Radical activists in Aotearoa-NZ, Canada and China lost a long-standing comrade when Bill Willmott died on the 12th October 2021. He was a globally renowned anthropologist, and expert on the overseas Chinese in South East Asia. He was also an excellent China scholar. But, as importantly, Bill understood the Marxist dictum that there is little point in just understanding the world; we have to work out how to change it so that we leave it a better place than when we found it. I remember Bill, therefore, as a critic and conscience within the academy and an activist outside. Some people call such academic/activists "pracademics", or practitioner/activists as well as scholars, teachers and researchers.

China; Communist Party; Cambodia

Bill was born to Canadian Methodist missionary parents in Chengdu, West China, on February 7, 1932. His parents were both teachers at the West China Union University which was a hot bed of radical thought and strongly supportive of Mao Tse Tung's communist revolution. Many of the teachers at this university, e.g., William Sewell, stayed on after the revolution to provide support to the new Government. Bill learned Mandarin as his first language and developed a lifelong passion for China and the Chinese people as a result of his early exposure to the country.

He started his education in China, then Japan and eventually enrolled in Oberlin College, a Presbyterian liberal arts college, in Ohio. Its mission was, and is, to "educate students for lives of intellectual, musical, and artistic rigor and breadth; sustained inquiry, creativity and innovation; and leadership". Bill imbedded all these values as a student and gave expression to them in every academic institution that he was a part of. He completed a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at Oberlin before completing a Master of Arts in Anthropology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

His Canadian research focused on the health and well-being of the Inuit community at Inukjuak in Northern Quebec. This research gave Bill a lifelong passion for honouring indigenous peoples everywhere and for working with them to overcome the negative impacts of colonisation. He did this in Canada, China and in New Zealand. It was when he was at McGill that Bill became a member of the Canadian Communist Party (a membership which haunted him for many years whenever he tried to enter the United States).

After his Master's Bill completed a PhD in social anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). This research brought Bill back to South East Asia, where he focused on the role and significance of the Overseas Chinese in Cambodia. During his fieldwork he made many important friends with Cambodian royalty and leading Chinese families. He returned to his work on Cambodia when he tried to make sense of the Cambodian Revolution of the Khmer Rouge.

Bill initially thought that the Cambodian Revolution was positive but became quite dispirited when he heard all the reports of Khmer Rouge excesses and tried (not very successfully) to rationalise these in terms of the PhD research on Cambodian peasants by Khmer Rouge leader Khieu Samphan. Bill felt that Khieu Samphan's PhD was flawed and this led to the genocide. Not many other scholars found this very convincing, however, and the Cambodian genocide remains an indictment on all those Left scholars who tried to see the good in it.

Anti-Vietnam War Activist

After the LSE, Bill's first academic appointment was teaching anthropology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada. UBC had a very strong focus on both China and the whole of East and South East Asia which meant that Bill was able to continue his teaching and research on Asia. His academic research was soon put to good activist use, however, as America became more and more embroiled in the imbroglio of the Vietnam War. Bill observed the unfolding disaster from Canada and became very critical of Canada's economic and political dependence on the US which he felt was distorting Canada's independent assessment of Indochina and the war in particular.

His resentment of American foreign investment in Canada and Canada's supine response to Washington, carried over to NZ when he came here. He was deeply critical of Rogernomics and the massive inflows of foreign investment which he felt paralysed NZ's independent foreign policy as well. In any event, Bill was a very fervent opponent of the Vietnam War and became a leading Canadian opponent of it. He conducted teach-ins at UBC on a regular basis and led many large public demonstrations against the War.

First Sociology Professor At Canterbury

Bill remained a fervent Canadian nationalist but became increasingly disenchanted with its inability to challenge its unruly neighbour to the south. His second wife Anne, was from New Zealand, and she encouraged him to come to Victoria University on sabbatical in 1971. They liked NZ so much that he applied for, and became, the first Professor of Sociology at the University of Canterbury three years later. Bill and I arrived at the University of Canterbury three months apart in 1973.

The Professors, at this time, were gods and had absolute power over faculty and students. The Professorial Board in consultation with the Vice-Chancellor decided everything. Bill's arrival at Canterbury, therefore, was revolutionary and took the fledgling group of Canterbury sociologists by surprise. Bill was committed to a collegial, flat participative management structure and believed very strongly in consultation and consensus decision making. This meant lengthy staff meetings (sometimes we seemed to be taking our cues from the long decision-making processes of China's Cultural Revolution!).

In fact, many thought that we were the First People's Sociological Collective. Some thought that we were the wave of the future; others that we had lost control of our senses. But the reality was that Bill's arrival at Canterbury transformed Sociology from a branch of Psychology into an independent department. Bill and his new colleagues were all committed to making sociological sense of the big issues of the time. Unlike today when possibility seems constrained by pandemics, climate change and other existential threats. The 1970s was a decade of infinite possibility. We all assumed that if we had the right analysis, the right vision, we could transform the world.

In addition to Bill's opposition in Canada to the Vietnam War he had also been deeply involved there in discussions and debates about Canadian national identity and how a relatively small country like Canada could control its larger neighbour to the south. On his arrival in New Zealand, he brought these debates to the Department. He both catalysed and encouraged discussions about New Zealand national identity and how we differed from his homeland.

He thought that we had higher levels of public morality and commitment to the common good than Canada. A lot of this was determined by his astonishment at discovering honesty boxes outside orchards and places selling fruit, vegetables and handicrafts. But he managed to tie this public morality to an analysis of altruism in New Zealand and a robust defence of the NZ Welfare State and the values that underpinned it. Thinking about New Zealand's national character and identity was novel and exciting to most of us as we struggled to understand the emerging contours of a bi-cultural society in Aotearoa-NZ.

