Early Life
Born in Keighley, Yorkshire, he went to Greenhead Grammar School (which became Greenhead High School and is now University Academy Keighley) on Greenhead Road in Utley, north Keighley, then attended Leeds Polytechnic. He was born into a Labour supporting family – his great grandfather was one of the founders of the Independent Labour Party, and described himself as "massively inclined" towards communism as a boy – but he joined the Conservative Party in 1968 after the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia.
Pickles soon became the chairman of the local Young Conservatives association and later became chairman of the national organisation.
Read more about this topic: Eric Pickles
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The secret of heaven is kept from age to age. No imprudent, no sociable angel ever dropt an early syllable to answer the longings of saints, the fears of mortals. We should have listened on our knees to any favorite, who, by stricter obedience, had brought his thoughts into parallelism with the celestial currents, and could hint to human ears the scenery and circumstance of the newly parted soul.”
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“I don’t like your miserable lonely single “front name.” It is so limited, so meagre; it has no versatility; it is weighted down with the sense of responsibility; it is worn threadbare with much use; it is as bad as having only one jacket and one hat; it is like having only one relation, one blood relation, in the world. Never set a child afloat on the flat sea of life with only one sail to catch the wind.”
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