THE LEAGUE for the Fifth International and its section in the UK, Workers Power, are extremely sad to report the untimely death of comrade Din Wong. Din died on 23 August after a long struggle with cancer.
Din was born in Hong Kong in 1948 and came to the UK as a student in 1967.
She was a founder member of Workers Power (indeed, of its predecessor the Left Faction of the International Socialists) from 1973 till 2006. She was a dedicated revolutionary who made an important contribution to launching Workers Power paper and our other publications. In addition, she was a militant and active trade unionist in the teachers’ union, the NUT, where she was loved and respected. Din was a lifelong anti-racist and active antifascist.
Like many of her generation, Din was initially influenced by the apparent radicalism of the “Cultural Revolution” in China and this led her to a lifelong interest in the Chinese labour movement. Researching for her dissertation on the 1925-6 Hong Kong-Canton General Strike revealed to her the errors and then the crimes of what became the Maoist current in the Chinese Communist Party and from then on she was a committed Trotskyist. Subsequently, she collaborated with the veteran Chinese Trotskyist leader, Wang Fanxi, in translating and publishing materials of the Chinese movement.
Nor was her interest solely historical. She also played an active role mobilising solidarity with other sections of workers, including with Chinese catering workers in London. In 1989, whilst still recovering from her first battle with cancer, she helped organise and maintain the 24 hour picket of the Chinese embassy in London in solidarity with the Democracy Movement in Tiananmen Square. More recently, as well as travelling in China to meet labour movement activists, she also contributed to the dissemination ofinformation from the underground by translating documents and statements for China Labour News.
Din was a complete internationalist and comrades from the League’s sections in Germany, Austria, Sweden and the Czech Republic remember her warm friendship and hospitality on their many visits to her home.
We send our sincerest condolences to her lifelong companion Steve and to her sons Danny and James, as well as the rest of her family. She will be sorely missed by all her comrades and her many friends in the workers’ movement, but never forgotten.
