Derek Robinson, aka 'Red Robbo', good or bad?

[Sigmund Fraud]

Wow!

 

Love the bit about the overly complicated rear axle. Semi trailing arms baffle me too. It scares me to even think about them.

 

I presume he means complicated compared to the live axle and cart springs of the Marina ?

[freebird]

I formed this opinion after having owned an 1802 for a year and then driving a friend's Marina 1.8 TC.

Again, I totally disagree that the Marina was a pig to drive fast. The opposite is true. It's great fun to thrash it around.

The BMW was tricky and comparatively unpredictable, and its Achilles Heel was always the overly complicated and fragile rear axle.

Also, the Bimma had those pre-war-style standing pedals, like the Beetle. They were shit.

 The only REALLY good thing about the TC was the sound it made.

......and the early interiors...and they looked good with those sports wheels.

Marinas, per se, were ok, but were pretty outdated even when they were launched. 

The vans used to go like the clappers, in fairness, quicker than the Escort van but the Escort was far better to drive.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I had a Marina, a 72 K 1.3 Deluxe Moredoor in Black tulip with the red interior. I gave 20 quid for it after I spotted it had been festering outside Misterton (Crewkerne) train station for a few weeks. It had a Teal blue front wing arc welded on and the first job was to nip to Halfords for a couple of Dupli-colour rattle cans to spray the front wing. I also swapped the letters on the number plates so KPB905k became KKB905P. Like I and the local plods gave a flying one - I was too busy thrusting in my late plate pre facelift, chasing floozies. MOT? Tax? What?

 

Fond memories of it, but it was garbage just like the rest of them.

 

However, as crude as they were, the Marina made a horrible car but a very good Van.

[oldford]

All the companies within BL forgot that they were part of BL and were competing with each other.  Morris competeing with Austin for sales whilst selling the same products and why did Triumph spend a shed load of money on a V8 for the Stag when Rover had a perfectly good one?

 

Blinkered management, miltant unions, employees that were given no sense of being needed or invovement with the company and the thought that the government would never let it go the wall.

 

Apparently the cure for a juddering 1.3 Marina clutch is to fit a clutch for a mark 2 Escort.

[dollywobbler]

Donald Stokes was a "truck & bus man" who achieved great success in that specialist area. The volume car industry was a completely different game; taking over Standard-Triumph, Jaguar and Alvis didn't make him a "car man", as later events with BL proved.

 

Stories about walkouts & football matches & tea-breaks are all very amusing, but never should it be forgotten that the main reasons for industrial unrest were unfair wage rates, Dickensian working conditions and arrogant dismissive management.

 

When withdrawal of labour is the only weapon left, that is what will be used.

 

I don't think the stories about 'wildcat' walkouts for football matches are amusing at all. Longbridge was terrible, Solihull could be even worse. Seem to recall the nightshift caused a stink by sleeping on the job and when the management kicked off about it, the unions went all strikey. A union has to do more than protect the workforce - surely it needs an element of sense that realises that there's no protection for the workforce if the parent company goes bust? Unions did their best to scupper several car launches by making the new cars unavailable. Strike if you really have to, but if you keep doing it, don't be surprised if the company goes bust. Clearly there were massive management issues, but striking didn't do anything to resolve that did it?

[brickwall]

Oddly enough there is good truth in what Junkman says. It was amazing that we would build crap cars, but spending a bit more and getting a spicier upper model completely changed the the car in ability and build quality. I saw it with the Granada, Hillman Hunter, Vauxhall Chevette, Metro Gta, Morris Marina.

 

Hmm.

[catsinthewelder]

I worked at a TV tube factory up in Durham around 2000-2002 and the attitudes hadn't changed.  The workforce didn't expect to work very hard and tried to operate to a system of 40 mins on 20mins off,  it shocked me after working for smaller companies since leaving school.  It's shut now like most of the rest of british industry.

 

In the Victorian age the unions did a fantastic job to get the working man a fair deal.  In the 70s they ruined it and now we are suffering. 

[brickwall]

Aye, I worked up the TV factory in Cumbernauld back in the 90s. We worked as slowly as possible and I couldn't help speeding up.

 

A joke really.

[scruff]

Going back to Derek Robinson - I am sure I read somewhere he ended up as an advert salesman (?) for Socialist Worker, might have been an interview in Car.

[brickwall]

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".

 

 

 

That's like a billion today or something in one year. Cripes!

[Andrew353w]

I've vague memories of a T.V. piece made in the late 1970's of the factory workers at Longbridge. At 5p.m. the hooter for the end of the shift would sound & they'd stream out of the gates, clearly having been hanging around the gates for "some time" awaiting its sonorous tones... (how much working time was lost as a result of staff thinking the hooter is the time you leave, as opposed to the time you actually stop working would be an interesting debate...) and they'd all jump in their cars & drive off the site. The cars they drove away in were Datsuns, Fords and VWs...  

 

Q.E.D.!

[worldofceri]

I don't really care much for the debate over who was to blame for the Demise of the British Motor Industryâ„¢.

 

Apportioning criticism to individuals seems irrelevant to me, although the anecdotes are entertainingly amusing/shocking.

 

What I'd really like to know is, have any lessons actually been learned?  History tends to repeat itself, and I don't think the general attitudes of working men, management, unions, governments have changed in forty-odd years.

[brickwall]

I agree, but human nature then allows the pendulum to swing the other way to its extreme.

[Wilko220]

 

What I'd really like to know is, have any lessons actually been learned?  History tends to repeat itself, and I don't think the general attitudes of working men, management, unions, governments have changed in forty-odd years.

