One more last working class hero

1.4.6. Cutting the fire service
In recent times, attempts to cut the fire service have almost forced firefighters to act in self-defence again (see Segars
1989; Bailey 19992; Darlington 1996, 1998; Chapter 5). In 2001 a pay campaign started which currently threatens strikes
in the fire service. However, despite some claims about the leadership of the FBU, only a few firefighters show the
revolutionary consciousness 43 that might be expected in such an apparently successful working class organisation. Some
firefighters may be very militant but like printers (see Cockburn’s 1983, 1991a): individual firefighters’ trade unionism
can be seen from a variety of views as either left wing, self-centred or conservative. Lashing out to defend their service
ethos may be an equally rational explanation of firefighters’ behaviour, alongside or instead of the class action and
solidarity that Segars (1989) recognises. One further explanation that will be explored later, is the possible link between
firefighting and masculinity, which firefighters may also be conservatively defending (see Chapters 3 and 6). Whatever
the reason, the FBU mixes a powerful cocktail for resistance and this makes them a substantial union that the employers
have to reckon with.
1.4.7. Shared understandings
Importantly the 1977 strike made obvious to firefighters that the so-called ‘shared understandings’ between firefighters
and senior officers were often little more than a sham. Senior officers, who before the strike appeared to have joint
understandings with firefighters (and therefore held firefighters’ esteem), in 1977 sided with the government 44 . These
officers not only helped to train the troops brought in to break the strike, but led them at fires. Senior officers at the time
made the argument they were defending the public. However, in the light of this report, it is possible to see senior officers
as accepting, if not supporting, the earlier understaffing and bad conditions that firefighters endured. It also appears that
post 1965, when firefighters started to fight back, officers have increasingly sided with the employers, who were first keen
to run the fire service as cheaply as possible and (after firefighters’ gains between the 1960’s and 1980’s) are now intent
on cutting the cost/size of the fire service. Despite the increase in emergency calls and attempts to increase the FP/CFS
duties of firefighters, officers have not stood up (in the way that senior police and military officers have) for their service.
Officers’ position may be less to do with protecting the public from fire and more to do with officers trying to ‘prove’ or
reclaim their authority in an environment where firefighters have become increasingly resistant (see Chapter 5).
However, attempts to cut the fire service remain largely unsuccessful and there have been no compulsory
redundancies in the fire service. In comparison with other groups of unionised labour, firefighters do not experience job
insecurity. The fire service remains one of the few havens where men can celebrate their physical strength 45 and
embodied skills in permanent employment with a pension after 25/30 years 46 . This has the outcome that firefighters,
collectively and individually, can reflexively view themselves in a positive light and not in competition with each other
over jobs (see Burawoy 1979: 67; Collinson 1992: 24, 1998). Of particular interest, the authority of the FBU, gained
during 1960’s, when firefighters were in short supply, has not been eroded as problems over a labour shortage turn into
problems of how employers process 80,000 applications for 120 jobs (see Webb 1998: 26-27) 47 . In part, this may occur
because the FBU have added public support to their cocktail of resistance by successfully manipulating the concept of
Total Quality Management. Rather than allowing politicians and officers to use public interest as a reason for introducing
economies, which in the NHS involves an emphasis on cost, rates of delivery and not ‘customer’ satisfaction (see Lucio
and MacKenzie 1999: 168-169), the FBU have turned the tables by forming an alliance with the public and public bodies
(who are the real stakeholders in the fire service). This innovative use of performance measurement and consumers rights
(to have ‘Best Value’ from an efficient fire service in delivery terms rather than economic) maintains their (firefighters)
service at 1980 levels.
1.4.8. Secondary work: fiddle jobs
Many firefighters have secondary employment (‘fiddle jobs’), through which firefighters use their entrepreneurial skills
away from the station to improve their income. The shift system is well suited to ‘fiddling’ and this second job can boost
firefighters’ incomes above that of their officers. Much of this work is casual labour, but many firefighters operate as self-
11
43 Giddens (1982: 163-164) argues that many groups have ‘class awareness’, which involves an understanding that groups form around norms. He does
not consider that so many have ‘class consciousness’, which he describes as, “conscious of the other classes and relationships and antagonisms between
them.” Giddens goes on to break these into three categories:
1. Aware of other classes and class differentiation;
2. Aware classes are in conflict, with oppositional interests;
3. Revolutionary consciousness.
I will for the purposes of this thesis use the term conservative to describe those firefighters who I consider are ‘aware classes are in conflict, with
oppositional interests’.
44 Segars (1989: 315-316) argues, “It was not until 1977 that firefighters eventually came to terms with both the special nature of their job in an
emergency service and their best interests as working people.”
45 The notion that firefighters have to be strong, which caused the fire service to look for sailors in the past (above), continues today and in research
(Richards 1999: 49-50) over 80% of all respondents considered a firefighters’ job was physical.
46 Whilst firefighting is a manual job, it also involves mental skills. Firefighters should be thought of throughout this thesis as a thinking labourer, whose
workplace is far from the assembly line and officers’ surveillance.
47 Outside of the remit of this thesis, but difficult to ignore, this mix of formal and informal structures appears to provide an efficient fire service that
reflects the wishes of the community and it may be that the fire service provides a good example of ‘Best Value’. If politicians really want to change the
fire service and promote an efficiency based on economics, then they will probably need to implement a root and branch rethink of the formal system.
However, moving towards a cost based criteria for efficiency might work against the secondary stakeholders’ (the public) views on ‘Best Value’, as
Chapters 3, 5 and 6 will suggest.