One more last working class hero

At this point in the data collection I wanted to find if any firefighters would openly and persistently resist informal
hierarchies. Using my networks, I theoretically sampled (Glaser and Strauss 1967) for such firefighters. One firefighter
was identified to me as not only resisting the informal hierarchy, but also as being harassed by peer group leaders for his
resistance. I interviewed him about his experiences:
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Colin:
There are sheep and there are shepherds, or a shepherd. And a lot of people only see that way and
anything that this person says is always right. And they have got to have their own minds and you get
appreciated for it at the end of the day. If you have got your own mind and people realise that you don’t
mind standing out from the crowd, at the end of the day you will gain respect. It will take time, but you
do gain respect at the end of the day.
(Brigade 4, firefighter, six years’ service, age 25).
How did the ‘shepherd(s)’ operate?
Colin: Just overpowering .. it’s hard to explain, ‘come on lets do this’ and it just rolls. Starts, it’s like a
snowball and it just gets bigger and bigger and you get caught up in it as it rolls and gets bigger. And
that’s the only way I can explain it in our watch.
Colin’s description of probationers’ behaviour, as like sheep following a leader, is common in the fire service. However,
when officers use this language they are often being more derogatory, alluding to all firefighters as a mindless flock, as
opposed to a bonded group. This can particularly apply when officers talk about the FBU’s influence over firefighters:
Shaun: [Firefighters] are like a shoal of fish, they dart here and there 147 .
(BCC student). [My insert].
The context in which this officer makes his comment suggests that firefighters blindly follow the FBU (see Chapter 5).
Despite being pejorative, these metaphors reinforce the informal hierarchy by promoting a view that individuals should
conform/bond and that probationers should simply follow their leaders. The politics of what Shaun was saying will
become more obvious in Chapter 5. As far as Colin is concerned his ‘goatish’ behaviour may be a reaction to the watch’s
refusal to accept his previous experience, not a resistance to the informal hierarchy per se. Colin is finding it difficult to
accept that age or experience before joining the fire service counts for little on the watch: it is ‘time served’ that counts
(see Morgan 1987):
Colin:
It’s been hard to start again, it means nothing to the fire service what I done. I am back to square one
again. I am the new boy. I was the new boy for a couple of years’ at my first station in the Army. Well
you know what its like.
It was Colin’s desire not to go through the process of earning respect again in the social hierarchy, rather than a resistance
to the social hierarchy, which made him a subject of my theoretical sample. The firefighter who pointed Colin out to me
had not realised that Colin has no problem in acknowledging the informal hierarchy in the civilian fire service. Colin’s
difficulties arise, because having served his time and presumably fitted-in with the Army fire service, he does not consider
that any move into a new hierarchy may involve a second set of humiliations. It appears that to ‘real’ firefighters Colin’s
time in the military fire service provides little kudos. Colin must start again.
Colin’s resistance is similar to Jack’s, a conditional resistance, unlikely to challenge the informal hierarchy; a test
of his status made more difficult because of his previous experience in the Army Fire Service. What follows from Colin
and Jack suggests they ‘fit’ within category 3:
Colin:
Jack:
You have got to get on, there are no ifs or buts, you have got to get on with people and if you don’t fit-in
you have got to change your way, or you’re not going to fit-in. But you can change your way to such an
affect that you don’t change completely, but you change to please them, but in your own mind you’re
true to yourself, if you see what I mean.
[My emphases].
I will always fit-in because I have got to work with them, so. I don’t mean it in that way, because I have
got to work with them, I wouldn’t want to alienate myself, because I think you have got to have on a
watch, you have got to be tight. … I will just be myself. I have no reason to want to be anyone else.
[My emphases].
147 This extract was collected during a debate by the Brigade Command Course on the Grey Book dispute (see Chapter 1 and 5). These officers had a
view, challenged by the data from the FBU in Chapter 5, that the FBU were able to blindly lead their members: to an extent they even supported a view
widespread amongst officers in the fire service that there is strong element of radical politics influencing the leaders of the FBU. These officers took no
account of the fact that members of the FBU actually vote to take part in their resistance to employers/officers when national disputes occur, or vote, as it
were, in their informal hierarchies when the resistance is more local.