 

I think lessons have been learned and attitudes have changed - UK car factories now have a reputation for being very productive. Sadly it's all come too late to save the British-owned motor industry though and it's Nissan, Honda, etc running the show.

[worldofceri]

I dunno.  I think to a certain extent it's still 'them and us'.  But then I'm too young to have experienced the '70s/'80s situation first hand so I'll take your word that things have changed.  They certainly have on the outside but I think (despite the recession) the relative prosperity we enjoy now helps.

[freebird]

Nowdays, If you are being balloted for industrial action/voting to accept or reject, you do it from the comfort of your own home and you can do it without revealing how you have voted.

No more intimidation or having the shit kicked out of you to make you tow the line and no show of hands bollocks in car parks. Its that which really changed things.

I doubt If there would have been half the strikes in the 70s had people been allowed to vote the way we do now.

Yes, there is still a "them and us" thing going down. I think my management are clueless twats and they think, because people like me have been on the tools for nearly 25 years, we are inflexible dinosaurs that they would LOVE to replace with black one legged lesbians because they are a "Dynamic 21st Century business that embraces diversity etc, etc.

They deny all this, of course...

Thing is, Im fully aware that I work with some utterly useless, lazy, cut and run merchants that the Company would dearly love to fuck off out the door but they cant.

Workers have rights, as they should, but it now protects the wanker and pisses of the grafter who has to run behind them sweeping up their shite.

I, probably, vote at least once a year, normally on a pay offer.

There is no longer the stomach to strike, we simply cannot afford to and, to be fair, my Union has NEVER, in all the years ive been there, ever recommended Industrial action.

Conversely, they seem to recommend that their Posties come out every fuggin week. 

Wont they get a fucking shock when they are privatised.

[Pete-M]

A lefty Mate of mine said to me recently that "Thatcher ruined the British car industry in the UK. The Germans did what we should have and spent billions on fixing their industry, we just left it to rot"

 

I pointed out that the German workers weren't on strike, that the German workforce accepted that some of the wasters in the factories would have to go to make things efficient and they did what it took to make the German motor industry workable - whereas ours went on strike over everything and would go on strike if they were told they had to be more productive.

 

Nationalisation of the British motor industry combined with our of date practices, in-fighting, Red Robbo and the unions and the general shit this country was in by 1979 finished it for good.

 

If Rover had been left alone in the 60s they'd be up there competing with BMW now. Jaguar would probably be the one that would have folded. We'd possibly still have Triumph too. Instead, we've got nothing left. A few manufacturing plants turning out foreign cars to world beating standards.

 

We are capable of doing great things in this country, but everything got massively out of hand in the 60s with nationalisation and in the 70s with the unions having far too much control and not enough restraint. The decline of UK Car manufacturing I put down to these two things. We should never have tried to nationalise the car industry and there's no way on earth rabid Communists like Robinson should have been allowed to gain anywhere near the power he had

[Cavcraft]

Can we have Focus Vs Astra again next?

[e287yba]

Going back to Derek Robinson - I am sure I read somewhere he ended up as an advert salesman (?) for Socialist Worker, might have been an interview in Car.

 

Russell Bulgin covered this in one of his monthly columns. A very interestng read it is too... (And no, I can't immediately put my hands on that issue, but I will post it up when I do.)

[Rocket88]

Robinson was far more interested in furthering his chances of becoming a Union grandee than keeping his members in work, with a decent wage. That said, the arrogance with which management treated their work force was breathtaking.

[oman5]

Read this book:

 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/British-Leyland-Chronicle-Crash-1968-1978/dp/147756067X

I just have-thanks for the heads up. fascinating stuff

[Guest Breadvan72]

My father, having met Robinson as noted above, regards him as a Trotskyite entrist, who wanted things to get worse for the workers so that, through proletarian revolution, things could get better.    This was a dumb plan.

[Rocket88]

In a Utopian society, the ethos of Communism makes perfect sense.But only if we ALL are allocated beige Talbot Horizons.........

[oman5]

Robinson was a firm advocate of  "means of production being controlled by the workers". I find some of the communist ideals prevalent in the unions  frankly bizarre in a company dependent on capitalist consumerism for its very existance.

It is very likely that some strikes, however, were engineered by the company itself as a means of stopping over production. BLs market share shrunk year on year through the '70s, they were after all making cars that people didn't want to buy.fields full of unsold stock did accumulate from time to time.

[warren t claim]

http://autoshite.commlm/topic/10241-bl-speke-and-the-unions-from-the-inside/?hl=speke

[chaseracer]

In a Utopian society, the ethos of Communism makes perfect sense. But only if we ALL are allocated beige Talbot Horizons.........

That's the best definition of Utopia I've heard yet. It could just work...

[Junkman]

The inconvenient truth is, despite being permanently slagged off in the day, many 70s BL designs aged better than a lot of other overhyped shit from that decade.

[John F]

The inconvenient truth is, despite being permanently slagged off in the day, many 70s BL designs aged better than a lot of other overhyped shit from that decade.

 

 

Haha! Like what?

 

The Maxi? The Ital? The Allegro?

[oman5]

I would go out on a limb and suggest the SD1. to my eye at least its still a remarkably attractive design and not obviously from the '70s.

[dollywobbler]

Not sure I agree about it not looking 1970s - I think a Series 1 SD1 is the very essence of the 1970s - but it remains a remarkable design that made many of its rivals seem rather plain and ordinary by comparison. 

 

I prefer the Series 2 myself - a bright red Vitesse remains a fabulous looking and very competent bit of kit (I'd settle for a moonraker blue VdP Efi though).