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Eric Pickles admits Communist past
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Ralphie |
| Last Edited | Ralphie Nov 28, 2009 07:54pm |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Daily Telegraph |
| News Date | Tuesday, November 24, 2009 01:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Eric Pickles, the chairman of the Conservative Party, has admitted an interest in Communism in his youth, studying the works of Leon Trotsky and Karl Marx.
He read the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital and even compiled a school project on Marx but was disillusioned by the USSR’s violent response to the Prague Spring, the liberal reforms introduced by Alexander Dubcek, the Czech leader.
The 57-year-old MP for Brentwood and Ongar said he was disappointed by the response of Britain’s then Labour government, under Harold Wilson, to Soviet aggression.
“I was 16 years old in 1968 when Dubcek’s Spring was crushed. I was very interested in Dubcek and thought it was the natural evolution of communism. So I felt a tremendous shock when the tanks rolled into Prague.
“I thought the British government was useless, in the way that only a 16-year-old can think the British government is useless. And I thought: ‘What’s the most outrageous thing I can do to protest? I know, I’ll join the Conservative party’.” |
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