Good condition, owner's inscription on flyleaf. Could he please have three large boxes of Cuban cigars instead?, Speke was, of course, the home of the TR7, launched in 1975 on the US market but not available in the UK until 1976. He was dressed. "He's to be hugely respected.". By 1975, it had been bailed out by the government, which now owned 95% of it. Where can you get cheap classic car insurance? She said: My husband rang to tell me that they have all lost their jobs.. British Leyland's Truck and Tractor Plant, Bathgate, 1980. The response was:Theyve been doing it for years., Wed been establishing targets, establishing line rates and achieving 60 per cent of the target, which meant that the track stopped for 40 per cent of the day. Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said: "History will show that Derek was unfairly maligned by the media as he aimed to find solutions to British Leyland's industrial disputes and turn around the car company. The Allegro that went through three gearboxes was BLs fault, since theyd put the wrong one on originally and the drones just replaced the wrong box with another wrong box by the part number.. And reduced my dads colleague to tears.. Calling for him to step in to end the 12 week . "I can sleep sound at night because I never betrayed the workers I was elected to represent," he said. Mr John Shayler, plant protection manager, said that at dawn on, June 14 he had seen a day-shift worker come in to their factory and knock on the door of the foremen's office. Here, after all, was the worlds fourth-biggest car maker building the planets most complete and ambitious range of vehicles. We ask Birmingham: How can bus services improve in the city? Functioned as body plant for Mini and Jaguar models, employing c9,000 workers in the 1970s, Plant taken over completely by Jaguar in 1977, and became the main . Elon Musk sacks 200 MORE Twitter staff - including top lieutenant who boasted about sleeping in her office to commit to billionaire's new 'hardcore' work culture - before posting cryptic tweet Fearing that its collapse would leave a million workers unemployed, the Labour government nationalized it. Where can you get quick classic car insurance quotes? Former Leyland worker Stephen Cox said Mr Robinson was regarded by many as "way out on an extreme". An uncompromising and . The statement added that the company regarded the investigation as private. Undermining the shopfloor In November of that year BL sacked Robinson for supporting the pamphlet titled A Trade Union Response to the Edwardes Plan, which criticised the plans proposals and the companys management. Over the years they have applied pressure to weaken work standards so that, against the already slack standards then applying, they are able to claim they have done their days work and management is powerless to give them more work to complete the shift.. These were dark times indeed.Harold Musgrove. In this article DAVE LYDDON analyses the forces at work in British Leyland. The idea was that they should be able to make triple time: do each job in a third of the time allowed which meant that by half past two everyone would pack up and bugger off home!, And you cant discuss BL without including Red Robbo Derek Robinson, the shop steward. Mr Alan Walters, a supervisor, said he had seen another man come from the office carrying a Land-Rover seat capable of being used as a bed. History will show that Derek was unfairly maligned by the media as he aimed to find solutions to British Leylands industrial disputes and turn around the car company., Derek Robinson, trade union leader, born 1927, died 31 October 2017, Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. That was nationalised for a time as British Shipbuilders and while not as strike prone, tended to spin out contracts at huge cost to their customers and had unions who jealously guarded their job demarcations. The men were found tucked up in sleeping bags when management swooped on the priming shop at the Range Rover plant in Solihull, near Birmingham. But why had Mr Robinson's fellow workers not supported him? In the 1980s and 90s, Mr Robinson worked as a tutor in trade union studies, teaching shop stewards. It was a merger promoted by the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation set up by the 1964-70 Labour government of Harold Wilson. Im a former Austin Maestro owner, admirer and salesman, so it [] []. The hours I spent with Simon, Richard, Alan and Tim confirm that belief. it was just part of a long running campaign by the mainly right wing press that had gone on since the end of WW2 against organized labour. This year's foundling is British Leyland's first new Rover sedan in 13 years. 