One more last working class hero

Roger:
You want to go out and do stuff and ‘prove’ yourself and that. Especially when you first come onto
the watch. … ‘prove’, you know, you get a reputation and that everyone says. They probe you and that
.. and you want to show you can fit-in and be part of the team and not be some sort of twat 136 that has ..
just can’t do nothing.
(Brigade one, probationer, 1 year’s service, age 23). [My emphasis].
51
Doing The Job well is the fundamental test for being seen as a good firefighter: firefighters need to be able to walk the talk
in the their own, their peers’ and the publics’ eyes. Identifying that they are looking for public recognition is not
something that firefighters regularly acknowledge. However, Alex is not in anyway reluctant to do this:
Alex:
It’s a good feeling that people sort of like, people sort of like, ‘yeah it’s the firebrigade’. Women
coming up [laughter], coming up to you and giving everybody a kiss or trying to and seeing me and
[laughter] ‘alright then’. Kids love it, everybody just, I don’t think I have ever met anybody who
dislikes firefighters. Unless they have been out with one that is [lots of laughter as I understood Alex’s
meaning that firefighters often exploit their imagery to gain sexual ‘favours’ from females 137 ].
[My inserts].
Two possible further motivations are emerging to add to Hypothesis 3. One is that firefighters may be treating the
opportunity to get-in as a test, through which they can ‘prove’ to a wide-ranging audience that they are good firefighters:
f. Testing: firefighters may be proving to the public, other firefighters and themselves that they ‘fit-in’ with the
image of a ‘good firefighter’ when they are getting-in (a Foucaultian gaze).
The second possible motivation is that firefighters enjoy the publics’ image of firefighting. Getting-in clearly maintains
that status:
g. status building: getting-in may add to the publics’ image of firefighting.
The last three additions to Hypothesis 3 may suggest firefighters take unnecessary risks when they get-in: a possibility
now investigated.
3.5. RISK TAKING
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) are the lead agency on industrial safety and HSE (1984) acknowledged that
firefighters would take risks to do their job. However, the HSE view has changed to a point where ‘Improvement Notices’
place a legal requirement on brigades to improve safety procedures (see Klein 1999: 13). The fire service has responded
to the HSE (Robinson 1998) by issuing new rules and training officers/firefighters in Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA): a
formal protocol that requires firefighters to carry out a risk assessment before getting-in. Chapter 5 describes how
firefighters may see DRA as deskilling, but this chapter will now consider whether getting-in involves risk taking. Two
issues will emerge: first, how firefighters have probably always carried out a risk assessment and that firefighters real
skills allow them to balance their actions on the safe side of recklessness. Second it may be that one skill and secret that
firefighters have is they are able to hide the way they balance safety and risk from the public: something that allows
firefighters to increase the public perception that their job is dangerous.
3.5.1. Is getting-in reckless?
This section will now ask if firefighters are reckless when they get-in, and/or are their actions a very skilful way of living
up to an image? The safety conscious FBU are clear:
I think that is indicative of exactly where the Service is. It surrounds itself in the male macho image of firefighters
who can do anything. That we are all-singing, all-dancing SAS people, and that accidents and burns and injuries are
par for the course. But they are not
(Mathews 1999: 13).
One principal officer who was discussing risk with me supports the FBU suggestion that firefighters may not be thinking
of their own safety when they get-in:
Josh:
They have bugles playing in the heads as they charge in.
(Principal officer).
136 The use of the word “twat” is similar to the word ‘cunt’, an insult based on feminine anatomy (see Hearn and Parkin 1987, 1995; Dixon 1994;
Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 1996). I am reminded of a term that I heard front-line troops use about their officers and their ‘colleagues’ who do not
actually come up to their standards: REMF, this stands for ‘rear echelon mother fuckers’.
137 Baigent (1996) indicates that firefighters often use females as pit-stops for their sexual egos (see Chapter 5).