Conway grew up in the Manchester area, and left school at the age of fourteen to work at the Metropolitan-Vickers factory at Trafford Park.
[1] In 1974, Conway was returning from Paris on Turkish Airlines Flight 981, when it crashed, resulting in the deaths of all on board.
The JCF began by organising weekend seminars for rank and file trade unionists.
In the late 1970s, the JCF formed links with the Friedrich Ebert Stifftung, a large German organisation associated with the German Social Democratic Party, with which it worked closely on trade union and work related social issues for the rest of the twentieth century.
The European Commission's Poland and Hungary Aid funded this involvement for the Regeneration of the Economies (PHARE) and Technical Assistance to CIS Countries (TACIS).