[1] While serving as a Secretary of the League of Nations Youth, he broke into a secret trial in Nazi Germany to protest against members of the Bündische Jugend being imprisoned for years without charges.

[1][2] Despite his life-long anti-fascism and having completed an Officer training course, he was denied a commission by the British military due to his membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

[1] In 1946 he was imprisoned alongside four fellow communists for running a campaign that sought to house homeless people in luxury flats.

[1] He won a scholarship to study at Oxford University's Christ Church college where he befriended the future Labour Party politician Richard Crossman along with the poets W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender.

After returning to Britain, Bill teamed up with Nancy Cunard and begun campaigning for the Scottsboro Boys, who were African-American teenagers falsely charged of rape in and put on a show trial.

[1][2] For this campaign he raised funds from a wide number of influential people, including Virginia Woolf, Bertrand Russell, Vera Brittain, H. G. Wells, and Aldous Huxley.

[1] During his time as a teacher the school was taken over by the Hitler Youth, where Bill argued with the boys over the topic of the Reichstag fire.

The result of this fact-finding mission was the creation of the British Youth Foodship Committee, which collected food and clothing which was then donated to people living in republican territory during the war.

[2] Shortly after his election victory, he and many other political activists were invited by Winston Churchill to discuss collective security and anti-fascism.

[1][2] During the war, Bill joined the British military's Welch Regiment and fought in Burma (now Myanmar) against Japanese forces near the city of Mandalay.

[1][2] Following his participation at the battle of Mandalay, Bill was air-lifted back to Britain to stand as the Communist Party's candidate for Westminster Abbey in the 1945 UK General Election, during which he polled 17.6% of the vote.

In 1946 Bill was put on trial after he and four other communist activists led a campaign to house homeless families in empty luxury flats.