Derek Robinson (trade unionist)

Derek Robinson, commonly known as "Red Robbo" in the United Kingdom's press, was a well-known Trade Union convenor and shop steward within the British Leyland (BL) company for much of the 1970s.

Career

Robinson was born in 1927, and began work in the motor industry as an apprentice during the Second World War.^[1] He was soon to become a member of the British Communist Party and the Amalgamated Engineering Union or AEU.

British Leyland was the result of a series of mergers between different British automobile manufacturers. By 1975 Robinson was the union convener of the Longbridge plant in Birmingham, having worked his way up from the shop floor to serve as the deputy of the previous convenor, Dick Ethridge.^[2] With his network of representatives in the 42 different BL plants around the country, he led a long running campaign of strikes around the BL empire which he argued were in protest at mismanagement.

In 1975, BL went bankrupt and was nationalised by the Government. In 1977 a new managing director, Sir Michael Edwardes, was appointed. He aimed to find a resolution to the ongoing industrial disputes and turn the company around. Robinson, for his part, supported the development of the policy of "participation", in which convenors and stewards would work together with company management. Robinson had seen the idea of "participation" as central both to his political aims and to making British Leyland a success, stating: "If we make Leyland successful, it will be a political victory. It will prove that ordinary working people have got the intelligence and determination to run industry".^[3]

During the 1970s, union organisation in British Leyland was split between the largely Communist Party-oriented stewards under Ethridge, and later Robinson, at Longbridge, and a smaller number of Trotskyist stewards based at the more militant Cowley plant. Many of the individual workers, however, took a more militant line than that espoused by the CP officials. An article by Frank Hughes in Workers' Liberty suggests that Robinson, by supporting the introduction of the measured day work system in place of piecework and by encouraging the adoption of "participation" in fact destroyed the relationship between stewards and the shop floor and left them unable to control unofficial strikes.^[2]

Relationship with press, sacking

Several left-wing commentators have suggested that Robinson was unfairly smeared by the press of the time, who habitually referred to him as "Red Robbo", and that contrary to their depiction of him controlling strikes at will, he in fact spent much of his time attempting to prevent unofficial strikes. This aspect was further examined by Ken Loach in part of an (untransmitted) documentary film series, Questions of Leadership (1983).^[4] Margaret Thatcher later described Robinson in her memoirs as a "notorious agitator".^[5] Many years later, Robinson commented "The pressures were immense but were it not for the ideological understanding that I had, I could very well have ended up with a nervous breakdown".^[6]

A 2002 BBC documentary series by Peter Taylor revealed that in the late 1970s MI5 had been attempting to undermine Robinson through an agent they had placed amongst his union officials; Edwardes stated that he had been "privileged to read minutes of meetings of the [...] joint committee of the Communist Party and our shop stewards", which had been passed to him via the Government.^[7]

Robinson was eventually sacked by BL in November 1979 for putting his name to a pamphlet that criticised the BL management. A ballot on a strike in sympathy of Robinson and opposed to the dismissal was held but the motion not carried, votes being 14,000 against a strike and only 600 in favour. Taylor's documentary suggested that this was a result of the MI5 agent's activity, with Edwardes acknowledging that the removal of Robinson was in some ways necessary for the company's plans to produce the Austin Metro, which would have involved many job losses: "It was planned only in the sense...well, the answer is 'Yes', from a strategic point of view we knew that we couldn’t have the Metro and him. Whether or not we wanted him to go, his actions made it inevitable that he would have to go".^[7]

According to the BBC, "between 1978 and 1979 Mr Robinson was credited with causing 523 walk-outs at Longbridge, costing an estimated £200m in lost production".

After British Leyland

Robinson worked as a tutor in trade union studies during the 1980s and 1990s, and was national chair of the Communist Party of Britain for a period in the 1990s.^[1]

References

1. ^ ^{a b} Stevenson, G. Derek Robinson, accessed 13-04-11
2. ^ ^{a b} Hughes, F. Lions led by well-paid donkeys, Workers Liberty, 62 (April, 2002)
3. ^ Jacobi, O. Technological change, rationalisation, and industrial relations, Taylor & Francis, 1986, p.102
4. ^ Leigh, J. The cinema of Ken Loach: art in the service of the people, Wallflower, 2002, p.135
5. ^ Thatcher, M. The Downing Street years, Harper, 1995, p.116
6. ^ 'I'm not to blame for Rover' - Red Robbo, BBC Online 28-03-00
7. ^ ^{a b} Transcript of 'True Spies' documentary, BBC

External links

• BBC News: The politics of building cars by Brian Wheeler
• BBC News, 28 March 2000

Persondata
Name	Robinson, Derek
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1927
Place of birth
Date of death
Place of death