a physical assault. It culminated in this man uh coming round and I remember being very frightened standing at the top of the stairs.

Presenter9:16

Physical assault.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP9:23

And thinking, what h will happen next? I mean, there was no no, I was the oldest male in the house when I was fourteen.

Speaker 49:26

Mm

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP9:30

And it's

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP9:31

A set of events which has stayed in the memory very powerfully. And when I've had people in the last ten years into my constituency surgery talking about neighbourhood disorder, one family may be dominating the neighbourhood, making everybody's life a misery, I immediately empathise and understand how they fix it.

Speaker 29:34

Mm.

Presenter9:46

And you say do something about it yourself.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP9:48

Well, no, you could you see it's my mother had skills. I mean, she really does have skills, which are not available to everybody. And it also has to be said that she came from a large family, five brothers living in the area, so that gave her a sense of security. Not always possible for people to do something for themselves. Often they're too frightened. And that's why I've been determined to make use of the power that Government gives us to bring forward major changes, as I'm doing in the Crime and Disorder Bill, to give decent people in these areas a chance.

Presenter10:20

Tell me about record number two.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP10:22

Well, record number two is Rolling Stones, Get Off of My Cloud.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP10:27

get off my cloud whenever I hear it, makes me chuckle, uh and takes me straight back to an evening I only partly remember uh at a hop at a s student union in Aberdeen uh and I only partly remember it because I was really very, very drunk, and I then remember standing in the middle of one of those

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP10:45

Rather grim streets, granite streets in Aberdeen, right in the middle of the road. I don't know where the cars were, thinking, where have I come from and where am I going next?

Speaker 410:58

It feels so busy after me out of my way.

Speaker 411:06

Hey, man, you speak out of my

Speaker 411:11

Hey, keep it up for my

Speaker 411:14

Hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm a lot of people.

Presenter11:24

The stones and get off of my cloud and memories of a drunken evening in Aberdeen. Time was when home secretaries wouldn't dream of admitting such things, of course.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP11:30

Well, I think of my predecessors. I think that probably most of them have been drunk at least once in their life. I think they might have drunk. We all have a past. I certainly do.

Presenter11:35

I think they might have to be.

Presenter11:38

Let's talk more about yours. Your your political pedigree is impeccable, isn't it? The boy activist tramping the streets, delivering the leaflets come rain and snow, listening to tales of social injustice at your grandfather's knee. That's that's about it, isn't it?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP11:52

Yes, and he was a very influential figure, although he died when I was nine, but his memory lives on. My grandfather's family had been involved in the great battle in the last century to save Epping Forest from enclosure by the Lords in the Manor. And it really was a staggering story because the common people in that area had rights of lopping and rights of grazing, and that gave them an independence which agricultural labourers anywhere else really didn't have. I think it's one of the reasons why Essex people have a certain, certainly that area, have a certain sort of Schutzpur, courage and

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP12:26

an ability to put their fingers up at other, which is I find coming from that area rather attractive.

Presenter12:29

I find

Presenter12:32

Now, that grandfather you mentioned, you say, died when uh you were nine. Your father left the family when you were eleven. How many years before you saw him again, your father?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP12:38

Dude.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP12:42

10.

Presenter12:43

How did it affect you, his going?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP12:46

Well

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP12:48

There was no counselling.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP12:50

In those days.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP12:52

You just had to get on with it. But of course it does affect you, things like that. And looking back on it, it obviously affected me a great deal, like any family breakdown.

Presenter13:00

Your brother Ed, who was two years younger, he is two years younger than you, he said that he sort of put him in a box marked doesn't exist. Yes, what's wrong with you?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP13:07

Yes, that's what you had to do. What else are you supposed to do?

Presenter13:10

So you pretend he was dead, really?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP13:12

Well, I didn't pretend anything really, except that he wasn't there, and no one had really said to me, How do you cope with the absence of a father?

Presenter13:16

Yeah.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP13:22

So I got on with it, I suppose. Yeah. Uh and that's a good thing to say. So do my brothers and sisters.

Speaker 413:22

Uh

Speaker 413:24

And now

Speaker 413:25

Oh, I see.

Presenter13:26

You do.

