EPPING FOREST: MP Laing follows Pickles in revealing radical youth (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

EPPING FOREST: MP Laing follows Pickles in revealing radical youth

4:10pm Monday 23rd November 2009

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(4)

EPPING Forest MP Eleanor Laing has admitted she quit the Conservative Party in her youth because sections of it were "too right wing".

The MP, who has been the Tory representative for the district for the past 12 years, made the comments when quizzed by the Guardian following the revelation that Ongar MP and Conservative Party chairman Eric Pickles was a communist sympathiser in his younger days.

Mr Pickles made the shock admission during the recording for a BBC Radio Four programme, in which he admitted being a past fan of Karl Marx and Trotsky.

Mrs Laing admitted that she too had read the Communist Manifesto and "parts" of Marx's epic analysis of capitalist economy Das Kapital in her youth, but said she had only done so for political research.

She said: “I have never even flirted with any other political party.

“When I was at university being Conservative was quite rebellious, and I was a bit of an outcast because of it.

“However I did resign from the Conservatives while I was at university because the Federation of Conservative Students were too right wing for me.

"I won an election for student union president as an independent.”

The federation attracted criticism in the 1970s and 1980s over alleged links to the National Front. It was finally disbanded in 1986.

Mrs Laing said Mr Pickles's revelation did not surprise her.

She said: “Mr Pickles is a well-rounded politician and I've have expected him to consider all areas of political philosophy before reaching his own conclusions.

“It doesn't do any harm to experiment with different political philosophies when you're young.”

Mrs Laing added that she became a Conservative because of the party's emphasis on the individual in society, although she was also influenced by her father who was a Conservative district councillor in Scotland for 25 years.

Mr Pickles spoke to the radio station as part of its upcoming documentary The '89 Generation.

He told the programme: “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 ‘What’s the most outrageous thing I can do to protest? I know, I’ll join the Conservative party’.”

• Print
• Email
• Share
• Comments(4)