Born in Stockport, Williams left school at the age of fourteen and completed an apprenticeship as a bricklayer with the Manchester Corporation.
He then returned to Manchester, finding work as a bricklayer, and joined both the Amalgamated Union of Building Trade Workers (AUBTW) and the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).
[1] Williams became known as a militant trade union activist, becoming a branch secretary and a regional delegate in quick succession, and was elected to the AUBTW's executive council in 1958.
He remained on the executive of the AUBTW and its successors, through a series of mergers which formed the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians (UCATT), and was prominent in the national strike of 1972 which led to the jailing of the Shrewsbury Two.
The TUC undertook mediation, which resulted in the GMB withdrawing from efforts to split the union,[3][4] and Williams' suspension being lifted.