One more last working class hero

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1. CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
These are also powerful arguments against any
naive, fixed or essentialist concept of masculinity:
masculinities are recognised as diverse, socially
constructed and structured in terms of their own
hierarchies, notably between hegemonic
masculinity/ies and subordinated masculinity/ies
(Carrigan, Connell and Lee 1985; Connell 1987
cited in Hearn 1994: 53).
1.1. INTRODUCTION
This cultural audit of the fire service is about firefighters: a group of mostly white men who so organise their work as to be
able to construct what I identify as firefighters’ masculinity. At times this report is controversial and whilst many will
support what follows, some will be uncomfortable with the findings. More likely the majority will find that they support
much of what they read but have reservations about some parts. This is the way in academia as in the fire service; it is
impossible to please all the people all the time. However, this report did not set out to be controversial (or to please), it set
out to provide an evidence-based account of life in the fire service. I think I have done this and as it mainly features my
successful doctorial thesis, it has passed at least one test. Now I am submitting to a wider, more practitioner based
audience. I hope that firefighters recognise their voice in the text because it is their words that feature in this work and
provide the evidence for the analysis. To firefighters, I say I have listened to you and if you recognise yourself then please
take note of the analysis. More importantly, when you read things you find difficult to accept, challenge the writing and
yourself, we can learn a lot about ourselves by reading what other people think about us. The first subject in this
introductory chapter is about how I came to use the term ‘firefighters’ masculinity’. Second, I will introduce the questions
that I used to interrogate firefighters’ masculinity. Third, I will describe my methodology and, in so doing, explain that I
intend to give a very hands-on account of the fire service. This will involve my using, as part of the research, my own
experiential knowledge of being a firefighter for over thirty years. Fourth, I shall introduce the history and organisation of
the fire service. Much of this is inevitably analytical, but I am not attempting to pre-empt the findings of the five chapters
that will follow this introduction. My aim is to use my experiential knowledge to put into context the fifth task, which is
an overview of relevant gender and class debates. Finally, I shall introduce the next five chapters, which are based on the
words that firefighters gave to me.
1.1.1 Firefighters’ masculinity
Most firefighters develop skills/qualities/attributes in common. Generally, these associate with what firefighters recognise
as their main job, firefighting. Moreover, because firefighters are mostly men, they form up in an informal hierarchy
through which older firefighters pass down to younger firefighters their knowledge about the skills/qualities/attributes
necessary for firefighting. Apart from firefighters being mostly men, the organisation in which they work is also
predominantly white, working class, heterosexual, able-bodied and pseudo/para-military 1 . The fire service is also
institutionally sexist, racist and homophobic (see Baigent 1996; HMCIFS 1999) and following this research, I suggest it is
institutionally conservative. However, alongside the skills/qualities/attributes that younger firefighters learn from their
peers in the informal hierarchy on the watch, they are also offered (and frequently accept) other forms of behaviour.
Much of this behaviour will be familiar to them, and likely represents their chosen preference as boys, youths and now as
firefighters, to achieve the “false monolith of what men are supposed to be” (Hearn 1996: 211). In this respect, this report
will suggest that firefighters’ ‘false monolith’ is one that they develop both individually and as group through their
informal hierarchy.
It is possible to continue using and extending the list of social characteristics that describe firefighters’ behaviour,
but it is not practical. I have therefore chosen a term that might describe this collective behaviour for firefighters. Whilst
I accept that this is not everybody’s preferred option, not the least mine (because I accept that the term is so ubiquitous as
to have no fixed meaning), I am going to call this behaviour firefighters’ masculinity. I am using this term because
without a label for the way firefighters act this report will fail in one of its key aims, which is to encourage male
firefighters to look again at how they behave at work (which they may call their natural masculinity). In particular, I
would note that whilst firefighters may talk about masculinity in a generic sense as if all men had it, they would, when
pushed, identify firefighters’ masculinity as characterising something different, even something special that ‘other’ men
do not achieve.
It is true I could spend a considerable part of my work discussing what would, or would not, be a possible label for
firefighters’ behaviour, and this would include an extensive theoretical debate about identity. I will say it once (to make it
1 99.2% are men, 98.4% are white; see Appendix 1).