since 1923 and had risen to the executive of the South African party. Possibly it was in 1930 that he left it and joined the International Workers Club, modelled on the Cape Town Lenin Club, which was not Trotskyist but interested in the Fourth International. He was a pioneer Trotskyist in Johannesburg, advancing Trotsky's views in the Club and one of the founders, with Millie Kahn, of the Workers' Party of South Africa (Johannesburg branch). After a 1935 split these two rebuilt the branch. He helped organise the Bantu laundry workers, who struck in 1934 and, through the revived Workers' Party, the African Metal Trades Union in January 1937. His record led the Metalworkers to ask his help when on 23 February they embarked on a strike which they abandoned, defeated, ten days later, (Sapire to Militant Group, 21 Feb. 1938, H.P., 2B.3.26; Anon., Report on R. Lee , reports on metalworkers and laundry workers disputes in Fight, May 1937). Heaton Lee, who was no relation to Ralph Lee, was a mining engineer who had met Ann (Angel) Keen, a non-political South African Jewess, on the boat to England. She became politically convinced and joined the Trotskyist movement the following year. In Johannesburg the other three had also known Ted Grant, who had travelled to England in 1934 or 1935. This strain of South African Trotskyism should be distinguished from that in Capetown in the English speaking division, whence Charles van Gelderen, his brother (who remained there), and Millie Matthews