From the very beginnings the government has manoeuvred to block any attempt to solve this dispute. The FBU have taken a very careful and considered approach to strike action. Firefighters do not want to endanger life, they want a negotiated settlement - if possible. But this looks less and less likely as Blair, Prescott et al intervene to block any progress. They have now openly said - if you want a wage increase it will have to be paid for with cuts. That's what their much vaunted 'modernisation' boils down to, just as the FBU argued from the outset. It is absolutely breathtaking that a dispute which began with firefighters demanding a fair wage, which is what a 40% pay rise would mean, has been turned into a defensive dispute as well, with working practises and 10,000 jobs at risk. This is now a strike to save the fire service from the butchers' knife as well as for fair pay.

The 'modernisation' that the government has proposed, under the guise of the 'objective' Bain report, would have a devastating effect on the service. The job cuts alone would be devastating enough, but they are also talking about reorganising the watch system, whereby the same shift of workers work together in eight day cycles, five days on, three days off, the timetable is set months in advance. They are proposing a conventional shift pattern instead, which will involve an increase in working hours through overtime. It will also mean an increase in the intensity of work because there will be fewer crews, engines, and stations covering the same area. They are even talking about cutting back the number of staff on the night watch; when the greatest number of fire related injuries and fatalities occur.

The government have long been looking at merging the roles of the different emergency services, in order to cut all their budgets. The introduction of combined emergency control rooms, which deal with police, ambulance, and fire calls will decrease the reaction time and the quality of the service. Bain also recommends extending the role of the service; firefighters might end up having to administer complex first aid at the scene of a fire. One FBU member said, "Yes we carry first aid kits, the government wants us to carry defibrillators, but no matter how much equipment they load us with that doesn't turn a fire engine into an ambulance. All ambulances carry fire extinguishers, but that doesn't make them into fire engines." What do they propose next, fitting ambulances with ladders and hoses! These proposals represent an attack on all the emergency services.

The firefighters must win, because if the government succeeds here they will feel more emboldened to attack other parts of the public sector. It is in this sense that the firefighters are fighting for us all. The Blairites have made the firefighters strike political. They have provoked the strike, and intervened to prevent a settlement, because their real agenda is to implement cuts across the public sector, and hand our services over to private sector profiteers. The Blairite clique at the top of the Labour Party is using a workers’ party to attack the workers. The Labour Party was founded by the trade unions to represent working people. It has been hijacked. It is time for trade unions to fight to take it back.

The FBU should stand firm, and continue to make the demand for 30K with no strings attached. The government is trying to wage a campaign to demoralise and sow doubts among some of the members, to encourage divisions and thus paralyse the union. They will not succeed! The only way to respond to these attacks, is to rally the members to move forward and to step up the action. Of course the union should continue to negotiate, but from a position of strength. The government will perceive it as a sign of weakness if more strikes are put off without any progress. To date the firefighters have bent over backwards to settle this dispute amicably. At every stage they have been met by the intransigence of the government. If Blair and co will not climb down then the union will have no choice but to step up the action.

Most importantly the firefighters cannot be left to fight alone, the whole trade union movement must be rallied behind them, to provide money and support. The TUC demonstration through Central London is a great step, but this must be built into a systematic campaign throughout the whole movement, capable of taking decisive action to ensure a victory for the firefighters. Government threats to ban firefighters' strikes and their agenda to attack public services has turned this dispute into a fight between the government and the entire trade union movement. Blair and co have seriously miscalculated. The whole movement must stand alongside the firefighters to ensure their victory. Enough is enough! We are not going to take any more!

The Labour leaders have picked a fight with the unions. Then the unions must fight back, not just industrially but politically, inside the Labour Party, to reclaim it from the Tory clique who have hijacked it. Hand in hand with the struggle of all trade unionists to support the firefighters must go a struggle to reclaim the Labour Party. The fight for socialist policies in the Labour Party, and the fight to defend public services and win fair pay for firefighters are two sides of the same coin.

"My call on Saturday was simply to work within the constitution of Labour to reclaim the party for socialist values and pro-working class policies: to work for greater equality and fairer rewards, for full employment and jobs paying decent wages, for progressive taxation to fund better public services" Andy Gilchrist writing in The Guardian. 04/12/02

From the media coverage you would have thought the event was an Andy Gilchrist press conference at which he was unveiling his plan to overthrow the Blair Government. In reality the clear tone of this meeting, made up overwhelmingly of Labour Party members, (120 delegates and 100 firefighters) MPs and NEC members, was set by opening speaker, John McDonnell MP - "We are the real Labour Party".

