[1] He was raised in the Protestant working-class district of Sandy Row; worked in the city's shipyards (where in 1920 he purportedly helped Catholic workers escape across the Lagan River from the fury of Protestant pogromists); was a member of the early labour-supporting Independent Orange Order.
Carnduff was an admirer of Robert Lindsay Crawford who in 1903 had co-founded the Independent Orange Order with Thomas Sloan, Independent MP for South Belfast, as a protest against what they saw as the co-optation of the established Orange Order by the Ulster Unionist Party and its alignment with the interests of landlords and employers.
[3] Carnduff saw action in World War 1; and, after partition, served in the Northern Ireland police reserve, the B Specials.
Carnduff celebrated the United Irishman, James (Jemmy) Hope,[6] the weaver from Templepatrick who insisted that the real causes of social disorder in Ireland were "the conditions of the labouring class".
[9] Carnduff was a friend of Peadar O'Donnell,[5] socialist and "somewhat erratic republican",[10] and was drawn to the left-republican Connolly Association formed in 1938.