Presenter13:31

Now you and your brother, who's chairman of the trustees of RELATE, the marriage guidance organization, talk a lot about the need for parenting, and obviously it's born as we're hearing from all of this background. But why do you think we need parenting lessons, which is what you said?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP13:38

Yeah.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP13:39

Yeah.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP13:46

The idea of parenting order.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP13:50

which is now in the Crime and Disorder Bill, came from very detailed conversation which I had with the mother of a young offender on a run-down council estate whose son at that stage was in Young Offenders Institute locked up. And we talked she'd been a single parent we talked about the problems she'd had. And she said to me, Mr Story, you know, I can see that things went wrong, but if only someone had said to me, look,

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP14:13

Why don't you talk to your son in this way? Why don't you try and, as it were, negotiate? And I said to her, Well, what about if the court had said we're going to insist that you go for counselling? She said, That would have been terrific. And I think if I'd had it, my son would now not be locked up.

Presenter14:25

G

Presenter14:30

Make it number three.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP14:32

Well record number three is part of the Messiah. It's Comfort Ye. I've chosen this because when I look back on my school days what I remember with greatest affection is the music. I was in the school choir so I ended up in chapel every day of the week for seven years. But we also used to sing in the Choral Society which was a town choral society and its attractions was the music but also with the fact you could see girls as well. And so I had a lot of fun.

Speaker 415:48

But he

Speaker 415:50

Bye, people.

Presenter16:02

Philip Langridge, singing Comfort Ye from Part One of Handel's Messiah with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles MacKerris. One other story from your youth, Jack Straw, which I think has influenced the politician you are today, um and that was the the boy at your school who committed suicide. Now, how did that happen?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP16:20

Yes, it was a terrible story. It was a boy of about fifteen and one morning one of the people in the boarding house had got up to go downstairs to the lavatory, smelt gas in those days of course it was town gas and had discovered uh the body of this boy uh lying in my study. I think that was a pure coincidence.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP16:42

Anyway, he had committed suicide and it gradually came out that he was very concerned indeed that he might be homosexual and that this would be a terrible shame on him and his family. And in those days, of course, homosexuality was a criminal offence.

Presenter16:58

How did it become?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP16:59

Well, it left me with some very clear conclusions about how you treated people's sexuality, that you don't treat people's different sexual preferences and sexuality as a crime, nor do you treat it as an illness, but you respect the fact that different people are going to develop in different ways and that amongst adults they should be able to express themselves themselves and their affection as they would wish to do so.

Presenter17:29

So one can see how much that incident in informed your view, and you've always been in favor of lowering the age of consent. What do you say to those who say that having now lowered it to sixteen,

Presenter17:42

that this is a move which simply speeds society on towards what the gay lobby is asking for, which is all rights, legalization of gay marriage.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP17:51

I don't believe that for a second. It never follows that one thing automatically leads to another. What you have to do in life is to make a judgment about whether the particular thing you're presented with is justified or not.

Presenter18:01

Yes, but people believe this is all the thin end of a wedge.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP18:03

Well, I know they do, I know, but one of the most I think hopeless arguments is that things are the thin end of the wedge, that you shouldn't do something today which is right, for fear that you might be forced to do something else tomorrow, which is also right.

Presenter18:12

But it's being proved, isn't it? That that that once you legalized um homosexual activity at the age of twenty one and now it becomes the age of sixteen, then next you can have gay marriage.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP18:18

Yeah.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP18:19

No, I don't accept that. Uh and what's more, I don't believe there's any more or less uh homosexuality today than there was thirty or forty years ago. What there is, however, is a good deal more happiness amongst people who are homosexual, because they're not branded wholly unjustifiably as criminals.

Presenter18:37

More music.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP18:38

Well, my fourth record is California Dreaming.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP18:42

This is a great, very cheerful record which transports me right back to the months in nineteen sixty seven when I was trying desperately to catch up on all the work which I had missed because I was enjoying myself too much at university in the harrowed weeks leading up to my finals.

Speaker 419:03

Gonna stay.

Presenter19:31

The Mammas and the Papas and California Dreaming. Um at Leeds uh you read law and then became President of the National Union of Students in your kippitai and buddy holly glasses. Um but you were pretty radical on the whole, except that you did campaign against cannabis, didn't you?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP19:48

Yes, it wasn't much of a campaign, by the way, because what people don't understand is that it wasn't really an issue in those days.

