It is a shock and difficult to comprehend, but Saturday evening our friend and comrade Jan van Emous died at home, a few weeks after being diagnosed with two brain tumours. We sympathise with his wife Ann, his sons Ben and Tijl and the whole family. It is hard to comprehend and bear that an illness can take away a father, husband and friend in this way, far too young.
Jan was always straightforward and confronted reality as it was, without glossing over things. As a nurse, he knew the illness he was fighting against and did not want to loose his capacities due to his illness. Last Monday there was a successful operation, which for a moment seemed to offer hope. But there was a cerebral haemorrhage in hospital. Now Jan is no more.
A week and a half ago, Jan intervened lucidly at our branch meeting. Now there is a void. He was great in his modesty and modest in his grandeur.
Jan was a trade unionist in the nursing home where he had worked for many years. Like his wife Ann, he was active in the ABVV, where he also gave trade union training. During the social elections to get the workplace representatives elected, Jan informed our members that he had successfully invited several new candidates to join the list. He had talked to potential candidates early on about a trade union commitment. With this, he strengthened the organisation of the workers in his workplace. The kind of work that can make this brutal society based on profit just a little more civilised by building up a strong union force. For Jan, it was a step towards broader social conclusions.
Jan has been active as a Marxist since the early 1980s when he joined our Dutch section. After he met his future wife Ann during an international summer school in Ghent in the 1990s, Jan moved to Leuven in Belgium. Since then, like his wife Ann, he was a pillar of our work in Leuven. Throughout the years, he has been consistent in his analysis and political activity. He always was his typically down-to-earth self in daily life and at our meetings.
Jan helped the Leuven LSP branch — which became two branches at some point in the 2000s — to build a healthy financial tradition as treasurer, with thorough planning and targets. Many comrades will remember dinners — before or after political meetings — at Jan and Ann’s home in Kessel-Lo, sometimes ending after sunset with drinks of their choice.
Jan became a Marxist again and again each time he read the newspaper, from politics to economic news, with an interest in scientific subjects as well. Reading was at the same time interpreting, analysing and connecting with a Marxist framework of analysis. Whatever history or life threw at him. Given his 40 or so years of political activity, that was a lot. From the degeneration of social democracy in the Netherlands, over the fall of Stalinism, to the rise of the anti-globalisation movement, strike movements, anti-racist demonstrations, the crisis of 2008 to the Covid-19 pandemic and the crisis that it unleashed again.
Jan had been struggling with leg problems for some time, which made campaigning on the streets less evident. But he took on life with sobriety — which does not mean without emotions — and without nonsense. Many will also have known Jan as co-organiser of the kitchen during political summer camps. He regularly revisited the summer school — during the party on the last evening he dressed conspicuously more chic than usual, which made him glow — which had brought him personal happiness and had sharpened his insights.
And yes, Jan, in a planned economy there also will be decentralised planning, corrected by workers’ councils and adjusted at sectoral level in a spirit of solidarity. You had summed that up remarkably concisely.
Jan realised from his profession in the nursing home that death belonged to life in the end. For Jan, this truth came far too early. In recent discussions about the Covid-19 pandemic, he added that within this criminal capitalist system there is unnecessary death and suffering.
When we were working with the ROSA campaign for International Women’s Day protest on 8 March in Leuven and already knew that Jan might be facing very bad news in hospital, we sent him a short message of support. Not knowing whether that would be appropriate or less appropriate. Half an hour later Jan sent back a message: “Thank you Peter. My fingers are crossed for a successful action tonight.” It became a successful action, unfortunately without Jan. We don’t know if we ourselves, sooner or later to be confronted with the kind of dialectic that no one conquers, would react like that. Let’s just say we kind of hope so. It was sober, but not unemotional. In the best traditions of the working class. It was all Jan. We will miss you, comrade.