Rodney Bickerstaffe
Popular leader of Nupe and Unison who won his lengthy campaign for a National Minimum Wage
RODNEY BICKERSTAFFE, who has died aged 72, was a passionate but constructive campaigner for Britain’s lowest paid public sector workers, as general secretary first of the National Union of Public Employees (Nupe) and then of Unison.
The creation of Unison in 1993 from Nupe, the Confederation of Health Service Employees (Cohse) and the National and Local Government Officers’ Association (Nalgo) was in large measure engineered by Bickerstaffe. So, too, was the introduction by Tony Blair’s government of the National Minimum Wage, after Bickerstaffe had faced down not only critics in the Labour Party, but other union leaders who saw a threat to skilled workers’ pay differentials.
Both these achievements stemmed from Bickerstaffe’s determination to see better living standards for the lowest paid. The minimum wage put a floor under their earnings, and their absorption into a union with
1.3 million members greatly increased their bargaining power.
Bickerstaffe’s heavy glasses and unruly hair first caught the public’s attention during the “Winter of Discontent” of 1978/79 when, as Nupe’s South Yorkshire organiser, he brought his binmen and gravediggers out in protest at the Callaghan government’s pay restraint policies.
Carpeted by the environment secretary Peter Shore over his members’ lack of respect for the dignity of the dead, Bickerstaffe retorted: “What about the dignity of the living?”
That winter’s industrial strife was a key factor in Margaret Thatcher’s election victory months later. Though well to the Left, Bickerstaffe – unlike some other Nupe officials of the day – had no wish to see Labour out of office. Seeing the way most of the media covered the dispute, he knew his members would be at risk from Mrs Thatcher.
Once she came to power Bickerstaffe fought their corner with tenacity – particularly when their jobs were transferred to private contractors – and opposed increasingly tight legal controls on union power. He also began campaigning for a minimum wage, finding few listeners outside the far Left.
Compassionate, modest, pragmatic yet principled and a compelling orator, Bickerstaffe – known to his colleagues as “Bick” – was popular and respected throughout the trade union movement. He was also, unlike some other union leaders, adored by his staff; he could reduce them to stitches with his Daffy Duck impressions. Among his early colleagues as a full-time Nupe official was Jeremy Corbyn. The two remained friends, and once in Parliament the future Labour leader frequently took Bickerstaffe’s advice.
During the miners’ strike of 1984-85, Bickerstaffe earned Arthur Scargill’s gratitude by committing Nupe’s moral and financial support to the striking pitmen and their families. But he was equally able to do business with Blair, despite their having much less in common.
Blair realised the respect in which he was held, despite Bickerstaffe having passionately opposed his abandoning the pro-nationalisation Clause 4 of Labour’s constitution. Heckled at a party conference when he made a reference to Bickerstaffe, Blair countered: “That’s funny – no one boos Rodney Bickerstaffe.”
Bickerstaffe had a keen interest in labour history. His mother – a lifelong Nupe member from a family of trade unionists – had put together as a girl a booklet about the Spanish Civil War, and when it was published he wrote the foreword. He left a request for donations to the International Brigade Memorial Trust.
Rodney Kevan Bickerstaffe was born in London on April 6 1945. His mother, Elizabeth Bickerstaffe, was a nurse at Whipps Cross Hospital; his father, Tommy Simpson, was an Irishman working in London who had come in complaining of stomach pains. Simpson would not marry Elizabeth as she was not a Catholic, and went back to Dublin, where he would find a wife and have three sons and four daughters. Rodney knew his father was Irish, but would only discover his half-brothers’ existence in 1998; he met them in Dublin soon after.
The eldest recalled: “I used to see this Buddy Holly figure on TV and think: ‘He’s a man after my own heart’.” Blair, who invited them to his office, joked: “Fancy waking up in the morning and finding you’ve got Rodney for a brother.”
Rodney spent his first months in a home for unmarried mothers, then Elizabeth took him home to her family in Doncaster. He won a place at Doncaster grammar school – having to stand in a separate queue for school dinners – then took a degree in Sociology at Rutherford College of Technology, Newcastle.
In 1966 he became a full-time Nupe official in South Yorkshire, moving on to become the union’s Northern divisional officer.
Bickerstaffe was elected general secretary of Nupe in 1981 in succession to Alan Fisher. The next year, he served as president of the Trades Union Congress. Having persuaded the TUC in 1983 to make the minimum wage its policy, he became one of its representatives on the National Economic Development Council, haranguing ministers over the issue. By then, the focus of Nupe’s campaigning had switched from council workers to equally poorly rewarded hospital ancillary workers, who had become increasingly militant in the early stages of the Thatcher government.
Unison was formed in July 1993 with Bickerstaffe the prime mover, winning the argument for a merger with powerful union conference speeches. For its first three years the white-collar Nalgo’s Alan Jinkinson was its general secretary with Bickerstaffe his associate, but it was always clear where the power lay.
On Jinkinson’s retirement Bickerstaffe was elected to succeed him, taking office in February 1996 – and turning down a pay rise. Labour – in the shape of Blair as shadow employment secretary – had committed Labour to a minimum wage prior to the 1992 election, but with a Blair government imminent and some unions still not convinced, Bickerstaffe worked hard to make sure it happened.
Blair and New Labour swept to power in May 1997, and two years later the National Minimum Wage was introduced. On other issues he and Blair were not soulmates, Bickerstaffe musing that no one with his own origins could have been so friendly toward the City.
He moved on to press for a commitment to uprate pensions in line with wages or prices, whichever was the higher, and at the September 2000 party conference, moved the resolution that brought it about.
In 2001 Bickerstaffe retired. He handed over to Dave Prentis, turning down Blair’s offer of a peerage, and succeeded the former transport workers’ leader Jack Jones as president of the National Pensioners’ Federation. He had told Jones he wasn’t old enough to take the job, only for the veteran to reply: “No, but you look it.”
Since 2005 he had concentrated on international issues through War on Want, of which he was president, and the Global Network, working with campaigners for social justice in the Third World. He also chaired the Ken Gill Memorial Fund, commemorating the Marxist white-collar union leader who was a good friend.
Bickerstaffe held honorary doctorates from Keele, Sheffield Hallam and Hertfordshire universities, and the freedom of the borough of Doncaster.
He is survived by his wife Pat, whom he married in 1973, and their four children.