by encouraging the adoption of "participation", in fact destroyed the relationship between stewards and the shop floor and left them unable to control unofficial strikes. Relationship with the press, and sacking The filmmaker Ken Loach suggested that Robinson was unfairly smeared by the press of the time; contrary to their depiction of him controlling strikes at will, Loach claimed, he in fact spent much of his time attempting to prevent unofficial strikes. This viewpoint was examined by Loach in part of an (untransmitted) documentary film series, Questions of Leadership (1983). Margaret Thatcher later described Robinson in her memoirs as a "notorious agitator". Many years later, Robinson commented "The pressures were immense but were it not for the ideological understanding that I had, I could very well have ended up with a nervous breakdown". A 2002 BBC documentary series by Peter Taylor revealed that in the late 1970s MI5 had been attempting to undermine Robinson through an agent they had placed amongst his union officials; Edwardes stated that he had been "privileged to read minutes of meetings of the [...] joint committee of the Communist Party and our shop stewards", which had been passed to him via the Government. Robinson was eventually sacked by BL in November 1979 for putting his name to a pamphlet that criticised the BL management, and refusing to withdraw his name from the pamphlet when asked to do so. A ballot on a proposed strike in sympathy with Robinson and against his dismissal was lost, with 14,000 votes against and only 600 in favour. Taylor's documentary suggested that this was a result of the MI5 agent's activity, with Edwardes acknowledging that the removal of Robinson was in some ways necessary for the company's preparations to bring the new Austin Metro into production. Longbridge was being substantially redeveloped and expanded for the new car, whose assembly was heavily automated in comparison to previous models and job losses would have been inevitable: "It was planned only in the sense...well, the answer is 'Yes', from a strategic point of view we knew that we couldn’t have the Metro and him. Whether or not we wanted him to go, his actions made it inevitable that he would have to go". After British Leyland Robinson subsequently applied for several engineering jobs and for a position as an organiser for the AEU in the Midlands, but these were rejected. He became a