Colin... All I can say is that MSIL understands static (class) methods and
variables so that you can certainly declare and use static member methods and
variables in a purely managed language as C#. C# does not support static
local variables. I don't (yet) have any C++/cli code for this so this is C#:

class TestStatic
{
   // static stuff
   private static int uniqueID= 0;
   private static int GetUniqueID()
   {
       lock(typeof(TestStatic))
       {
           return uniqueID++; // returns zero at start
       }
   }

   // member stuff
   private int identity;
   public TestStatic()
   {
       this.identity= TestStatic.GetUniqueID();
   }
   public int Identity
   {
       get
       {
           return identity;
       }
   }
}

I have done quite a lot with /clr so far, and I have not seen problems with
static member variables of native types so far.

Marcus Heege