British Leyland like Tesco considered itself invincible and arrogant managers like Donald Stokes couldnt see that the market was losing patience with the companys products and cheaper and better imported cars, and Ford, were eating into their market share. He was the main spokesman for the British Leyland combine committee which united about 40 different plants around the country, for most of the 1970s. This has not happened easily and Black and Asian people have often had to fight for their rights. 1990s Vauxhalls seemed to have red paint that faded quickly, so most surviving ones look more pink than red these days. What's he waiting for? Mr Robinson . When we were given more money to buy, say, new transfer lines, says Seth Smith, we were restricted by government rules to buying sometimes inferior local tooling., Then there was the way that the cars were produced. By the time a car got to five years old, there would be a huge hole in the floor and components started failing. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. British Leyland was an automotive engineering and manufacturing conglomerate formed in the United Kingdom in 1968 asBritish Leyland Motor Corporation Ltd . Communist Party of Great Britain, Communist Party of Britain [1] Derek Robinson (1927-2017) was a British trade unionist. By Business Ideas UK October 31, 2017. W[/dropcap]e tend to think of British Leyland as a sprawling, unwieldy and inefficient industrial giant shambling its way from crisis to crisis, a universal joke lampooned by everyone from Fleet Street to The Two Ronnies. But the political mood of the country was changing. Inside British Leyland Stories from those at the coalface. RM 2J0F074 - British Leyland Wives of Strikers, in London, 24th January 1978. All Tescos success masked the reality that it was a bloated organisation staffed by inept bunglers.The brand value of Tesco was all conquering.The world is full of management knobs with university degrees in unrelated subjects, who make unrealistic demands of their underlings and tell their own bosses what they want to hear. The Daily Mail claimed that the car firm British Leyland was paying bribes, and was exposed for printing a ludicrous hoax. It was incredibly the first new model to come out of Longbridge for seven years, but also notable for the utilisation of modern robot technology to produce it. 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. Learn how your comment data is processed. It needs to be left alone. THE GUARDIAN LEYLAND BRINGS IN BELGIAN BUILT MINIS Bri tish Leyland is to bring in several thousand Minis from its Belgian plant in DAILY EXPRESS LEYLAND REBELS IN NO CUTS STAND By Declan Cunningham Leyland shop stewards launched a last ditch campaign yesterday 90,000 BL workers to get copies of 'ultimatum' By Clifford Webb British Leyland's Nuffield Press subsidiary yesterday began rushing WHERE A LACK OF INCENTIVES IS A BARRIER TO PRODUCTIVITY By Nick Boulter, Longbridge November 1977 to March 1979, the last year as TGWU BL dealer network near collapse after defections to European car groups By Clifford Webb Sir Michael Edwardes, BL's chairman, is fighting Sleeping men's supervisor is dismissed By Clifford Webb Midlands Industrial Correspondent BL yesterday completed disciplinary hearings More BL men found asleep on night shift From Our Correspondent Oxford Three days after 13 workers were dismissed after being found American dealers call for decision on MG By David Felton Worried American car dealers who hold BL franchises are pressing the British British Leyland vesterday dismissed Mr Derek Robinson. Then Aldi and Lidl arrived and the facade melted away. Ian is unable to help with technical queries he pays other people to fix his cars! Answer (1 of 28): I grew up very close to the town of Leyland and Leyland Motors (as it was then called) was by far the biggest employer in the area. Archive : 1979 from the National Archives, Archive : Sleeping foreman loses dismissal case against BL. Classic car tax exemption: what you need to know. As a young man, his first job was selling the newly launched Maestro at a BL dealership in his native Cumbria. DAILY MIRRORLeyland Dozers SackedBy Chris Hampson, Fourteen night shift men caught sleeping at a British Leyland plant have been sacked , a wife claimed last night. The company remained a ward of the state for 13 years. The SOLICITOR-GENERAL for SCOTLAND (Lord McCluskey) "He's to be hugely respected.". Modified date: August 5, 2017. Indeed it almost looks like Corsas, Combos and Vectras had a salmon pink colour option! But at Drews Lane we still have an extraordinary situation. "He may well have had absolute belief in what he was doing, but few others did," Mr Cox added. He left school aged 14 to begin work at the Austin plant at Longbridge, initially as an apprentice toolmaker. Back in 2011, I visited a fair-sized barn in North Yorkshire full of Maestros, Montegos and the odd Metro. BL began selling its interests in the 1980s, and by 1990 the Ford Motor . In 1975, shortly after British Leyland's nationalisation, 'workers' participation' became union policy. "He is quoted as saying: 'If we make Leyland successful, it will be a political victory. The demise of the firm was nothing to do with the design and engineering. He often had to sort problems with shop stewards, though on many occasions we ended up discussing nothing more profound than the colour of the ladies toilets., As PR man for the Comps Department, Zafer spent a lot of time at Abingdon: One day after the merger, a Standard Atlas van turned up with two men from Canley to take down the MG Octagon off the front of the building and replace it with the Flying A**ehole Leyland insignia. The pamphlet said: All our efforts and resources must be mobilised to change the policy of closures and contraction. Mr Robinson led the fight back, organising hundreds of disputes. A little later, through a window, he saw two men, naked from the waist up. Five minutes afterwards Mr Yates came out. 