Mon Mar 25, 2024
March 25, 2024

Bill Hunter, Trotskyst and workers’ leader, is 90 years old

The International Socialist League invites you to Celebrate Bill Hunter’s 90th birthday, veteran Trotskyist and workers’ leader.

2-5pm, Saturday 8th May, CASA Hope Street, Liverpool.  

Bill was born in 1920 into a miner’s family in Durham two years after the end of 1st World War and 6 years before the general strike of 1926 and has dedicated his life to the fight against capitalism, against the bureaucracies and for the Fourth International.   

Under the Ministry of Labour transfer scheme Bill started to work in an engineering factory in London in 1936. Two years later he joined a Trotskyist group. During the war he was a convenor in the Chrysler aircraft factory in London, in 1952 a borough councillor in Islington, then in 1954 he and his wife Rae were expelled from the Labour Party.  

He was secretary of CAV-Lucas Joint Shop Stewards Committee from 1966-72 in Liverpool and remains an honorary member of Liverpool Trades Council today. Bill has always retained a close connection with the dock workers movements in the unofficial strikes from the 1950s including the dispute of 1996-98 and remains loyal to his class.   

In 1979 he helped form a Joint Trade Union Inquiry into Allegations of Police Violence, and was a member of the Liverpool 8 Defence Committee. Inside the Trades Council he built and won support for a resolution against the Malvinas (Falklands) war. He and Rae started the Liverpool 8 miners support group in 1984 and Bill participated in the first anti-war meeting in Liverpool and attended meetings regularly. He was one of the first to express opposition to the “war on terror” as a cover for the US and Britain’s war for oil and control.  

He travelled many times to Europe and Latin America in the fight to re-build the Fourth International and in 1988 he helped form the International Socialist League, the ISL became a section of the International Workers League-Fourth International, an international Trotskyist current with many sections across the world and was on the leading body of the IWL, the International Executive Committee, until the mid 1990s.   

So that’s the first 90 years in a nutshell.     

APPEAL FOR BOOK FUND   

Bill has written three books, many pamphlets and 100s of articles, however many are out of print. In order to celebrate a lifetime’s work in defence of the working class as a Trotskyist we are launching a book fund to publish selections of Bill’s writings. There is a wealth of material from the 1940s onwards including writings for the ISL, IWL and others throughout the 1990s and 2000s. We hope to raise £1000. Cheques payable to the International Socialist League/Socialist Voice (please write Bill Hunter on the back).

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