Robin Smith, who has died aged 76, was an industrial relations academic and arbitrator who used his negotiation and conciliation skills in many walks of life. He was also the long-serving chairman of the Friends of Beamish Museum in County Durham, which tells the story of life in north-east England between the 1820s and 1940s.
Robin was born in Leigh, Lancashire. His father, Ronald, was a technical draughtsman, and his mother, Kathleen (nee Hocken), a medical secretary. After leaving Bolton school, at first Robin worked for Barclays Bank, where he became active in the National Union of Bank Employees, but after taking evening classes he gained a degree in sociology from Rutherford College in Newcastle. There he met Monica MacRow, a fellow student, and they married in 1967.
His studies changed the direction of his life: he followed up with an MSc in industrial relations at the London School of Economics, where he and I met, and a PhD from York University, then lectured at Durham Business School, where he built up an industrial relations studies course.
Soon he was appointed an arbitrator at the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), where he demonstrated his great ability at getting opposing parties to work through issues. Subsequently he became professor in the business school of the University of Northumbria (1991-93), and then head of its Carlisle campus until his retirement in 2003.
In his spare time Robin was interested in transport history, and helped to guide the expansion of the Beamish Museum. An associated venture was the reconstruction in 1975 of George Stephenson’s 1825 Locomotion No 1, the first steam locomotive to pull a passenger train on a public railway, by the Locomotion Trust.
As director of the trust Robin negotiated with Japanese enthusiasts who wished to borrow the engine and went out to Japan to accompany it. The replica engine is now at Beamish, together with Puffing Billy and the Steam Elephant, another couple of early engines the trust rebuilt.
A convivial, warm-hearted polymath, Robin was much in demand as a public speaker, and would travel all over Britain giving illustrated lectures to railway and history societies. In between he would organise cycling tours of first world war battlefields with a group of friends.
He is survived by Monica, their sons, Adam and Richard, and three grandchildren.
