sentences:  Born and educated in a working-class Protestant area in Ballymacarrett, Belfast, Thompson was the seventh of eight children of a lamp-lighter and part-time sexton of St Clement's Church.He spent most of his working life as a painter in the Belfast shipyards, starting aged 14 at Harland and Wolff and working for Belfast Corporation after the Second World War, and much of his writing draws on these experiences.Thompson was a lifelong socialist and a committed trades unionist; he became a shop steward at the Belfast Corporation.