Presenter19:54

L let's whip on through your life. Because you were called to the bar and eventually to the aid of Barbara Castle. You became her special adviser in in nineteen seventy four. She's always quoted as saying that she employed you for your guile and low cunning. I always thought she had plenty of her own, really, but how highly developed is yours?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP20:12

Well, she said that when she was asked what the difference between myself and a senior policy advisor, Brian Abel Smith was, and she replied, well, she'd employed Brian Abel Smith for his brains and me for my guile and low cunning. You need a bit of both in politics, but you've obviously got to understand people's base motives and work out ways of dealing with that. On the other hand, I do think you have to have a clear set of political principles and an ideology, if you like, if you're going to get through politics.

Presenter20:41

You went into the House eventually in 1979 in her old seat, Barbara Castle's old seat, MP for Blackburn, and began those eighteen years of opposition.

Presenter20:50

Possibly your biggest moment in the House of Commons during that time turned out to be your moment of greatest failure when you failed to deliver Michael Howard's head on a plate in the autumn of 95 over the prisons issue. I'm sure you don't want to re-rehearse all of that, and neither do I. But it's been said that one of your problems on that occasion, and one of your problems in the House, is that you suffer from tinnitus. Now, how bad is it, and how does it feel?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP21:14

Well, what happened? I mean, I I make no excuses for my uh performance there, and yes, I almost delivered my own head on a plate. Uh but anyway, what happened was that that in the

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP21:22

Whitson of 1981, I had a cold and over the weekend I've discovered I'd lost my hearing altogether. It took quite some time for it to be properly diagnosed, but the short story is that I have no hearing whatever in my right ear and in place of that I've got this very, very loud continuous noise called tinnitus. And it is very distracting, especially where there's a lot of noise. And of course there's a lot of noise in the House of Commons. You can't tell where the noise is coming from. And that does mean that there's a split second delay if I'm dealing with interventions in a noisy house. And that in turn can mean that if you're not careful, you can lose the house.

Presenter22:00

More music.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP22:01

Well, my fifth record is Bob Marley and the Wailers, and it's No Woman, No Cry. This is a sad record, but it reminds me of quite a sad time in my life when uh my first marriage broke up and that was not a good time. But it's uh in a sense does a lot for me, this record.

Speaker 422:27

No, no matter why.

Speaker 422:34

No woman, no crowd.

Speaker 422:39

No, oh man, no.

Speaker 422:44

Say

Speaker 422:46

That I remember when we used to sing.

Presenter22:50

Bob Marley and the Wailers live at the Lyceum with No Woman, No Cry. If that debate with Michael Howard was the low point of your years in opposition uh the lowest point of the last fourteen months in office must have been the moment when you discovered that your son William was involved with drugs. How did you discover it?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:07

Well, I literally discovered it on the way back from uh a Blackburn Rovers match, and we were on the way to Preston station to pick up a a train from there. And I had a call message to telephone the editor of the Daily Mirror, which I did, and I was then given the details of

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:24

What they had discovered.

Presenter23:25

And your son William was in the car with you?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:27

He was in the car with me. I couldn't talk to him at that moment because my daughter was there and also others were.

Presenter23:32

So you didn't say anything? You just put the phone down and you I put the phone down.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:34

I put the phone down, yeah. Um what did you think? Well, I thought I got a problem here.

Presenter23:37

What did you sing?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:40

Like you do.

Presenter23:41

So, how long was it between receiving the call and your speaking to your son about what was going on?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:46

Only about fifteen minutes.

Presenter23:47

And where were you when you did that then?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:49

At the far end, the south end of platform four on Preston railway station.

Presenter23:54

Was he I'm sure he was incredibly miserable?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP23:56

Oh, he went to the mouth. It was a terrible time. I mean, it's an awful thing to happen. I mean, you know, he shouldn't have done it, it was wrong.

Presenter24:02

And he knew he'd landed you in it in a very large

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP24:02

And he knew he'd

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP24:04

Oh, no, he did know that, and of course he was very worried about that, although I kept saying, Look look, you know, in a sense, I have landed you in this, William, because were it not for the fact that you're the son of the Home Secretary, this would be at worst just an ordinary police matter which would be dealt with in the ordinary way.