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. Following his dismissal, Mr Robinson worked as a tutor in trade union studies during the 1980s and 1990s, teaching shop stewards. Keith Adams Youll find that spending time reading Ian Nicholls excellent set of stories about, Clive Goldthorp THE real significance of Honda Motor Company Limited (Honda) President and CEO Takeo, THE GUARDIAN Production should be back to normal today at two Midlands car plants where, British Motor Holdings the joining of BMC and Jaguar. That had to be the responsibility of management.. Read about our approach to external linking. Location: Leyland, Lancashire. In this article DAVE LYDDON analyses the forces at work in British Leyland. Mr John Share, personnel manager, said the company was satisfied that Mr Yates had allowed men to sleep on a night shift and had allowed clocking offences in which he had taken part. "These words are a suitable epithet for a stalwart of the trade union movement, whose passing we mourn.". The case against me was brought following publicity and not on the facts.. All this was occurring at the same time as the crisis confronting BL over its decision to fire Longbridge Convener Derek Robinson. 1970 Ferrari 512M track test Group 5 great driven at Paul Ricard, Driving the legendary Bentley 3 Litre and Bentley 4 Litre. Appointed in 1977, the combative South African businessman Sir Michael Edwardes cut the number of workers almost in half at British Leyland, from 172,000 to 90,000. He will give evidence today. DeSantis won't say he's running. They had begun a policy of non-cooperation following the managements moves to stop workers leaving before the shift was completed. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. British Leyland would once again become a privately-owned company and the size of the state sector would be reduced. "We all worked like hell to make it work" Inside British Leyland. Permanent Salary: 27,043 - 33,453pa; Hours: Monday - Friday 09:00-17:00 Friday 09:00 - 14:00; Person Specification Six hundred workers had been laid off indefinitely because of a shortage of suspension units caused by a work to rule by 150 workers at the transmission plant at Drews Lane. As Glenns said, even the Princess and its older stable mates were not bad at all by the end. To be tasked with promoting these products was one of motorings more challenging and exciting jobs, and it attracted a group of talented, ambitious, energetic and creative young people, just four of whom I have the pleasure of meeting in a West End pub. Mr Robert Yates, British Leyland foreman, was dismissed for allowing men to sleep on the night shift at the Rover works in Solihull, West Midlands, an industrial tribunal was told yesterday. Am I being targeted by an overpayment scam? Learn how your comment data is processed. Mr Lampett, who joined Rover 22 years earlier as a Tool Setter, said: I believe I have been treated very harshly. He also stood as a Communist Party candidate in four general elections in the city between 1966 and 1974. He added that communists active in Unite "mourned the loss of their most distinguished veteran, a mentor and guide to us all". I hadnt been there for many years. He was in charge of 32 men on the night shift who were dismissed, disciplined, or 'who resigned rather than be dismissed. Mr Robinson was among those trade unionists soon to lose their grip on power. Union convenor Derek Robinson had been dismissed months earlier by British Leyland's chairman Michael Edwardes. Seth Smith joined Leyland Motor Corporation as Triumph press officer in 1967, and in 1968 helped with the famous announcement of the Leyland and BMH merger. The UCPI is a damage limitation exercise by the British state, established in 2015 after the exposure of widespread use of undercover police agents against political organisations. The men at Drews Lane had worked to rule for several weeks in protest at management attempts to stop them leaving early. This means employees can complete their daily stint, or work quota, and then go home at any time from 3.00pm onwards, but still be paid to the end of the shift. The odd 1m going missing (I would have paid money to see the auditors face when they found that little gem), contractors doing nothing for weeks at 100 a day because the bloke who set the administration lock password buggered off for sunnier climes without telling anyone what it was. However, someone should have really gone at Lyons (head of Jag) and put him firmly in his place. The long-standing custom and practice of allowing men to go home early once they had completed their quota of work was a thorny industrial relations issue. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Robinson was not reinstated. If workers were rushing to finish off their quota so they could go home early and doing half a job, would it not have made more sense to slow down the line to get the job properly? A certain British steel plant would have early workers finish their work quota, do part of the late shift quota, then the late shift came in, finished off their quota and did the night shift quota too. A communist, he had led 523 walkouts at the Birmingham car plant during a 30-month period, gaining the nickname Red Robbo from journalists and becoming an increasingly divisive national figure. The general secretary of Unite, Len McCluskey, said: Derek Robinson was a dedicated lifelong trade unionist who fought, as convenor, for the rights and future of the then British Leyland workforce at the Longbridge plant in Birmingham during the 1970s. Year: 1977. Mr Stevenson, a former union official from Coventry, said Mr Robinson held