Derek ‘Red Robbo’ Robinson
Shop steward who led hundreds of walkouts from British Leyland’s Longbridge plant in the 1970s
DEREK “RED ROBBO” ROBINSON, who has died aged 90, was the shop stewards’ convener at British Leyland’s Longbridge plant in Birmingham, plant in the late 1970s as a wave of strikes there threatened the company’s existence.
Spokesman also for the “Combine” representing stewards at BL’S 42 factories, Robinson, a Communist, was seen as such a threat that in November 1979 Sir Michael Edwardes, chairman of BL, had him summarily dismissed.
Edwardes claimed that in Robinson’s five years as convener, there had been 523 disputes at Longbridge – an 87 per cent increase – preventing the production of 62,000 cars and 113,000 engines, worth £200 million. Robinson’s activities delighted BL’S competitors: Fiat’s advertising agency came up with the slogan “made by robots, not by Robbos”.
Six feet tall, burly, and from a family of Black Country chainmakers, Robinson became a national figure as he was seen on television haranguing mass meetings of Longbridge workers in Cofton Park. One of three brothers – two of them Communists – who worked at the plant, he lived modestly in the nearby suburb of Rubery.
An Amalgamated Engineering Union shop steward, Robinson took over as full-time convener late in 1974 from another Communist, Dick Etheridge. Etheridge had been a firebrand, but when he retired BL’S chairman Lord Stokes threw a party for him – leaving with one of Mrs Etheridge’s Christmas puddings.
No such civilities attended Robinson’s tenure, which coincided with BL going under and being nationalised, and Edwardes arriving in 1977 to turn the company round. Robinson was ready to work with management, provided the shop stewards called the shots, but he upset sections of the workforce by agreeing to the replacement of piecework by a “measured day work system”.
When Edwardes cut 18,000 jobs in 15 months and prepared to axe 25,000 more, Robinson drew a line. Ostensibly his aim was twofold: to curb the wildcat strikes which led to thousands being laid off, and work instead for a “mighty orchestration” of strike action by all BL’S 225,000 workers.
His initial purpose was to pressure the Labour government into abandoning its “social contract” with the unions on pay; later it was to secure the continuance of BL as a volume car maker, without closures or redundancies.
He failed in both. Unofficial strikes at Longbridge escalated, despite occasional reprimands from him to their leaders. At least once Robinson turned up to persuade workers not to strike, only to deliver such a passionate attack on the management that they walked out.
His attempts to bring out BL’S entire workforce were equally unsuccessful, apart from a “day of action” early in 1977. Later that year, they refused to strike over a pay offer after Robinson had claimed 50-1 support; a thousand marched on his office to demand his resignation. Yet it was his activities within the Combine – and the involvement of the Communist Party – which convinced Edwardes that Robinson had to go.
The final straw for Edwardes came when MI5 passed him minutes of a meeting between the Communist Party and BL shop stewards, convened by the CP’S industrial organiser Mick Costello, the day after he announced his rescue plan. Robinson had not been present (though his brother Dennis had) but the wording of the minutes was almost identical to an anti-management pamphlet put out by the Combine, which the Longbridge convener had signed. He was summoned to meet the plant director and asked to dissociate himself from the pamphlet, and specifically a threat of mass strike action. When he refused, he was sacked.
Robinson pledged to “fight to the end” for reinstatement, and his supporters at Longbridge called out its 17,000 workers – most of them members of the Transport & General Workers’ Union. But Terry Duffy, the Right-wing president of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, outflanked the T & G by setting up an inquiry into whether Robinson had been unfairly dismissed – and the strikers trickled back.
When Arthur Scargill offered to call the Yorkshire miners out in support and Labour’s Left-wing national executive criticised the sacking, Duffy told them to mind their own business. Edwardes stood his ground, Mrs Thatcher hailing his decision as “a triumph for common sense”.
The inquiry took three months to conclude that Robinson had been unfairly dismissed, reporting just after the announcement of a plunge in BL’S market share to an all-time low of 15 per cent. AEU leaders – with visible lack of enthusiasm – called a meeting of all Longbridge workers to vote on an official strike. With the Birmingham Mail proclaiming: “It’s Red Robbo or your job”, they voted 10-1 not to strike; Robinson was pelted with fruit and mud.
He told the shop stewards, many of them in tears: “You must go back into the factory, elect a new convener and give him the support you gave me. Thanks, comrades.”
They chose Jack Adams, who had also signed the Combine leaflet but was far less confrontational; the number of strikes fell sharply, the workers accepted new employment terms and Longbridge stayed in production for a further 25 years.
Derek Robinson was born at Cradley Heath, Staffordshire, in 1927. He left school at 14 to become a toolroom apprentice at Austin’s Longbridge plant. Latching on to Etheridge, he joined the Communist Party at 21, becoming a shop steward at 26 and eventually Etheridge’s deputy.
In 1966 Robinson fought Birmingham Northfield as a Communist, losing his deposit then and three times more. In 1970 he stood as a district secretary of the AEU, losing to a Right-winger.
The mergers of – in turn – Austin and Morris to create the British Motor Corporation and of BMC and Leyland Motors to form British Leyland brought together plants with very different working practices – a recipe for strife as management tried to standardise. It also pitched Communists at Longbridge against Trotskyists at the Cowley plant in Oxford.
Robinson succeeded Etheridge just before publication of the Ryder report which was optimistic about BL’S future, concentrating on the need to improve management and not recommending closures. The Combine saw potential in this, but when BL’S fortunes worsened and Edwardes arrived, Robinson was ready for confrontation.
Refused a pay increase early in 1979, Longbridge workers voted to strike after Robinson told them they must reply in “the only language the management know, the language of force.” Other plants carried on working, and Robinson was jeered a week later when he proposed a return to work.
The AEU inquiry dragged on beyond the deadline for Robinson to take BL to an industrial tribunal. When he appealed, the chairman ruled that his case fell because he had relied on industrial muscle rather than the law to get his job back. Robinson said the pressures on him would have led to a nervous breakdown but for “the ideological understanding that I have had”.
AEU members rebuffed Robinson again in 1981 when Duffy’s brother defeated him for the post of West Midlands organiser. Instead he became Midlands distribution manager for the Communist Morning Star, and lectured on industrial relations at Bilston Community College, also taking classes for shop stewards. He had over 100 applications for jobs in engineering rejected.
When the Communist Party split in 1985, Robinson and other hardliners were expelled. In the 1990s he chaired the splinter Communist Party of Britain.
Derek Robinson was three times married: once when young, secondly to Phyllis Davies, herself a powerful figure at Longbridge, and a third time after her death in the 1990s.
Derek Robinson, born 1927, died October 31 2017