One more last working class hero

firefighters’, such as Ricky, were put in the middle seat to achieve this effect. It is also interesting that ‘outside’ is
also the location that officers now have at a fire.
Firefighters divide between three groups (although this is not an either or and is contextual on the situation at the
time):
1. those whose beliefs have not moved far from the commonsense view;
2. those who realise the hegemony at work, consciously marginalise the feminist critique, the efforts of the
FBU and employees;
3. the minority of firefighters who publicly support female firefighters.
These first two groups are then partly responsible for why there are fewer female firefighters than might be expected.
They make two convincing arguments:
1. ‘the introduction of females into the fire service has reduced standards and made The Job soft’;
2. ‘female’s ‘natural’ femininity is a source of danger to the men who work alongside them’.
Current debates more often pass both possibilities off as a classic malestream excuse. However, there may be a lack of
sophistication in this approach, because it conflates the two groups of ‘doubters’ rather than looking at them as two
separate groups. My own auto-critique provides a useful clue here; in an unreconstructed organisation like the fire
service, it may be necessary to convince those male firefighters who actually believe the commonsense arguments about
strength and irrationality that these arguments are flawed.
Firefighting, as it is currently practiced, can be a life and death job. Firefighters have to know their colleagues can
be trusted to follow their understandings and the informal but sophisticated tests within their working arrangements
provide this knowledge (see Seidler 1997) 212 . In this context it could be argued that the first group of firefighters above
are not so much rejecting equal opportunities, rather they actively prefer homosociality. This then leads to them only
passing on their skills to those that their socialisation leads them to believe can be trusted to support them: other men.
However, it is possible that homosociality does not only need to be about men preferring to work with men per se. It
could equally be a way of ensuring a preference to work with people who can achieve firefighters’
understandings/protocols/masculinity. To date, commonsense notions, which underwrite traditional gender divisions of
labour, have assumed this understanding/masculinity is essentially male 213 . Now I argue (and to a limited extent have
demonstrated) that the way firefighters ‘prove’ their masculinity whilst firefighting, might not be a male preserve: female
firefighters are doing it as well. This information needs to be made available to firefighters in a way that they can
understand. They are unlikely to just take the word of their employers, or academia: they need some proof that their
hands-on approach to life and the watch (their primary reference group) can recognise.
Once this information is made available to firefighters, they will then have a choice. They can join with the second
group, above, who consciously continue to resist the obvious, that females can learn to be firefighters. Better, perhaps
they accept that their masculinity is something they learn to do: a social attribute that firefighters’ informal hierarchies are
able to teach women as well as men how to be firefighters. Then female firefighters can be treated with no less suspicion
than any other recruit and be freely taught the major and positive attributes that they see as the skills that constitute
firefighters’ masculinity. The less positive attributes, which firefighters might try to impose on each other, can then
become a focus for research aimed at making further change possible. Indeed female firefighters are already doing this,
because whilst they are accepting the way firefighters fight fires, their networks are actively discouraging the negative
behaviour of their male counterparts 214 .
103
6.4. CLASS
The fire service is an unwanted expense for capital, but in an advanced capitalist society, capital cannot do without a fire
service. Firefighters’ work is therefore secure and even more so since local authorities have replaced the insurance
companies who previously ran the fire service. However, the local authorities are in somewhat of a contradictory situation
in relation to the cost of the fire service: on the one hand, the electorate appear to want to retain the fire service in its
current model and on the other hand capital would like to reduce the cost. Similar divisions exist within the fire service,
with senior officers appearing to support the view of capital, and firefighters following and setting the electorates’ view.
212 Such a system inevitably has to deal with those who will not fit-in with firefighters’ protocols for firefighting. Therefore it is not surprising that
firefighters have found ways to exclude or marginalise them to positions where they do not need to be trusted. Such a position might be outside of the
building during a fire and Chapter 3 has shown that ‘deviant firefighters’, such as Ricky, were put in the middle seat to achieve this effect. It is also
interesting that ‘outside’ is also the location that officers now have at a fire.
213 Whilst not wishing to widen this debate at this stage, it would be wrong not to comment on the landmark refusal by the European Courts to refuse an
appeal to allow women to become Royal Marines. In my opinion this decision was based on the very situation of men believing women cannot adopt
their standards in regards to masculinity and how when it came to national security the possibility of upsetting the men and consequently risking national
security, it was more important to deny women equal opportunities. The court ruled that as the Royal Marines were the, “point of the arrow head …
intended to be the first line of attack. … The exclusion of women from service in special combat units such as the Royal Marines may be justified under
Article 2(2) of Council Directive 76/207/EEC of 9 February 1976 on the implementation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women as
regards access to employment, vocational training and promotion, and working conditions, by reason of the nature of the activities in question and the
context in which they are carried out” (European Court 1999).
214 In particular, women’s networks in the fire service are actively discouraging all three of what are possibly the most significant negative aspects of
firefighters masculinity, their institutional sexism, racism and homophobia. It may be that these networks are consciousness raising groups attempting to
raise women’s understandings, but some women resist joining them (see Andrews 2000).