Roy Grantham - Telegraph He was equally exercised about poor working conditions, saying in 1972: "Behind the flower-ridden reception areas the rooms are often dirty, dangerous and uncomfortable." Grantham long campaigned for "temp" agencies to be outlawed, saying they employed a "wandering tribe of half-trained gipsy clerical workers." As shop floor militancy took hold, he complained in 1978 that many manual workers were being paid more than managers. Roy Grantham addressing the TUC in 1977 (PA) Roy Aubrey Grantham was born in Birmingham on December 12 1926. From King Edward Grammar School, Aston, he was sent to the coal mines as a Bevin Boy. He emerged to join the Inland Revenue, but left at 22 to become area organiser for the CAWU, and from 1959 its Midland area secretary. Four years later he moved to London as CAWU's assistant secretary; he became general secretary in 1970, continuing in that role through its name change in 1972 and its merger with the GMB union in 1989. He retired in 1991. The first major national issue Grantham faced was the newly nationalised steel companies" refusal to recognise the CAWU, having inherited their own staff associations and with the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation flexing its muscles. Strikes were threatened, but in 1968 the TUC rejected the union's claim. At the 1970 TUC Congress. Grantham moved the resolution for Britain to join the Common Market, saying the alternative was to become the "poor man of Europe." By the next year Labour had moved against the Market, and he was one of only two speakers in favour. Once in, he pressed unsuccessfully for the TUC to take its seats on European bodies, as the CBI had done. In the referendum of 1975 he campaigned for a Yes vote. On the General Council from 1971, Grantham campaigned against the Heath government's Industrial Relations Bill. But in 1972 he was shouted down by his own members at Standard Triumph, Liverpool, when he tried to persuade them to end an unofficial strike. Grantham was voted off the General Council in 1975 after he fell out with the engineers" president, Hugh Scanlon, and Clive Jenkins's ASTMS . There was also resentment on the Left about his support for the Labour government's pay policy. In 1975 Grantham instructed his negotiators to accept the government/TUC guideline of a flat £6-a-week increase, and the next year's Labour Party conference backed the policy at his urging. He now became embroiled in the bitter and protracted dispute at Grunwick, the north-west London film processing firm which had sacked 127 workers who had gone on strike after being refused union recognition. When its proprietor, George Ward, rejected a settlement proposed by Acas in 1977, there was increasingly unruly mass picketing. An employee struggles to get through the picket line at Grunwick Grantham accused the police of provocative tactics, and Ward claimed that Grantham had been howled down by workers at the factory who called him "scum" . Apex first encouraged members (including Shirley Williams) to join the picket, but grew alarmed as the picketing was taken over by extremists. He said the arrival of 1,000 Yorkshire miners to picket would not help; Arthur Scargill, already there, was arrested. Grantham persuaded the strike leaders to accept mediation if Ward would abide by it - but he refused. When the High Court upheld the Acas recommendation that Apex be recognised, Grantham hailed it as "a splendid victory," but the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal. At the TUC Congress, strike leaders lambasted Grantham for not getting other unions to cut off power and supplies, despite his explaining this would be illegal. Meanwhile, fellow leaders were irritated with him for letting the dispute drag on. At the 1978 Labour conference, Grantham appealed for unity with an election approaching. But when the draft manifesto contained fresh commitments to nationalise, he and other moderates warned that they would be hard put to endorse it. When the election was lost, he castigated the Left for its "foolish belief" that the programme was not socialist enough. In 1981 Grantham and fellow moderates formed Trade Unions for a Labour Victory to organise the fightback against the Bennite Left. At the 1982 party conference he moved the resolution paving the way for expulsion of the Trotskyite Militant Tendency . As unemployment topped two million, Grantham, now president of the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, warned that 250,000 engineering jobs could go in a year. Labour had appointed him a director of Chrysler UK, but in 1981 he resigned when the company closed its Linwood plant in Scotland with the loss of 1,800 jobs. In 1985 Grantham was elected chairman of the TUC's employment committee, which crucially set the movement's response to new industrial relations laws. Earlier he might have found the post embarrassing: James Prior, Mrs Thatcher's first Employment Secretary, was an Apex member. In this capacity, Grantham opposed national action in support of striking printers at Eddy Shah's Warrington plant, prompting a move to censure him at his own union's conference. At the 1985 TUC Congress he moved a resolution opposing single-union agreements after the electricians concluded one with Shah, saying it would set the unions against each other. Four years later, when Apex merged with the GMB, single-union agreements with new employers were one of his priorities. Blaming the merger on falling membership, he portrayed Apex as a "victim of Thatcherism." In 1984 Grantham demanded Michael Heseltine's resignation as Defence Secretary after the American-made Harpoon missile was procured for the Royal Navy in preference to Britain's Sea Eagle. He accused the MoD of "fudging the accounts" to justify the purchase by quoting an inaccurate dollar exchange rate and not including VAT. He attacked the government for encouraging Japanese firms to build car plants in Britain while pursuing policies that handicapped British carmakers. But he also suggested that British managers should emulate the Japanese by mingling with workers on the shop floor. Grantham was an executive member of the Labour Committee for Europe, and a Croydon councillor from 1984 to 2002. He was for a time chairman of the UK Temperance Alliance. He was appointed CBE in 1990. Roy Grantham married Maura Teresa Walsh, with whom he had two daughters. Roy Grantham, born December 12 1926, died October 25 2013