One more last working class hero

elevate their command and control responsibility, outside of the building on fire, as if that were firefighting 26 . Examples
of this appear within the firefighters’ journals, where the description of major incidents often inflates officers’ role to a
point where firefighters’ attendance at the incident almost appears coincidental: an unskilled job that anyone can do 27 .
Such views increase the gap between firefighters and officers, and the way officers marginalise firefighters’ skills, appears
to support firefighters’ view (above) that officers always justify their own position as key in the organisation. It is also
very noticeable that when research takes place by the members of the Divisional and Brigade Command courses at The
Fire Service College (FSC) 28 , it is predominantly about command and control (how officers control firefighters, manage
fire brigades and technical developments): a view that invariably looks down on firefighters and does little to take their
views into account 29 . Further examples of how officers marginalise firefighters’ skills (a point that particularly angers
firefighters), is that at an important incident, it is always senior officers who appear on the television, as if to steal
firefighters’ glory. As one watch-commander pointedly said during a lecture on command and control at FSC, “as soon as
the cameras are around the command structures collapse – the white hats are there.” It appears that until fire service
officers recognise that they have to work with firefighters, rather than operating as if they can order them about, the fire
service will continue to have difficulties in operating to provide best value.
1.3.10. Senior officers’ firefighting experience
Senior Officers operate on a different shift system to firefighters in order for the them all to at least attend fires. They do
this by taking turns at being the ‘duty officer’, who has responsibility to take charge of ‘makeups’ 30 within their area.
However, following the 1977/78 firefighter’s strike, there was an increase in the numbers of senior officers (probably to
improve managerial control). This speeded up promotion then and because more senior officers are needed to replace
them as they retire, it continues to increase the rate of promotion. The experience an officer gets from their time spent as
firefighters has consequently also reduced. It must also be considered that the increase in officers, without an additional
increase in makeups meant that there were fewer large fires for officers to attend. As an example, after the strike
(1977/78) each of the 12 LFB divisions of 11 stations had an increase in senior officers from 5 to 16. Recently, senior
officer numbers are reducing, but there are currently 264 senior officers in the LFB. These officers have to share the
experience to be gained from the 581 makeup incidents that the 112 LFB stations attended in 1998/9. Although a crude
example 31 , this suggests that each senior officer might attend 2 incidents in a year, and because only 19 of these makeups
involved more than 8 pumps, this supports a view that not only is senior officers experience of attending fires limited, but
that only rarely and by chance do senior officers actually attend large fires. In Brigades outside of London, senior officers
may ‘go on’ to fires more regularly, but at most incidents the watch officer will have ‘sent the stop’ before they arrive
(‘stop’ and other messages are sent from fires to inform the mobilising officers at control of the situation at the fire).
One example of the gap developing between officer and firefighters is when firefighters complain that their officers
have ‘lost’ 32 substantial buildings by withdrawing firefighters from the fire too early (see Chapters 3 and 5). This
argument stems from the fact that if a fire is spreading inside a building, it can only be stopped by firefighters ‘getting-in’
to extinguish it (see Chapter 3). There may be some truth in firefighters’ argument that officers withdraw firefighters from
a fire too early, because as the explanation above suggests, officers are now clearly less experienced at actually
firefighting and might err on the side of safety. However, firefighters’ arguments might not be altogether fair when they
accuse senior officers of ‘losing’ a building. It has to be understood that once a fire has reached a certain size and
intensity, then it is very dangerous for firefighters to remain inside the building. Therefore, it is possible that some of
firefighters’ argument will be anti-officer. There are also complicated issues about imagery at work at this time because
8
26 I am not going to comment in detail on the rights and wrongs of single tier entry promotion. However, in Chapter 5 I do suggest the difficulties of
such a system, and here I suggest that the fire service might be better managed if officers concentrated on managing and forgot the notion of being
operational. Officers though are unlikely to propose this because once they were ‘reduced’ to being managers, then managers from outside the fire
service could apply for their job. The single tier entry system would then no longer support their sole right to be officers and the employment of
professional managers would reduce if not stop completely the right of firefighters to rise through the ranks. The way that officers resist the employment
of professional managers may be partly responsible for why the fire service finds it so difficult to change its approaches, especially to equal
opportunities. Strangleman (1998) identifies that railway culture only really changed when managers from the private sector were brought in.
27 Segars (1989: 5) raises exactly the same point when he argues that “most fire service histories … concentrate excessively on chief fire officers and
their role in technical innovation as leaders of men. … The part played by the ordinary rank and file fireman and his importance is totally ignored.”
28 Each student on these two high profile courses has to complete a dissertation from their own research. In the case of the Brigade Command Course,
the research involves an international project funded by the Home Office. All these dissertations are available in The Fire Service College Library. They
are clearly in-house, written for the examiner and therefore unlikely to challenge current wisdom, but they do provide an understanding of the view of
future officers and those who train them. It is my judgement that in academic terms they range between A level standard and Masters.
29 Most of this research is quantitative and little of it involves interviewing anyone, least of all firefighters and those interviews that are done appear not
to have been transcribed. One senior officer at FSC told me about his research and his metaphors were interesting in that they portray a common view
amongst senior officers that running the fire service would be easier without firefighters. He spoke of station-commanders as “sleeping with the enemy”
and about the “pathological behaviour of the watch.” However, aware as they are of firefighters’ ability to resist their actions, apart from innocent
asides, officers do not publicise this knowledge. Nor do they use their research opportunities to look at why the problem exists, but just seek to find
better ways of managing firefighters without identifying the dynamics behind the actors they are trying to manage.
30 This term relates to fires where the officer in charge decides the initial attendance of two appliances is insufficient to deal with the incident and radio
for more pumps to control the fire (see Chapter 3).
31 There is a considerable amount of data produced in Appendix 6 and this particular use of the data hopes to provide an overview and uses averages.
Some senior officers will attend more fires, but that inevitably means others will attend less. The statistics may also be skewed, because at large fires
several senior officers will attend, although only one will be in charge. However, most makeups are not generally large fires: the majority will involve 4
pumps at a single house fire and most of the work will be done before the senior officer arrives. The senior officer might have a considerable distance to
travel to the fire and does not get the call until the makeup is sent (by the watch-commander who has arrived at the fire).
32 The term lost means that the fire has ‘won’, firefighters have had to withdraw and have in effect given in (see Chapter 3).