Speech of the General Secretary of the Provisional Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain

Jack Conrad

I bring you condolences not only from the Provisional Central Committee but also from the Socialist Alliance Executive and Committee. My remarks today are not from the Provisional Central Committee but I want to speak for myself as an individual.

The first time I suppose I ‘met’ comrade Yürükoğlu, was in the form of a book that was published in English and it was called ‘Turkey-Weak Link’. And that book had a profound impact on me at that time.

I remember I was a member of the New Communist Party and I was going, I think, to my first tour around the organisation, and I was going up to Yorkshire on a bus. I was told to read this book. I was an told that it was an important book and we must read it. I’ve been told many other books meant to be important. I tried to read them but I didn’t find them particularly interesting; didn’t find them satisfying, didn’t find them inspiring in terms of what I was told to read.

But when I picked up ‘Turkey-Weak Link’ I couldn’t put it down until I’ve arrived in Leeds, at the end of my journey. And in all honesty, it was one of the turning points in my political life.

Here was a book in genuine sense of the word was not only modern, but it was a Leninist book, which was something very different, something very exceptional in terms of what was normally coming out of the official communist movement.

It was a book that in its own way, didn’t just only told me about Turkey. It was a book that enabled myself and other comrades around me genuinely start to think for themselves about problems they face not only in our country, but also what they face as communists in the world.

In terms of my relationship with comrade Yürükoğlu, I don’t think it is a secret to say that it was a difficult relationship. As an organisation the TKP approached myself, and so did comrade Yürükoğlu, and ask myself and a number of other communists to join the TKP. I can remember being persuaded by them and after the meeting we have had with Yürükoğlu, not only he did apply me with extremely strong ideas, but he also applied me some strong alcohol, so I am not so quiet sure about all details of that particular meeting.

Suffice to say that I’ve joined the TKP along with a number of other comrades. The idea was that we learn more advanced experiences in the world and we apply those lessons into Britain. I think my membership lasted a year. I think comrade Yürükoğlu not only was a, how should put it, a powerful charismatic personality, but he was also I think a difficult person. I think all great personalities are difficult at times.

In spite of leaving the TKP and setting up a what became the Leninist, our contacts didn’t cease, indeed in certain respects, our contacts actually deepened. Comrade Yürükoğlu attended the first conference of the Leninist wing of the CPGB. He had not only right to be there but he also had the speaking rights at that conference. And indeed the comrade also participated in the international school that we organised in the Greek island of Andros.

I think it’s a pity, more than a pity for myself and my comrades in the Communist Party of Great Britain, that contacts between ourselves came to an end sometime in the 1990’s. I think it is a loss as far as we are concerned.

When I think about comrade Yürükoğlu, whatever differences I had with him, his sprit lives on, not only in my organisation, and its dynamism, its seriousness and its commitment to communism, it also lives in me, in what my actual vision of socialism is.

I recall going to a meeting, I think it was in the old pill factory in Islington and listening to a speech. And  I think it was an anniversary of TKP and that was the speech that was published the book, ‘Socialism Will Win’.

This was the time of terrible troubles, as far as Soviet Union, Poland will concerned. What comrade Yürükoğlu did in that speech was again, just like my experience with the ‘Turkey-Weak Link’ it opened up a window  ‑ didn’t so much give me all the answers, I don’t think anyone ever can ‑ but it opened up a window and what it pointed out was quite clearly the necessity, not just a luxury but necessity, of socialism going hand in hand with democracy, that socialism is a democracy.

And that is a lesson comrade Yürükoğlu thought me, and is a lesson that I will never forget.