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 Yorkshire, rising through the ranks to be divisional officer of the northern division. He then became national officer responsible for members working in local government, universities and the water industry. During the 1978–79 Winter of Discontent he was particularly known for his militancy on behalf of government workers; some other trade unionists blamed him for Margaret Thatcher's subsequent election. Despite that criticism, he told historian Tara Martín López in 2006 that "if I had to do it all over again today, I would do it all over again." In 1981 he was appointed NUPE general secretary. When NUPE, COHSE and NALGO merged to create UNISON in July 1993, Bickerstaffe became associate general secretary. He was elected general secretary in November 1995, taking office on 28 February 1996. Bickerstaffe was a popular and highly visible trade union leader, calling for better rights and fairer treatment for staff working in public services and those transferred to the private sector through national and local privatisations. Although he was not known for aggressive tactics, he was passionate in his campaigns against low pay and for the introduction of the statutory national minimum wage. At the 2000 Labour Party Conference he moved the successful though