The obituary notice of Willie WATTS MILLER

Part 4:
During their time in China, they travelled widely. They first visited Hong Kong, then Guilin, a picturesque city known for its dramatic karst hills and clear rivers, before taking a 32-hour train journey to Beijing. During the semester break, they went north to Inner Mongolia and west to Xi’an, an ancient capital, with Ian and Carolyne in bitter winter weather. I remember Ian managing to ask in Chinese, “Any beer?” The answer was always “No.” They joked about it often, entertaining me with all kinds of accents. Only later did I realize how central beer was to British daily life. At that time, China was still an economy of shortages. A lack of beer was normal and hardly worth mentioning; even food was still rationed. Train tickets were difficult to obtain, and I still do not know how they managed to secure them and make their way through the crowds of the world’s most populous country. But they did, and they enjoyed every journey, never tiring of telling the stories afterwards.
In a sense, China in the 1980s was at its best: the country was beginning reforms with a shared sense of direction and hope. Society was open and receptive to new ideas. China enjoyed good relations with the wider world, and its people were relaxed, warm-hearted, and unpretentious. Willie and Elizabeth were fortunate to experience this China at its best. In return, they gave their best.

August 12, 2026

From Wenbin part 3:
Hang visited again when he led a delegation of academic exchange in Britain. And friends from the hospitals Elizabeth researched often stayed for a day or two with Willie & Elizabeth when they visited the UK.
Their enthusiasm for different cultures was most impressive. When I arrived at 60 Kingsdown Parade, virtually every item in the house had a sticker on it with the Chinese character for the object and its pronunciation — a sign of how much time and energy they had spent learning Chinese. Even this June, when Willie was in the BRI, he introduced me to the nurses and still practiced his Chinese by saying 你身体好吗？ (“How are you?”). When they were in Beijing, they visited ordinary Chinese households and celebrated Chinese New Year with them. They were always curious about things happening, or that had happened, in China. Once, when they travelled to Inner Mongolia, they stayed with a local family in their yurt. There, these highly cultured people experienced cultural differences at first hand. When they arrived at the yurt, they were greeted with large bowls of Mongolian salted goat-milk tea. Thinking it polite to drink it all, they did. But according to Chinese custom, the bowl should always be kept full as a sign of hospitality. So as soon as Willie & Elizabeth drank up their tea, their bowls were filled again; they drank up again; and people must have thought they liked the tea, so the bowls were filled once more…

From Wenbin part 2:

It was the first course of its kind among the major universities in China. The teaching materials were later developed into a textbook that influenced many students of philosophy and many professionals. The course itself was so well received that it became a required course of the Department of Philosophy in 1988. The research institute of sociology was also established and became the Department of Sociology in 1987.
By all accounts, Willie served as both scholar and cultural ambassador. At a formative moment in China’s reopening to the West, he introduced important developments and central questions in Western philosophy and sociology. The pioneering work he and Hang carried out helped enrich these disciplines in China and benefited thousands of students. Yet Willie was exceptionally modest. He often told us stories about his time in China but never spoke of his own role in strengthening academic life at one of the country’s leading universities. Nor did he boast about serving as an academic bridge to China after nearly four decades of hostility and mutual ignorance.
Elizabeth went with Willie to China and was granted a scholarship to study community health care there. At her spare time, she started a spoken English class in the Department of Philosophy, where I was a second-year student—too junior to attend Willie’s class, but fortunate enough to be a student of Elizabeth’s, and later a friend of them both. They were so busy and happy during their time in Beijing. We were all amazed by their extraordinary ability to make friends. I remember that every time we met, there were always other friends around: friends from the university, from other walks of life, journalists and foreigners worked at ambassies in Beijing. They did not just make friends; they kept them for years.

Willie’s time in China

Wenbin

Many friends and neighbours of Willie & Elizabeth often heard Willie refer to his “Chinese daughter”. That’s me. I lived with them while I was a postgraduate student at Bristol University from 1987 to 1992. They took me in as a member of the family, and I have remained part of their family for nearly 40 years now.

