Researching Joe Williams

A fullback, he joined Shamrock Rovers in 1934 from Bray Unknowns F.C. where he had played since 1929. During his time at Glenmalure Park he made the centre-half position his own.

Williams won one international cap for the Republic of Ireland national football team against Norway in a World Cup qualifier at the Ullevaal Stadion on 10 of October 1937.

Joe had a benefit game at Dalymount Park on 10 April 1940..

In March 1957, Joe was flown to the US to take part in a This is Your Life special for Maureen O'Hara, as Joe was her favourite Rovers player. He presented her with an autographed soccer ball from the team.

A graduate of the University of Iowa, Williams has also served as a member of the wrestling squad for the Iowa Hawkeyes, and eventually worked as an assistant head coach for three consecutive seasons. In 2012, Williams launched his own youth wrestling academy in North Liberty, Iowa, where he has been currently appointed as the managing director and head coach.

Born in the Hulme area of Manchester, Williams spent some time as a pupil-teacher before following his father by becoming a musician, finding work as a clarinetist at the Comedy Theatre. Concerned about working conditions in the industry, in 1893, he founded the Amalgamated Musicians' Union (AMU).

The union's first members were Williams' own colleagues, with forty attending the first meeting. Shortly afterwards, Williams' mother, Kate, recruited a group of musicians in Birmingham and, within a year, branches had been set up in a large number of provincial cities. As general secretary of the union, Joe successfully argued that part-time musicians should be permitted to join, but that members of military bands should not earn extra pay by working as civilian musicians in their spare time.

Williams became was elected to Manchester City Council in 1904 as the Labour Representation Committee candidate for Openshaw, with the backing of Manchester and Salford Trades Council. However, two years later, he was declared bankrupt and therefore was excluded from the city council. In 1907, he was elected to the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), later serving on its successor, the General Council of the TUC, and as President of the TUC in 1923.

Williams' son, also Joe, served in World War I and was killed aged just eighteen. Despite this, he supported the war and, frustrated with the Labour Party's anti-war stance, he was one of the proposers, in 1917, that a new trade union labour party should be created.

After many years of negotiations, in 1921, Williams persuaded the AMU's main rival, the National Orchestral Union of Professional Musicians, to merge into it. He remained general secretary of what was now remained the Musicians' Union until he retired in 1924; although only in his early fifties, he was in poor health following years of extremely long hours of work. He moved to Veyrières in France, where he died in 1929.