Pickles reveals communist past
Comrade Pickles: A serious young man
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Monday, 23, Nov 2009 05:15
By Ian Dunt
Eric Pickles was an avid reader of Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky in his youth, he has revealed.
In a radio interview on Radio 4 this morning, the Tory chairman said communism was part of his upbringing, but that the USSR's violent crushing of the Prague uprising caused him to question the philosophy.
"I was a pretty serious young chap. For my 14th birthday I got Trotsky's 'History of the Russian Revolution' as a present — and I read the damn thing," he told interviewer Anne McElvoy.
"I was massively inclined that way. It was part of my upbringing."
The West Yorkshire pupil read the Communist Manifesto, and even the epic Das Kapital, and compiled a school project on Marxism before becoming disillusioned.
"I was 16 years old in 1968 when Dubcek's Spring was crushed," he continued.
"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'."
The USSR and members of the Warsaw Pact countries crushed the liberal reforms by Alexander Dubcek, the Czech leader, in 1968.