Alan Thornett Suddenly the last of the early Trotskyists pioneers have passed away.
It's just over a year since we celebrated the life of Charlie van Gelderen, veteran South African Trotskyist, and the last of the surviving participants at the founding conference of the Fourth International in 1938.
Now we have witnessed the passing of Wang Fan-his, the last of his generation of Chinese Trotskyists, who fought and endured not only the barbarity of the nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek but the brutality of the Stalinists under Mao Tse Tung.
Wang was a member or supporter of the Fourth International (and the USFI) for the whole of its existence, and remained so until his death.
He did not, however, engage in active politics during his years of exile in Britain -where he came to escape Maoist agents.
Wang's book Chinese Revolutionary was inspirational.
Reading it in the earty 1980s I could not get out of my head the picture of this modest man who had survived under the most difficult conditions, struggling for Trotskyism and the revolutionary cause
Most vivid was his description of torture extraction of names of other comrades Wang never cracked, and describes the point at which he realised that no more could be done to him other than killing him - which would have been a welcome relief.
In his nearly 30 years as a part of the revolutionary movement inside China, his achievements were remarkable. He played a leading role in the unification of the Trotskyist movement.
Wang translated Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution into Chinese - only to have to burn almost all of the copies as the Japanese army arrived.
For me it was the sheer tenacity, determination and self-sacrifice, which the early pioneers of the Chinese movement endured which came though in Wang's book, as much as the political analysis and theoretical contribution which it contains.
After the victory of Mao and the CCP in 1949, Wang's group decided to stay in China and organise an underground Trotskyist movement. They were rounded up in December 1952 and most of them perished or faced long jail sentences for "anti-revolutionary activity".
Wang survived because he had been sent to Hong Kong.
We salute the contribution to the revolutionary movement made by Wang and his comrades. Without their decision, along with Trotsky, to create an alternative to the Stalinist nightmare we would all the poorer today.
page 22 of the scan
22 80 ce February 2003