But I am not the only Chinese presence in Willie’s life. His connection to China went back much earlier and ran far deeper. In the early 1980s, emerging from the shadows of the Cultural Revolution, China began to turn toward the West and adopt the policy of opening. “Hang” -- the name by which Willie & Elizabeth addressed Professor Zheng Hangshen -- was among the first group of scholars sent abroad to learn from the West. Hang was visiting scholars at the Department of Philosophy for two years, from November 1981 to December 1982, and during that time he lived with Willie & Elizabeth. I can well imagine their many fascinating conversations they must have had over dinners or at parties about political events in Britain as well as social changes in China.
The 1980s were a time when China faced many neglected tasks await to be undertaken. When Hang returned to China, he was given two major responsibilities in 1983: one, by the Ministry of Education, was to set up a new research institute of sociology, a discipline that had been abolished in 1952 as the country focused on industrialization; the other was to launch a new course in the Department of Philosophy on “Modern Western Philosophy”. This was the background to Willie’s time at People’s University of China, where he taught and exchanged ideas in 1985. Willie must have helped Hang greatly in fulfilling these tasks. According to the University records, a new course on “Modern Western Philosophy” was offered first time to fourth-year students in the academic year of 1984-1985. It was the first course of its kind among the major universities in China.

I first met Willie Miller (Watts came later on marriage to Elizabeth, typical of Willie’s thoughtfulness) at university when he had a mop of dark auburn hair. He was taking a group of visiting Russian students to a brewery down the Cannongate. The Student Representative Council was mentioned very early on, to be followed by the McGonagall Society (at least one McGonagall supper with a White Elephant of Burma , and an extraordinary whisky tasting), foreign student exchanges (Willie went to Finland, I went to Iceland), an SRC based group of friends that included George Foulkes (who had an English accent then), drinking at Bobbies, a Denning Report party when Willie queued at the office in Castle St for the report which was released at midnight. On graduation Willie went straight to a job at Bristol University, but he definitely came to Frank’s & my wedding in December 1966.
Some years later when HMS Bristol, on which Frank was serving, was awarded the Freedom of the City of Bristol, and Willie was a Liberal Councillor we were given an amazingly warm welcome by Elizabeth to 60 Kingsdown Parade. Since then they have been wonderful true supportive friends with whom we have shared many interests and cultural tastes.

our lifelong friend

tribute from Vernon Reynolds

I got to know Willie during my years in the Sociology Department at Bristol University, 1966-1972. This was a new department and the first Head of Department was Michael Banton. I believe Willie came to Bristol from Edinburgh with Banton, in any event they got on well and Willie could be described as Banton’s protégé .
Apart from teaching and taking part in the work of the Department, Willie’s main concern was his PhD thesis, on the police. Banton had wanted a straightforward analysis of modern policing in Britain but Willie approached the topic from a more philosophical angle. This caused some friction between them.
Willie and his ever-cheerful wife Liz became firm friends of my wife Frankie and myself. A few times, after a night out, we stayed at his house, sleeping in the top floor bedroom with its magnificent views over Bristol. For a while, Liz and Willie had a long-term visitor from China, Wen-Bin, whose company we enjoyed; Willie and Liz later visited Wen-Bin for a prolonged stay in Beijing but it was in winter time and he said they were mostly cold.
Willie was an interesting conversationalist and liked nothing better than to get stuck into a lengthy philosophical discussion. His chief mentor was Emile Durkheim whom he quoted frequently, and he became an active member of the Durkheim Society together with William Pickering. Durkheim’s views on policing and crime influenced Willie’s thinking, and this may be why he and Banton had different views. Banton had a more functional approach and was less concerned with the philosophy of policing.
In later years I did not lose contact with Willie and Liz. We talked on the phone and visited them in their Bristol home.

How do we remember Willie? Mainly for his cheerful and caring nature, his fondness for his friends, and his charming personality. We shall miss him.