Yes, Straw Jr, in a heroic bid to be interesting, was seduced by an attractive Daily Mirror Journalist into supplying a small piece of cannabis resin (another UK barbarity - no raw grass). But Straw pere did the right thing and handed the youngster over to the police!
One of Straw's Home Office-good parenting proposals is that parents should bear the responsibility for their children's crimes, though no- one has yet demanded that he spend all day in bed, craving sweets and cakes.
Deeply hidden under his dull exterior is a reputation for scuppering a plan to domesticating the National Union of Students, by having them elect representatives to the College Governing bodies (a piece of ultra- leftism that wins my admiration) and a series of trips to the north Africa in the sixties: to what end? we do not know.
None of this ought to affect his decision on Pinochet, because whatever you or he think about it, he is insisting that it is purely a legal question, in characteristically boring mode.
None of this peripheral detail of course, has any bearing on the main argument. -- Jim heartfield