Rodney Bickerstaffe

At the beginning of PMQs today Jeremy Corbyn paid tribute to trade union leader Rodney Bickerstaffe. The prime minister had difficulty in composing an appropriate reply. Indeed, she kept stumbling over her words in at least the early part of PMQs.

I knew Rodney Bickerstaffe through his involvement in the Modern Records Centre of the University of Warwick. Indeed, he was a honorary graduate of the University, although there is no tribute to him on the University website.

Jeremy Corbyn paid tribute today his role in securing the minimum wage, and rightly so. Rodney was well to my left, but we agreed on one thing: the continuing importance of manufacturing industry and the need for that to be reflected in the collections of the MRC which was originally set up primarily to house the records of employers' associations and trade unions (as well as the Crossman diaries).

I well remember his pleasure when we examined together some material we had purchased relating to Victor Grayson, the pioneer Labour MP for Colne Valley who disappeared in circumstances never fully explained. The papers concerned one of his biographers, Reg Groves.