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Bob Pagels, a key figure in the Ulster Workers' Council, describes the planning of the UWC strike which brought down the power-sharing Executive in just 14 days in May 1974. He reveals the planning for the strike with workers in key industries, the bitter confrontation with Minister of State Stanley Orme at a meeting with loyalists, some of them armed, at Stormont Castle, his astonishment that the British Army did not take a firmer hand during the strike, and his belief that in any other country in the world, "they would not have got away with it." He describes how the UWC reacted to Prime Minister Harold Wilson's notorious "spongers speech". Pagels says he would have been in favour of mediation during the strike and he now believes a similar strike would not work today. He gives his reaction to the Dublin-Monaghan bombings which claimed 33 lives during the strike, and the effect on him of seeing a woman who had lost both legs in an explosion on Bloody Friday in July 1972. Fear of "Rome Rule" from Dublin motivated him, he reveals, and he describes his confusion about the future of Northern Ireland at the end of the strike and his disillusionment with politicians
