Member of Parliament
Straw was selected to stand for Parliament in Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1977, after Barbara Castle (the incumbent) decided not to seek re-election. He won the seat in 1979 and has held it since, also becoming honorary president of Blackburn Rovers. In the 1980s, he was an opposition spokesman on Treasury and economic affairs from 1980 to 1983, housing and local government from 1983 until promotion to the Shadow Cabinet in 1987.
Read more about this topic: Jack Straw
Famous quotes containing the words member of, member and/or parliament:
“There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member of the human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to “dress up like daddy.””
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“Even in harmonious families there is this double life: the group life, which is the one we can observe in our neighbour’s household, and, underneath, another—secret and passionate and intense—which is the real life that stamps the faces and gives character to the voices of our friends. Always in his mind each member of these social units is escaping, running away, trying to break the net which circumstances and his own affections have woven about him.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“Undershaft: Alcohol is a very necessary article. It heals the sick—Barbara: It does nothing of the sort. Undershaft: Well, it assists the doctor: that is perhaps a less questionable way of putting it. It makes life bearable to millions of people who could not endure their existence if they were quite sober. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)