[1] The grouping adopted as formal policy an opposition to socialism, but was seen by many as an attempt to convince people that the Unionist Party had the interests of the working class at heart.
In a letter to Carson he stated that they would be used as a means of distracting younger members of the working class from the Independent Labour Party, who held views which were very different from their own organisation, i.e.
Predominantly Protestant, Belfast engineering and shipyard workers, traditionally well organised, staged a three-week strike demanding a 10-hour reduction in the working week.
It was the local middle class who alleged that "peaceful penetration" of Belfast industry during the war by thousands of Catholics created the unemployment problem, especially that of the ex-servicemen.
[1] In the spring and summer of 1920 "indignation" meetings were held in Belfast by working-class members of Carson's “Old Town Hall circle” to attack the British unions for their "Bolshevism" and "pro-republicanism".
Rail Union members in the south of Ireland refused to allow his body to travel home by train, leading many Loyalists to then identify the Labour movement with his assassins.
It was on the day of his funeral, Collins says, that the expulsions began, resulting in ten thousand Catholics and so-called "Rotten Prods" with connections to Labour.
This resulted in UULA creating an "unofficial special constabulary", with members drawn chiefly from the shipyards, tasked with "policing" Protestant areas.
Carson and Craig need to establish a militant basis for resistance to republicanism, wished to reconstitute the UVF which could operate independently of the British.
[10] The Great Depression saw many workers look instead to the official trade union movement and the Northern Ireland Labour Party, and many branches of the UULA became moribund.