The Ulster Workers' Council Strike - 1974
1974 UWC Strike - Episode 3 - Of Course We Are Socialists
Oct 4, 2026 · 33 min · 9 segments
The Strike ramps up. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
The Ulster Workers' Council Strike - 1974
Oct 4, 2026 · 33 min · 9 segments
The Strike ramps up. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
And on that Friday, the crisis on the streets was becoming stark as the strike continued to choke the province.
Even though the UWC at that stage were not targeting the petrol supply, the barricade stopped most of the tankers getting through.
Even when petrol stations were supplied, the power went off for protracted periods and the pumps simply stopped working.
The big name petrol and oil companies, Esso and Taxico and the like, took their tankers off the road completely, reporting a confused situation but an intention still to serve essential users such as food processing plants, hospitals, abattoirs and petrol stations.
In many areas, car drivers were limited to a quid of petrol.
Many began to hoard petrol, exacerbating the shortage as the panic kicked in.
The real truth was that the tanker drivers were not turning up for work.
Key foodstuffs such as eggs, bacon and bread were not getting through to the shops.
Farmers and agricultural industry were suffering.
Pictures were shown on the pages of the papers of 20,000 chicks being slaughtered in heaps.
Pigs reaching abattoirs could neither be slaughtered because of the increasing power cuts nor fed because the animal feed was not getting through.
Thousands upon thousands of gallons of milk were poured down the drains by farmers although when the Northern Ireland office agreed to compensate them the pressure was taken off and many of them began to support the stoppage in full fervour.
When essential shops opened, queues bought out their little bread, plain and pan loaves which also people shared with their Lowland Scots cousins.
Soon there was no milk or bread people resorted to hoarding dried milk and flour and canned food.
The more intrepid were going to the farmers and getting churns of unpasteurised milk and distributing them for ready consumption because the fridges were rendered useless.
People resorted to tinned food and potatoes, hard to cook even when the power went off.
And yet, journalists who were led into the Protestant working class ghettos four days later, Fisk among them, reported that the Protestants, mostly women, were upbeat, that morale was high, and those being interviewed were accepting every hardship with a view of making themselves heard.
Fisk would report that the government line about intimidated workers was now untenable.
These people he was seeing in the heartlands, men, women, young people, children, were upbeat and enduring every hardship stoically, prepared to sit it out.
Joe McCann, president of the Farmers Union, pleaded with the Ulster Workers' Council to alter its policy and complained that at the street level, the essential users list the UWC had issued meant little.
Food supermarket chains started selling off their frozen foods.
It took little power to run their freezers for 24 hours, but the threats of imminent shutdowns achieved their maximum intended effect.
As I say, these men with little confidence, looking at the enormity of their venture, had overcompensated and so there it stood.
Power supplies, food supplies, postal supplies in the main simply cut.
And on that Friday, the crisis on the streets was becoming stark as the strike continued to choke the province.
Even though the UWC at that stage were not targeting the petrol supply, the barricade stopped most of the tankers getting through.
Even when petrol stations were supplied, the power went off for protracted periods and the pumps simply stopped working.
The big name petrol and oil companies, Esso and Taxico and the like, took their tankers off the road completely, reporting a confused situation but an intention still to serve essential users such as food processing plants, hospitals, abattoirs and petrol stations.
In many areas, car drivers were limited to a quid of petrol.
Many began to hoard petrol, exacerbating the shortage as the panic kicked in.
The real truth was that the tanker drivers were not turning up for work.
Key foodstuffs such as eggs, bacon and bread were not getting through to the shops.
Farmers and agricultural industry were suffering.
Pictures were shown on the pages of the papers of 20,000 chicks being slaughtered in heaps.
Pigs reaching abattoirs could neither be slaughtered because of the increasing power cuts nor fed because the animal feed was not getting through.
Thousands upon thousands of gallons of milk were poured down the drains by farmers although when the Northern Ireland office agreed to compensate them the pressure was taken off and many of them began to support the stoppage in full fervour.
When essential shops opened, queues bought out their little bread, plain and pan loaves which also people shared with their Lowland Scots cousins.
Soon there was no milk or bread people resorted to hoarding dried milk and flour and canned food.
The more intrepid were going to the farmers and getting churns of unpasteurised milk and distributing them for ready consumption because the fridges were rendered useless.
People resorted to tinned food and potatoes, hard to cook even when the power went off.
And yet, journalists who were led into the Protestant working class ghettos four days later, Fisk among them, reported that the Protestants, mostly women, were upbeat, that morale was high, and those being interviewed were accepting every hardship with a view of making themselves heard.
Fisk would report that the government line about intimidated workers was now untenable.
These people he was seeing in the heartlands, men, women, young people, children, were upbeat and enduring every hardship stoically, prepared to sit it out.
Joe McCann, president of the Farmers Union, pleaded with the Ulster Workers' Council to alter its policy and complained that at the street level, the essential users list the UWC had issued meant little.
Food supermarket chains started selling off their frozen foods.
It took little power to run their freezers for 24 hours, but the threats of imminent shutdowns achieved their maximum intended effect.
As I say, these men with little confidence, looking at the enormity of their venture, had overcompensated and so there it stood.
Power supplies, food supplies, postal supplies in the main simply cut.
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