Derek Robinson ("Red Robbo")
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Derek Robinson was a well known Trade Union spokesperson and shop steward within the British Leyland (BL) company for much of the 1970s.
BL itself had been the result of a series of mergers between a multitude of different British automobile manufacturers. However, the resulting company, the British Leyland Motor Corporation (BLMC), proved to be an unmanageable bethemoth, crippled by ineffectual management and product duplication.
Robinson, as union convener of the Longbridge assembly plant in Birmingham had ascended to be the most powerful shop steward on the British shop floor. 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 were supposedly in protest at the apparent mismanagement which was driving the company into oblivion.
As it became apparent that Robinson's actions were in fact eroding Britain's state-owned motor industry's chances of survival (in 1975, BL went bankrupt and was nationalised by the Government). From 1977 the new managing director, Michael Edwardes, made it his business to end the strikes and turn the ailing company around. Robinson was being turned into a hate figure by the tabloid press, who dubbed him with the nickname "Red Robbo". 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". Robinson was eventually sacked by BL in November 1979. A ballot on a strike in sympathy of the dismissal went 14,000 to 600 against.
