The group had been mooted in late 1973 when Harry Murray, a shop steward at Harland & Wolff, and other loyalist trade unionists had met at the Hawthornden Road headquarters of the Vanguard Progressive Unionist Party (VPUP) to discuss setting up a more formal version of the LAW[1] The formation of the group was announced in the April 1974 edition of Ulster Loyalist, a publication of the UDA, with the announcement promising that workers would be central to the political future of Northern Ireland and that these workers were preparing to mobilise against a united Ireland.
[3] The Ulster Workers' Council (UWC) name was adopted by February 1974 with the group chaired by Glenn Barr, at the time a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for the VPUP as well as a brigadier in the UDA.
On 13 May 1974 a large meeting of UWC-affiliated people was held at Portrush at which Billy Kelly, accompanied by Tyrie, UDA member Jim Smyth, and Short Brothers shop steward Hugh Petrie, announced to the assembled audience, which included Ernest Baird, Ian Paisley and John Taylor, that the general strike was to be launched the following day.
Rees interpreted the strike as Ulster nationalism, as it constituted open defiance of the British government by loyalists, and indeed some leaders, notably Barr, did support long-term Northern Ireland independence.
[15] Barr announced his public opposition to the strike, Harry West led counter demonstrations urging a return to work and Royal Ulster Constabulary Chief Constable Kenneth Newman, under instruction from new Secretary of State Roy Mason, took an aggressive line smashing through makeshift barricades set up on areas such as the Shankill Road with convoys of new police armoured land rovers.
[16] The strike descended into chaos with a series of setbacks, notably UDA gunman Kenny McClinton shooting and killing Protestant bus driver Harry Bradshaw on the Crumlin Road for his refusal to strike, an off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment soldier being killed by a bomb in the same area, UDA members William Hobbs and James McClurg accidentally immolating themselves whilst making petrol bombs in Rathcoole and Ian Paisley being arrested at a rally in Ballymena by Superintendent John Hermon.
[15] Harry Murray became involved in an attempt to revive the UWC in 1982, albeit as a cross-community campaign group that would lobby for the creation of employment and for unity across the working class.