Rodney Bickerstaffe
Rodney Kevan Bickerstaffe (6 April 1945 – 3 October 2017) was a British trade unionist. He was General Secretary of the National Union of Public Employees (1982–1993) and UNISON (1996–2001), Britain's largest trade union at the time. He later became president of the UK National Pensioners Convention (2001–2005). Early life and education Born on 6 April 1945 in Hammersmith, London to Elizabeth Bickerstaffe, from South Yorkshire, who had been finishing her nursing training at Whipps Cross hospital in the heavily bombed East End during the Blitz. She had a brief romance with a carpenter from Dublin who returned to Ireland and ceased all contact. She and her son lived for three years in east London in a home for unmarried mothers. He then moved to Doncaster among extended family. He was educated at Doncaster Grammar School and in sociology at Rutherford College of Technology. Much later, in the 1990s, Bickerstaffe's quest to find his birth father finally led to his mother revealing his father's possible whereabouts. Rodney discovered that his father, Thomas Simpson, had died in 1991 but Bickerstaffe subsequently discovered three Irish half-brothers. Career Bickerstaffe became an organiser for the National Union of Public Employees (NUPE) in 1966 in