The Party was now so devoid of active members, said McDonnell, that in reality the number of people present at the conference, was almost enough to take over the Party. "If Militant were still around" he continued, "they would be over the moon."

Andy Gilchrist received a standing ovation before he even spoke. He gave the statistics on the deaths and injuries at night, to refute the case for reduced night cover. He explained that in fighting fires there was no distinction between full-time and retained fire-fighters, but made clear that if full-timers had to wait for the arrival of retained staff the result would be a significant increase in response times. He highlighted the need for separately trained control room staff to meet the different needs of the 3 emergency services, and suggested that at least one life had already been lost because of the joint control room operated in Cleveland. He listed the names of fire-fighters killed on active duty.

The FBU had actively pursued "modernisation" for an improved service, but there was no way they would accept the job cuts that John Prescott had now shown were at the heart of the Government's case. 10,000 fire-fighters was the equivalent of all the fire-fighters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together. How could cuts like this deliver a better service?

It was only at the end of his speech that Andy picked up on the theme of challenging the Blair Government's political attacks on the FBU. Everyone at the conference was clear that the Government saw the fire-fighters strike as a chance to attack and defeat a strong public sector union - as a lesson to all public sector workers. Rightly Andy Gilchrist recognised that the fight had to be taken onto the political plane, as well as the industrial front, and that the FBU had to join the fight to replace the clique who had hi-jacked the party; to return "New Labour" to real Labour.

Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT, said his union was 101% behind the FBU. He talked about the effect on the London Underground, and explained why some of his members were refusing to work without fire cover. Bob reiterated the need to take the fight into the Labour Party, highlighting the NUR's role in moving the original resolution to establish the Party.

Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary, explained that the attack on the firefighters was part of a sustained attack on the terms and conditions of public sector workers. Newly converted Socialists, Dave Prentis and John Edmonds, were off at the latest Labour Party National Policy Forum, but sent messages of support, particularly to the firefighters.

Alan Simpson MP announced that Campaign Group MPs had now set up a Firefighters Support Group in Parliament, and this would be meeting weekly. "If you want to really piss-off Blair" he said "hold on to your Labour Party card, and get your union to affiliate." This will scare the living-daylights out of them. Tearing up your card was what Blair wanted active trade unionists to do.

Ray McHale,
Ellesmere Port & Neston CLP
& Cheshire UNISON (Personal Capacity)

When you read this letter in the pages of the News Post Leader you will, most likely, be on strike for the third time. I hope you are back at work with a pay settlement you deserve but I have grave doubts that this will be the case.

All the issues surrounding the strike aside, other than no say I wish you a great victory, there have been one or two fundamental questions which have been named as a result of the action you have taken and the way in which the Government have reported.

Firstly, you were forced to take action to rectify a situation of low pay which goes back over 20 years. All public sector workers have been systematically neglected over such a long period that it was simply a case of when, nor if, the dam would burst.

The reason for so much public support was because millions of workers, not just the fire fighters, are underpaid and that all their hopes and aspirations were with you in your fight for a living wage. In all the working class areas in the country and many in the more affluent areas, saw this fight as one they could indentify with and that a victory for you would mean a victory for all. People had had, quite simply enough!

I don't want to go into any detail as to the extent of increasing indebtedness affecting peoples lives and indeed the poverty that has never left our communities since the early eighties, this letter would like to deal with other things, but needless to say all the frustration and anger has finally come to the surface in the form of unequivocal support for your struggle.

Secondly, what has been the government response? I don't need to go into any detail has to what the Prime Minister and his deputy have been up to has it is quite clear that their position from the beginning was to hold down public sector wages claim and indeed, as it transpired, to institute a series of major job cuts.

In effect they wanted to not only deny you a living wages but to put peoples lives at risk by further corroding a service which has been under constant attack from cuts for many years. So there we have the two positions more or less in outline.

I have been on the picket line on many occasions and had many discussions with you. Many of you are very angry at the Government's role in general and Tony Blair and John Prescott's role in particular. Indeed many have expressed their desire never to vote Labour again and after who could blame anyone for feeling that way.

