an increase in wages along with union recognition and better working conditions, all of which Gallaher and the other shipping bosses adamantly refused to grant. At this stage, however, the dockers' strike was hampered by the strong police and military presence on the quays. On 1 July, Larkin decided to lead the striking dockers in a march to Belfast City Hall to put their case before the council chamber who were in session. According to a newspaper report, the dockers were "marshalled in a long column of fours, and headed by Mr. Larkin they marched in military order through the streets gathering an immense crowd at their heels". The politicians inside City Hall had to perforce admit a delegation of dockers to their meeting, but they would not make any concessions. The tide suddenly turned in the dockers' favour when carters on the railway company quays refused to transport goods unloaded from the ships by the Dublin blackleg dockers. On 4 July after submitting a general pay claim, Larkin called the thousand remaining carters of Belfast, who were employed by the 60 firms of the Master Carriers Association, out on a sympathy strike. Gallaher and the other employers had no means of getting their merchandise out of the port. The Belfast Newsletter commented on the situation with the following words: "It was remarkable to see the stagnation which existed from the Custom House to the Clarendon Dock. With the exception of an isolated van or lorry driven by the obvious amateur, there was scarcely a sign of life or movement". Soon afterwards engineers and boilermakers were striking; workplaces all over the city stopped production and shut down. The strike escalated into bitter violence when shipyard workers burnt company vans, hurled rocks at the police and attacked blacklegs with "shipyard confetti" which consisted of rivets, nuts and bolts. Blackleg workers had to be billeted aboard a ship in the Belfast Lough for their own safety. Solidarity between Protestants and Catholics The strike was characterised by unrest in working class areas of Belfast and solidarity across the sectarian divide. Given that Protestants made up the majority of Belfast's workforce, most of the strikers and local strike leaders were in fact, Protestants, although Catholics comprised a significant number. Specifically, three-quarters of Belfast's carters and three-fifths of its dockers were Protestants. That July Belfast experienced the most unusual Twelfth ever witnessed before or since.