Joop den Uyl on Jacques de Kadt

Interviewers Michel Gijselhart and Jos Havermans spoke with Joop Den Uyl (1919-1987) about the politician and essayist Jacques de Kadt (1897-1988) on Sept. 14, 1987. The interview was published on the occasion of De Kadt’s death under the title “De onmiskenbare tragiek van Jacques de Kadt”. Een interview met J.M. den Uyl’, in: Socialisme en Democratie no. 5, May 1988. Den Uyl died three months after the interview.

De Kadt was a member of the SDAP for several years in the 1920s, which he left in 1932 for the Onafhankelijke Socialistische Partij (OSP), a leftist breakaway from the SDAP. During the 1930s he emerged as a fierce anti-communist. After the war, he joined the PvdA. Here Den Uyl met De Kadt in 1949 when he became director of the Wiardi Beckman Stichting and De Kadt was editor of the magazine of this scientific bureau of the PvdA, Socialisme en Democratie. In addition, the two sat together for the party in the Lower House for a long time in the 1950s and 1960s. De Kadt resigned his membership in 1970 out of dissatisfaction with the strong position that the New Left had managed to acquire.