One more last working class hero

during the war (1941): a situation dominated by London, which had the largest number of professional 10 firefighters 11
and was able to dispatch them as officers and trainers to areas with little or no provision for firefighting. After the war,
The Fire Services Act (1947) returned the fire service to local authorities, but it appears that the whole tradition of the
modern fire service had its foundations in a model established in London (see Blackstone 1957; Holloway 1973; Segars
1989).
1.3.2. Fire Services Act (1947)
The Fire Service Act (1947) established that in England and Wales local government is responsible for appointing a Fire
Committee to provide an efficient fire service that will protect life and property from fire, and render humanitarian
services. To comply with this requirement local government in England and Wales provides for 50 brigades with 589
wholetime stations and 139 day crewed stations (Audit Commission 1995). Staffing these stations are 33,499 wholetime
firefighters of which only 285 are women, 324 are black and 56 Asian (see Appendix 1). There are also 868 retained
stations staffed by 14,969 retained firefighters: 14,397 are men, 301 are women, 35 are black, 16 are Asian 12 . The total
annual cost is £1.6 billion—55% of which represents professional firefighters’ wages (see HMCIFS 2001) 13 .
Government also accepted in 1947 that there would be national pay and conditions of service for firefighters negotiated
between the employers and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), and that the FBU also had authority on technical questions
within the fire service: a situation that still remains today (Segars 1989: 342).
The Government maintains control over the fire service through Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Fire Service
(HMIFS), which reports to the relevant Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (OPDMS) on fire service
efficiency. Historically HMIFS have concentrated their efficiency inspections on the firefighters’ product: the saving of
life, property and the rendering of humanitarian services. However, as in all government organisations over the past 20
years there has been an expansion of the terms of reference for efficiency (see Maidment and Thompson 1993; Corby and
White 1999). Now HMIFS inspect to identify areas where financial savings can be made, Health and Safety, Best Value,
Fire Prevention and even more recently equal opportunities (Fire 1998: 10-11; HMCIFS 1999). The move by the HMIFS
to inspect for wider efficiencies, rather than at point of delivery, represents an increasing gap in the fire service between
officers and firefighters.
1.3.3. Fire service ethos: to provide an efficient service to help the public
Up until the 1960’s, ‘all’ firefighters had undertaken military service. Tradition passed from the military to the fire
service, despite long hours and often-harsh discipline the fire service appeared to have one view about service delivery
(Segars 1989). Officers and firefighters bridged any gap between them by their shared understandings about what I call a
professional ethos: ‘to provide an efficient service to help the public’. This ethos closely links to another shared
understanding, the fire service’s raison d’etre: the saving of life; the suppression of fire and the rendering of
humanitarian services (what in the military might be seen as a sense of honour, see Dixon 1994). Then in the 1970’s
politicians increasingly looked for budget savings in the fire service. At first, almost all uniformed staff resisted these
economies: a shared understanding based on a tradition started by Massey Shaw. Now, on the one hand, you have those
who still want to retain a fire service based on a traditional model of efficiency, which equates to the fastest and best
service delivery: the Massey Shaw model that the public appear to support. On the other hand, you have those officers
4
10 The more usual use of the term professional might follow Hall, (1968; see also Wright 1982; Lucio and MacKenzie 1999; Devine et al 2000) and relate
to the work of recognised professionals, such as doctors, accountants and lawyers. These have a professional body that is: self-regulating and controls
entrance to the organisation and ethical considerations; acts almost as a public trustee, to be relied on to ensure that a profession will retain the highest
standards. Most professionals can be elitist, having undergone a period of higher education, followed by further qualification in work-based
examination/s and time served. Professionals also consider there is status to their work and incumbents attempt to control the work-process, mainly on
the basis that professionals know best how their work should be done. Professional work in the UK can also be identified as predominantly white male
work (Grint 1998: 209-214, 254-256) and in the same sexist terms male managers are increasingly terming themselves as professionals (Kanter 1977;
Collinson et al 1990; Collinson and Hearn 1996).
The fire service is somewhat different having little in the way of educational standards for entry to define it as professional, yet is selective in its
recruitment policy by choosing mostly working class, white, heterosexual males who are able-bodied, physically fit and have to reach high medical
standards. Firefighters are also chosen for a predisposition to learning experientially, suited for team working activities and are expected to follow
masculine standards (see Burke 1997; Chapters 3 and 5;). Firefighters’ use of the term professional has two interpretations. First, the term is selflabelling
by firefighters who see their work as professional in that: firefighters have their own work ethos related to helping the public; firefighters
consider their job has status and characteristics that are not simply rewarded by pay alone; becoming a ‘good firefighter’ involves a great deal of
experiential learning of professional skills learnt on the job (see Chapters 3, 5 and 6; see also Willis-Lee 1993a, 1993b; Manuel 1999; Smith 1999;
O’Brien 2000). In a similar way the army advertise themselves as ‘The Professionals’ and the police take a similar view (see Campbell 1999). Second,
firefighters use the term to differentiate between those firefighters who are employed wholetime (on exacting standards regarding suitability for the job),
as opposed to the retained firefighters, who more often have full-time jobs in other occupations and do not have to fulfil such exacting recruitment
standards. In many areas where retained pumps provide the fire cover there are difficulties in getting enough retained firefighters to staff the appliance,
even on the lower standards applied. As might be expected, wholetime firefighters have a considerable animosity for the retained service, because if it
did not exist there would be more jobs for fulltime firefighters, and the lower standards applying to recruitment might denigrate the status of wholetime
firefighters.
11 Out of the 4272 professional firefighters in the country nearly half of them were LFB (Segars 1992: 139).
12 The retained section of the fire service contains a higher percentage of female and non-white firefighters than the fulltime one. I suggest this occurs
because, unlike the fulltime service, the retained service has difficulty in recruiting sufficient firefighters. Therefore, ‘starved of choice’, prejudice
cannot operate so freely and it may be that female and non-white firefighters are a reserve army of labour, which fills the gap left when white-men are
not available, or prepared, to undertake such work (see Gamarnikow et al 1983: 3).
13 Under the Standing Spending Assessment for 1997/8 the fire service in London costs £34.42 per head, West Midlands costs £27.42, Essex £22.26,
Surrey £22.34 (FBU 1998).