Billy Hull

A native of Belfast, Hull came from the Shankill Road, a staunchly loyalist and working class area in the west of the city.^[2] Hull was well known for his heavy build, and he was said to weigh as much as twenty stone.^[3] He was a member of the Orange Order.^[4]

Hull worked at the Harland & Wolff engine shop in Belfast, and became the convenor of shop stewards there.^[2] A supporter of working class and trade union politics, Hull became a member of the Northern Ireland Labour Party in 1948. He maintained his membership of the party until the early 1970s, when he resigned in protest at the Northern Ireland policy of the Harold Wilson government and the British Labour Party.^[1]

Hull was also active in loyalist paramilitarism and around 1970 he helped to establish the Workers' Committee for the Defence of the Constitution (WCDC), a loyalist trade union of which he was joint leader along with Hugh Petrie of Short Brothers.^[5] In February 1971, he led a march of 9,000 shipyard workers to demand the introduction of internment in the aftermath of the 1971 Scottish soldiers' killings.^[1] Hull's march was one of the major factors in the resignation of James Chichester-Clark as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.^[1]

In 1971 he founded the Loyalist Association of Workers (LAW), which campaigned against the abolition of the Parliament of Northern Ireland and which replaced the earlier WCDC. He felt that the LAW could harness the "power of the [loyalist] grass roots", which he felt had been taken for granted by unionist politicians up to that point.^[6] The group, which combined an interest in working class issues with an anti-Catholic agenda and support for inequality, has been characterised by David McKittrick as presenting a syncretic form of "sectarian socialism".^[7] Hull warned of the results of a British abandonment of Northern Ireland: "If we're sold down the drain, there wouldn't be a civil war. There would be armed rebellion against the government of Britain."^[8] The group claimed as many as 100,000 members at its peak and Hull helped to organise a 48-hour strike as a response to the introduction of direct rule.^[1] This however was to prove the zenith of the LAW for Hull disagreed with other leading figures over strategy soon afterwards and the movement collapsed, with the bulk of the membership decamping to the Ulster Workers' Council.^[1]

In 1971 Hull had co-operated closely with Jim Anderson in helping to organise a local "defence association" of vigilantes in the mid-Shankill area.^[3] This group was swiftly merged with a number of similar like-minded groups to form the Ulster Defence Association (UDA) and from 1972 to 1973 Hull would serve as a member of the UDA's Inner Council, the name given to a group of prominent members who met regularly to decide the direction of the movement.^[9] Hull was prominent in the early years of the UDA and in 1972 was one of three members, along with Tommy Herron and Davy Fogel, to meet Secretary of State for Northern Ireland William Whitelaw at Parliament Buildings to discuss the growing problem of violence at interface areas in Belfast.^[10] In November of the same year he also accompanied Herron on a trip to Canada where the pair hoped to present the loyalist case and develop links with groups representing Northern Irish emigrants.^[11]