Heady & Exciting Times

These were very heady and exciting times for faculty and students alike. We had to confront rising unemployment and challenges to political institutions, the emergence of Muldoon and his Poujadist* politics; the 1981 Springbok Tour and what that meant for race and racism and how we would respond to a growing and assertive Maoridom. We were all trying to make sense of ourselves in a rapidly changing NZ, in a rapidly changing world. Bill instilled in us the centrality of a critical consciousness and a critical sociology and a positive disposition to change. *Poujadism: "a conservative reactionary movement to protect business interests of small traders", Collins Dictionary. Named after a 1950s' French populist politician. In NZ, Muldoon's supporters became known as "Rob's Mob". Ed.

Bill's reign as Head of Sociology gave all of us a chance to build on our strengths. He was an affirmative, encouraging and challenging Head of Department. He created conditions within which we could flourish and do the best work we were capable of. He understood the hierarchical and Darwinian nature of the academy, though, and thought it an impediment to scholarship and productive faculty/student relationships. On one occasion he asked the Professorial Board to abolish rank and replace all grades with the simple idea of University of Canterbury Fellow! When put to the vote, his proposal didn't even get a seconder, but it opened up a wide debate about the shape and values of the University of Canterbury.

Champion of Friendship With China

But that's not all. Bill modelled what it meant to be a public intellectual. In 2001 he was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for his scholarship and service to NZ-China relationships. In addition to heading up the NZ-China Friendship Society, (which he was Chairman of for ten years) he also led 14 different delegations to China and China honoured him by appointing him an International Friendship Ambassador for his services to China in 2002.

He was a strong supporter of Rewi Alley and all his educational work in China. Bill was Chair of the NZ Democratic People's Republic of Korea Society (China and North Korea were two very unpopular and marginal causes at the time), he replaced me as Chair of the Canterbury Council for Civil Liberties and was actively involved in groups such as Corso.

Bill saw it as part of his role to encourage all of us to be the critics and conscience of society and encouraged us all to talk about the environment, politics, Asia, peace and justice, gender, health, sport and public policy issues. We conducted adult education programmes in Rangiora and elsewhere. He and others initiated rural research in Canterbury and the Wairarapa.

Bill was always encourager in chief, nudging us to be engaged sociologists at the frontiers of society. We had workshops and conferences on cutting edge issues e.g., the conference on Development and Underdevelopment in Canada and Australia (that I organised) and the many follow up meetings to the pathbreaking Women's Conferences of the 70s.

We also pioneered thinking about what white settler societies needed to do to acknowledge and reconcile with Maori, Aboriginal and Inuit colleagues, focusing on how to save Te Reo through Kohanga Reo and other initiatives. I don't think it's an overstatement to say that in Bill's time as Head, the Canterbury Sociology Department led the country in terms of public profile on a whole range of issues. One mark of this was that we always had more faculty and students at sociology conferences than other departments in the country. Other departments sometimes referred to us as the Canterbury Mafia with Bill as the genial Capo.

Making The Personal Political

It also has to be said that not everyone in the Department shared Bill's interests and passions. Some thought him too radical and felt that consensus decision making generated a small tyranny of the majority. But none of us could say that sociology under Bill's reign was dull, narrow minded or abstracted from the real world. We were trying to make the personal political, change ourselves into better, more open-minded people and ensure that the institution of which we were a part served students and the community well. We were also trying to make sense of what it meant to be empathetic, loving and compassionate in our personal and work relationships.

On a personal note. Bill was intensely loyal to colleagues and friends. He was always attentive, and supportive and loved sharing stories. He lit up every room with his big smile and had an endless supply of anecdotes, ideas, and concerns. I don't know how many times he shared childhood stories of flying over the "Hump", i.e., the Himalayas, from Chengdu to India with the passengers quietly going unconscious because of poorly pressurised planes and the pilots staying awake because they wore oxygen masks. He also had an endless supply of stories about what it meant to be a communist in Canada and the US in the 1950s.

I thought that Bill's intuition about how to organise a department was exactly right and I tried to emulate his leadership style and decision-making processes wherever I went after I left Canterbury. He was a wonderful mentor and friend. He focused on NZ and Canadian nationalism while promoting inclusive cosmopolitanism. He was, and will always be, an inspiration to me and all the others with whom he worked. He retired from the Sociology Department in 1998 and became a research associate in Pacific Studies at the University of Canterbury's Macmillan Brown Library, researching Chinese communities throughout the Pacific and Oceania. He finally retired from all his academic positions in 2006.

Quaker

Being the child of missionary parents, Bill always tempered his socialism and radicalism with a heavy dose of Christian social gospel. It was not surprising to me, therefore, that he and Di Madgin (his third and final partner) decided to nurture their spiritual life in the Religious Society of Friends. Quakers are committed to justice and peace, as was Bill. They also believe in consensus decision-making, no hierarchy, and a celebration of relationship and friendship. These were all strong values which guided Bill over his entire life. Bill was a radical who always respected the humanity and truth of his opponents.

There are so many other things that I could say about Bill. It's hard to believe that he is no longer with us. If he were here, he would be urging us all to be the best, most engaged people we can be and the change that each of us has to be. His spirit continues in all the thousands of students, groups, faculty and publics that he inspired over the years.

He will be remembered for always standing up for the poor, and dispossessed, for his fervent support of China and North Korea while being a most wonderful and unique human being. We are going to miss him enormously. Diana and his extended family Nicole, Kate, Jane, Claire, Andrew, Katherine and Sarah will miss him even more. RIP dear friend, colleague and comrade in many different causes.