Presenter24:21

And the press wouldn't have been involved to that extent. He was set up.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP24:23

He was set up, wasn't he? Yes, he was set up. Now I say that doesn't excuse what he did, which was both wrong and also foolish. But of course it raised other issues.

Presenter24:27

Yeah.

Presenter24:33

But had you or your wife any idea before that moment that that your son was was in pubs underage mixing with people who did drugs?

Presenter24:42

Or what did you feel in that moment exposed as being incredibly negligent as parents?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP24:47

You feel a whole range of emotions. We didn't know he was taking drugs, not at all, nor that he was involved in the sale of drugs in that way. There's certainly not. I suppose, you know, what you do in that situation, you rework everything. But then, God Almighty, I was 17 once. And to some extent, when you're sixteen or seventeen, you have to make your own mistakes, but you have to have some guidance. But I was just very, very sorry for him that this had happened, as well as obviously concerned that he'd done something wrong. And I thought we had to deal with it very swiftly and firmly.

Presenter25:24

And you did, and you it was almost Dickensian, really, the picture we got of your taking him by the ear and leading him to the police station.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP25:29

No, it wasn't like that, but I talked to him. I said, Look, William.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP25:33

There is only one thing to do in this situation, and you and I have got to go to the police station and you've got to say what happened. And I'm sorry, old son, but you've got to take it on the chin after that.

Presenter25:46

After that. But what about you? Because I mean, obviously, it was total humiliation. You, the Home Secretary responsible for these kinds of laws, you've been banging on about being a good parent and so on. All of a sudden this happens. Did you ever consider resigning?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP25:55

In the

Speaker 425:55

Uh

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP25:55

And

Presenter26:00

Yeah.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP26:00

No, I didn't. And I didn't because I didn't think that the charge of hypocrisy

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP26:06

could be made against me. Although I have been banging on about parenting I mean, I've been banging on as much about my own parenting as about anybody else's. I've never ever suggested that I know the answers. I mean indeed the whole reason why I've come to the issue of parenting is precisely because I don't know the answers.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP26:20

Of course I realised that those who'd been calling for the legalization of cannabis would have a field day.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP26:24

For sure. But I'd not said that uh cannabis should be legalized. I'd not said that young men aged seventeen should be allowed to sell or buy even small quantities of drugs in pubs or anywhere else. And it seemed to me that I was doing what I would expect any parent to do in that situation.

Presenter26:44

Next piece of media.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP26:45

Well, my sixth record is a record which has been chosen jointly by my two children, by my son William and by my daughter Charlotte.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP26:55

I thought about going on this desert island, and this will remind me of.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP27:01

Their music, coming through the walls, of my occasional pleas for could we have a record mark Silence had to be put on, but it's the verve and history.

Speaker 427:11

Every child and every eye and every sky above my head I hope that I know So come when the bed because it's you and me with mystery There ain't nothing left to say When I will get you alone

Presenter27:38

The Verve and history. In the past, Jack Straw, the view of the left was that you intervened in the economy and left the social agenda to itself. But you and New Labour seem to be reversing that position. Market forces are healthy. Social forces are not, as we've discussed. There are things that you want to do. You want to be a social interventionist. Why do you think that society has gone so wrong in the second half of the twentieth century when we are more affluent, we are more comfortable, we are more equal than we've ever been? So why are we in this mess?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP28:08

There are some things which have gone right and there are far greater opportunities, for example, for women. Our attitude to race is changing for the better, still a long way to go. People in work, in good jobs, have in many ways never had it so good. But there is this big change that's happened, and we can't stop the world and get off from it. We've got to deal with it. The big change is in the nature of work, that people's jobs are intrinsically less secure. They're much more likely to have to be retrained in the course of their life or to move away. And what this means is that in the past the economic structures, big factories providing jobs, particularly for a lot of underskilled men, underpinned and reinforced social stability. These days the economic structures, if you just leave them to themselves, will undermine social stability. And there is no doubt, if we want to identify one problem, it's the problem with boys. It's the problem particularly with underskilled.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP29:10

Undereducated young men who, in the past, there was a natural transition between adolescence and adulthood, and now there isn't.