The firefighters feel betrayed by a government which, after all, were elected in 1997 to put right what the Tories had destroyed over 18 years.

With a massive majority this New Labour administration could have transformed the lives of millions of working people. They could have taken the wealth that had been robbed from us through privatization curbed the excesses of the bosses and eradicated sleaze and cured the poverty and ills of the years of neglect which we had to endure. Contrast where we are now with what could and should have been achieved. I need say no more!

The history of our party, I say our party because it still remains the party of the working class despite Blair, is one rooted in struggle and hardship. It was forged in the great industrial battles of the latter part of the 19th century by the trade unions and eventually rose to the greatness of the 1945 government.

It is a party inextricably tied to and derived from the struggles of the working class. Blair and its cronies, however, are not. They are from a different tradition! They represent the aspirations of a liberal and professional class of people whose desire is to shift the party and the allegiance of working people to the political center, to create a party system which is more akin to the American, i.e., the tow party style Democratic/Republican system.

Those of us on the left of the party have opposed this process for years. We have argued that to take the party on this rightward adventure was to capitulate to the needs of the bosses, to pander to the profit system and that this would result in them eventually taking on the working class in open battle in an attempt to hold down the wages and conditions.

However, we must remember, the Labour Party is our party! It does not belong to Blair or Prescott or anyone else for that matter, the Labour Party belongs to the working class. It has, unfortunately, been high jacked, temporally, by a set of ideas alien to the needs of ordinary people and the leaders priorities bare no relation to the reality of life for those on low wages and benefits.

So I would encourage those FBU members who are in the Labour Party not to tear up their party cards and those who don't wish to vote Labour again to think on this.

The only way to win the political battle is to join the party and take the fight to these leaders. Not only would I encourage you to join, but to fight again for the ideas which founded our party, the ideas of socialism, of nationalization, a free health service, decent pensions and the right to work for a living wage and to break the link with big business.

To abandon the party now would, I believe, play into the hands of the present leadership. Many at the top have already expressed a desire (behind closed doors of course) to sever the link with the trade unions. To leave now would let them off the hook.

The present leaders have been found wanting and it is now time for a radical change. They have been given the chance to improve the situation for many for many people and have failed. It is now time to see them off. The course is clear. Join the party! Fight for socialist policies! Remove Blair and his clique! Vote Labour.

Steve Brown
Pegswood Labour Party, and secretary
Wansbeck and Castle Morpeth TUC
(Personal capacity)

Close the fire stations - turn them into flats for yuppies! So says one Philip Stephens, editor of the UK edition of the bosses paper the Financial Times. According to the 'liberal' Mr. Stephens, fire stations should be moved to 'motorway service stations and industrial estates on the edge of towns.' Here they would be far 'better placed' to deal with the sort of work required of them by big business and insurance companies rather than being wastefully placed in areas where just people live - after all who cares about them? Certainly not Mr. Stephens who seems quite happy to accept and repeat all the lurid stories being peddled around about firefighters being fulltime cabbies who hardly do any work and could be easily replaced by part-time amateurs armed with just a bucket of sand and a milk bottle of water. (This may seem to be a wild over-exaggeration but one 'expert' in the Daily Mail has already come close to suggesting just this!)

So the firefighters are moved into nice new cheap prefab stations and all the old Victorian stations get sold off to property developers who can then make a nice profit on them. Funny how 'modernisation' always involves someone making a packet on the side and always at our expense. Naturally Mr. Stephens does not stop at this but carries on to run through all the usual attacks on the FBU, Andy Gilchrist and firefighters in general, almost as if he had been writing for that anti-union rag The Sun. In fact The Sun must have though so too and reprinted the article in their November 19th edition as part of their ongoing campaign to break the strike and have a rerun of the great press slander campaign against the NUM held during the Miners strike of the 1980s. During that 'campaign' the national press operated as an virtual auxiliary of the National Coal Board bosses press office (itself staffed by over 60 people!) in spreading lies about how the strikers were all being mislead, didn't want to strike really, had no case anyway, all took second jobs as the strike continually 'crumbled' - does any of this sound familiar? The ongoing anti-union role of papers like the Sun, Daily Mail, Express, Torygraph etc. etc. - all owned by big business tycoons - once more reminds us of how unfree the press really is when it comes to workers in struggle.

December 7, 2002