13 November 1979. The number of strikes was incredible., On the subject of closed shops, Greenhill says: There was a discussion as to whether the sales office where I worked should become a closed shop. British Leyland trade union leader. Had a nice blue pearlescent paint that never matched properly, sold it with the bodged paintwork at a loss. "The Communist Party then dominated the factory's workforce, with many hundred Daily Workers [newspaper] being sold every day," he wrote in his blog. Communist Party of Great Britain, Communist Party of Britain [1] Derek Robinson (1927-2017) was a British trade unionist. He was in charge of 32 men on the night shift who were dismissed, disciplined, or 'who resigned rather than be dismissed. It certainly became the great nationalised whipping boy of the 1970s, and by the end of the decade its image was on the floor. The British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC), was a vehicle manufacturing company formed in the United Kingdom in 1968. Whether or not unions in the UK took industrial action more than unions in Europe and North America is a moot point, much of the rubbish produced by the NoW, Daily Mail etc is treated as if it was historical fact nowdays where it should be regarded as propaganda. In this occasional series Ian Nichollsrevisits some of these stories, using the newspaper articles of the time as the main source of information. Known for. ( Somehow an orchestra trying to perform a punk record would be comical). The size, militancy and determination felt on the pickets, demos and rallies show that the sleeping giant, the British working class, has stirred. Over 50,000 workers across British Leyland immediately came out on strike, including the 20,000 workers at Longbridge in . Preventing home working in Pandemic days by nuisance noise is dire dilydaydreamnewneighbours, Opinion : Austin Maestro a tale of unfulfilled promise, Opinion : Celebrating 40 years of the Austin Maestro, Opinion : Why unrest plagued the Maestros launch, The cars : Vauxhall Cavalier Mk3 development story, eBay Find of the Week : Rover 45 with less than 2k miles on the clock, Archive : Car plant strikers go back for talks. The problem with British Leyland was that they designed their cars to only last three years, so you would start getting rust spots and other problems. "But they are going to appeal against the decision. Mr Robinson was involved in an estimated 500 disputes at Longbridge. The result has been the opposition of senior stewards to the toolmakers' strike earlier this year, and the fiascos of the April 20 strike against the Social Contract and the Longbridge strike vote in August 1977. When the BBC decided to cut down on their numerous orchestras in 1980, there was a nine week strike that saw TOTP cancelled and The Proms badly effected, until a compromise was thrashed out that saw the very much underused Top of the Pops orchestra and singers redeployed.Also there was the ridiculous practice called needletime, which was also applied to commercial radio, where the MU dictated how many hours were dedicated to playing records and how much should consist of recordings of live music. Tesco is the same, they thought they could dominate the market forever as they pioneered the pile em high, sell em cheap style of supermarket, but were caught out by smaller continental rivals who beat them on price and quality. Stories from those at the coalface. A quote from Austin Rover Managing Director Harold Musgrove (right) from 1984 underlines that. What's he waiting for? He will give evidence today. A plan by the unions to fight for a mass-volume car manufacturing was truncated when Robinson was sacked by British Leyland in November 1979. Belated attempts to set up acceptable new output targets had been resisted by the Shop Stewards. Two of them had clocked 24 or 25 cards. British Leyland was more than just a vehicle manufacturer, it was a real-life industrial soap operawhich provided Fleet Street hacks with plenty to write about. They had found that double the recommended number of body panels could be hung on the paint conveyor. And apart from the stupid steering wheel, the Allegro was pretty good, and a lot less labourintensive to produce than the 1100/1300., Was the UK press quicker to stick the boot in when things went wrong than they were in, say, France? He was a lovely guy, recalls Greenhill, when you werent in a meeting with him. Was he a communist infiltrator? The worker participation scheme at British Leyland was known as the Ryder Plan. Michael Edwardes, who has died aged 88, was the chair of the car giant British Leyland during the critical period of the company's transformation from 1977 to 1982. Archive : 1979 from the National Archives, Archive : Sleeping foreman loses dismissal case against BL. Do they take well to polishing, T-Cut, or is a respray the remediation? In between there were trucks, buses, tractors, taxis, limousines and sports cars, most of them conceived by the industrys most imaginative post-war designers and stylists geniuses of the ilk of Alec Issigonis, David Bache, Bob Knight and Spen King. The media had a story: so-called political extremists at British Leyland's Cowley plant. Mr Lampett, who joined Rover 22 years earlier as a Tool Setter, said: I believe I have been treated very harshly. A stickler for historical accuracy he has recently performed the marathon task of mining the online newspaper articles for all BMC>MG related stories. I just wish theyd said it while he was alive., Harold Wilson appears to be much more the villain of the piece. The behavior of absenteeism is normally evidenced in work places where some workers may decide to make absenteeism their habit. But the car giant had been hit hard by post-war economic struggles and had developed a reputation for producing low-quality cars. Back in 2011, I visited a fair-sized barn in North Yorkshire full of Maestros, Montegos and the odd Metro. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Absenteeism is simply defined as an individual's frequent pattern of evasion from an obligation or duty. Did the media have it in for British Leyland? Mr Robinson, one of the most famous trade unionists of the 1970s, was dubbed Red Robbo by the media. 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