the position during a time when more than 18,000 jobs disappeared at the company, plants closed and car production fell. Sounds very like British Leyland at the start of the seventies, four out of ten new cars were British Leyland and imports were still rare, if slowly gaining ground, and a few customers werent happy about the quality of the new Maxi. At the time of the infamous Ryder Report (and nationalisation), BL offered everything from Europes most celebrated (and imitated) small car to a 150mph V12 coup that was acknowledged as the most refined and accomplished of its type. Do they take well to polishing, T-Cut, or is a respray the remediation? Mr Robert Yates, British Leyland foreman, was dismissed for allowing men to sleep on the night shift at the Rover works in Solihull, West Midlands, an industrial tribunal was told yesterday. I dont think we realised what halcyon days we were living through at the time., AT THE TIME, BRITISH LEYLAND HAD THE BIGGEST ADVERTISING BUDGET IN THE UK, AS PEARSON RECALLS: LORD STOKES WAS COGENT, ACCESSIBLE TO ALL AND A LISTENER!. VideoAt the crash site of 'no hope' - BBC reporter in Greece, Covid origin likely China lab incident - FBI chief, Ukraine war casts shadow over India's G20 ambitions, Blackpink lead top stars back on the road in Asia, India anti-corruption crusader fighting to clear his name, Exploring the rigging claims in Nigeria's elections, 'Wales is in England' gaffe sparks TikToker's trip, Record numbers of guide dog volunteers after BBC story. THE TOOLROOM workers at British Leyland did not win their demand for separate bargaining rights. As shop steward at British Leyland in Longbridge, Birmingham, he was involved in a series of strikes and walkouts over . Odd we never ever had a BL product..Incidentally Ive never ever seen a red SD1 before.. Did they suffer from the Renault red effect? British Motor Holdings merged with the Leyland Motor Company to form the British Leyland Motor Corporation on January 17, 1968. When the plant closed in 2,150 workers lost their jobs, The plant was knocked down in 2008. . After two days of disciplinary hearings and appeals, BL dismissed 13 Land Rover car workers, who had been caught sleeping on the night shift. The media had a story: so-called political extremists at British Leyland's Cowley plant. Following his death on Tuesday aged 90, BBC News examines his legacy. Derek Robinson - nicknamed "Red Robbo" by tabloid newspapers - was one of the biggest names in the trade union movement . Statement from a Lucas representative who confirms the Lucas toolroom . This British Leyland collection is diverse, huge and full of interest. Williams Lyons. 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. One night him and his mate who were on the maintenance nightshift went to sleep in the cupboards. Leyland Dozers Sacked. The sleeping on the night shift story went quiet until the New Year of 1980. If you want to see the true horrors of 1970s workplaces, have a look at the ship building industry. BL still conjures images of half-finished Marinas and Allegros on desolate production lines and a militant workforce that appeared to be looking for any reason to down tools. document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value",(new Date()).getTime()); This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. The story first hit the headlines on 12 November 1979 when it was revealed that 14night shift workershad been caught sleeping at a British Leyland plant. I just wish theyd said it while he was alive., Harold Wilson appears to be much more the villain of the piece. By Chris Hampson. When former Triumph and Leyland Special Tuning man Richard Seth Smith arrives, proffering a rare Rover SD1 press pack, all concerned nod sagely at the suggestion that this was yet another brilliantly conceived but indifferently executed car. Good condition, owner's inscription on flyleaf. Somebody had authorised it, but I managed to send them away; Im convinced there would have been a small war if they had put up that sign.. Undermining the shopfloor If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. Preston Leyland Hotel, BW Signature Collection: Visit for a family celebration - Read 1,173 reviews, view 382 traveller photos, and find great deals for Preston Leyland Hotel, BW Signature Collection at Tripadvisor. In 1975 Robinson succeeded Dick Ethridge, a fellow Communist Party member, as the AEU convenor at Longbridge. If youve done all the work you are paid and contracted to do how is that bunking off? The night shift came in and went to sleep. Thatcher provided British Leyland with 2.9 billion pounds ($4.4 billion) of taxpayer money from 1979 to 1988, Rhys said. Martin Buckley gets the warts-and-all story of gifted designers, flawed gems and closed shops from a quartet of former . In this occasional series Ian Nichollsrevisits some of these stories, using the newspaper articles of the time as the main source of information. The director believes Mr Robinson was "betrayed" by a union leadership with whom he had a thorny relationship. 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.. Martin Buckley gets the warts-and-all story of gifted designers, flawed gems and closed shops from a quartet of former colleagues. A further confrontation with the Transport and General Workers Union over BLs imposition of new working practices in April saw market share slump further to 13 per centin June 1980. The spokesman at the Land Rover plant in Solihull: We do not condone sleeping or dozing in working hours.. Mr Robinson, one of the most famous trade unionists of the 1970s, was dubbed Red Robbo by the media. "His legacy ought to be that you've got to fight," said Mr Loach. ( Somehow an orchestra trying to perform a punk record would be comical). 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