Presenter29:12

Now we have

Presenter29:17

Yes, and you're saying that they can't pass from adolescence into adulthood via going down the pit like their dad did or whatever. I I just wonder if that can be the total answer, or whether there isn't something in the way that we've brought up. I mean, are we guilty of breeding a generation of young people who enjoy all of the affluence that the second half of the twentieth century has provided, but don't want to accept any of the responsibilities for it for some reason? You know, people used to say what we need is another war, you know, to make them hungry.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP29:42

Blunt.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP29:45

Yes, well I d I don't buy into your the word guilt. Are we guilty? I think that uh however, as a society we need to recognize that there is far too much Me Tooism, far too much of people seeing uh rights as things that they just grab without understanding that they have responsibilities and even if they are unemployed

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP30:08

They've got a responsibility to themselves, to their family, to the people who are providing them with cash to do their best to get back to work.

Presenter30:16

How do you inculcate that sense of responsibility?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP30:18

Sense of responsibility. You do it partly by example, you do it actually by changing the rules. We've done that with the Welfare to Work Programme. We are saying to young men and now to older unemployed,

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP30:30

Dist sitting on the dole is not an option.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP30:32

We're not going to let you do this. We've got to get away from this idea that people have a right to benefits without giving something back.

Presenter30:43

Record number seven.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP30:44

Reckon number seven uh is

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP30:47

from Tellermann's Trumpet Concerto in D. This is also quite a melancholy piece. I think if I'm on that desert island alone, every so often I'll need to have a good cry, and this would bring it on. But it's a wonderful piece of music.

Presenter31:57

Hawking Hardenberger playing the adagio from Telemann's trumpet concerto in D with the Academy of St. Martin in the fields conducted by Iona Brown.

Presenter32:05

Well, as a as a as a cook, as a runner, as a reader, as a man of low cunning, I suspect you'll manage quite well on this desert island, really, won't you?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP32:13

I think I'll be all right actually. I'm also uh

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP32:16

Not bad at doy itself. I go camping a lot. It's the real hair shirt, serious camping, like my politics. Uh you know, two matches, uh no paper, you have to use uh silver birch bark. So I'd be okay.

Presenter32:29

And people apart, of course you'd miss them. What what thing, what I don't know, what in your life would you miss most? You'd miss power, I suppose. Now you've got it.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP32:37

Don't know whether I'd miss power. People say to me, you know, don't you f get up and feel powerful?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP32:43

And I understand what they're saying. Actually, I feel responsible. Of course, it's fun and it's challenging and you're on a pedestal, all that stuff. But it is a responsibility. But I'd miss that. Yeah, for sure. I'd miss the job. Yeah, because it's.

Presenter32:54

Would you miss all those people who who mock you for all the things you've you've just been saying, this s sort of respectable suburbanite attitude, this kind of tough on self-indulgence kind of attitude?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP33:04

No, I mean it's a free country, um um you know, th and they're entitled to their point of view. On the whole I found that people who go in for that much mocking of me actually don't understand exactly who I am, and I suggest that I have got a sense of humour and I enjoy myself and I feel

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP33:20

quite comfortable in myself.

Presenter33:22

Tell me about your last record.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP33:24

Uh my last record is from Cozy Fantuti, where the uh two women who believe that their two lovers have gone off uh on a military adventure are standing on the quay wishing them the best of luck, with of course the very tricky Don Alfonso singing along with them.

Speaker 433:54

Oh free.

Speaker 433:57

Trust me, O Lord.

Speaker 434:23

I can't see.

Speaker 434:28

So

Speaker 434:39

Well sweet.

Presenter34:44

Lella Kubali as Fiorda Ligi, Ticilia Bartoli as Dora Bella, and John Tomlinson as Don Alfonso, singing Suave Si Ilvento for Mozart's Cousi Fantute, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP35:00

I think it would be the last one.

Presenter35:01

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP35:04

Yeah. My family's told me this is a boring choice. However, I'm sticking to it. I read quite a lot of military history, and one of the best is On the Franco-Prussian War by the other, by the military historian, Michael Howard. It's a wonderful book, which really told me more about why we'd had two world wars in this century than any other work I'd read.

Presenter35:26

And your luxury.

Rt Hon Jack Straw MP35:27

Well the luxury I'm going to have a saxophone. I think it would be quite a good triumph for an Essex lad like me to learn to play the saxophone tolerably by the time I'm rescued from this desert island, or get on my escape raft and rescue myself.

Presenter35:41

Jackstraw, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 235:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.