11.08.2004

Defend the union, defend rank and file

Alan Fox reports on the latest developments in the Fire Brigades Union

There is clearly something wrong with the collective perception of BBC TV programme makers, if 55 degrees north is anything to go by (the six-part series finished on August 10).

An attempt to make yet another cop programme different, by setting it on Tyneside, starts off by making the lead character a black cockney. Then, because it wishes to be politically correct, it feeds in large doses of ethnic minorities, so it looks like scenes from East Enders. In fact I don’t know why they just didn’t paint out the Queen Vic and paint in the Tyne Bridge and move the cast over en masse.

But what about Geordies? This is supposed to be Newcastle upon Tyne - we know that, because we keep seeing fancy shots of the Tyne Bridge, but have you discovered any Geordie speakers? Nope, not a one. Lots of sort of ‘somewhere up north’ accents that they teach in the acting schools, and some Geordie-ish accents, but working class Geordie dialect? Not a ‘gaan’ or a ‘yem’ or a ‘hoose’ to be heard.

So where’s the political correctness in relation to Geordie folk then? We can be excluded from our own city in order to paint a totally unreal picture - in fact make it like any other southernocentric programme with the Tyne as a backdrop, and a few northern vowels: that’ll do ’em. I get heartily sick of this painting out of local and regional differences in order to fit some imaginary image of us all being the same everywhere you go. Doubtless that’s the way they would like it to be, but nobody who lives north of the Watford Gap believes this to be anything other than a totally artificial picture.

Ha-weh, if Glasgow can have Rab Nesbitt and his genuine Glasgow twang, and East Enders can have genuine cockney, any chance of a bit of Geordie for Tyneside? Incidentally, apart from the total destruction of the Northumbria dialect, the programme itself is like watching paint dry. Dull? To the point of suicide.

The EC had already caved in to the employers’ pressure and conceded that night-time stand-down should be relinquished and were prepared to accept that the same form of words relating to duties to be performed on bank holidays should apply as those agreed for night work. The employers, the Local Government Association, at first would have none of it, but eventually proposed an alternative form of words, which were accepted by union negotiators.However, a section of the LGA was unhappy with this compromise, which the majority of local government representatives was prepared to agree, and wanted nothing less than complete capitulation on the part of the FBU. They first of all attempted to persuade Christina Jebb, Liberal Democrat chair of the national joint council (NJC), to cancel its August 2 meeting, which was due to rubber-stamp the deal. She refused - and was subsequently dismissed for her pains. Their next move was to try to get several councillors who normally attend the NJC not to show up, hoping that it would be inquorate and therefore unable to ratify the proposed settlement.

When it was clear that this too would not succeed - most LGA delegates were happy that they had squeezed enough out of the union and wanted to lay the whole matter to rest - a batch of (mostly Labour, but also some Tory) councillors who had never previously participated, and had no particular knowledge or interest in fire authority questions, were sent along to pack the August 2 NJC meeting. Thanks to them, the deal was overturned by a 13-10 vote among the employers (nine of the 13 were hard-line ‘plants’).

It seems that the deal would have been signed, sealed and delivered at the previous NJC on July 29 but for the absence of a National Audit Commission report on that date. As part of the settlement after the 2002-03 strike, the audit office is supposed to assess what progress on ‘modernisation’ has been made. However, the commission’s report, due on July 19, had not been delivered - allegedly “out of respect” for two London firefighters who were killed on duty. This feeble excuse was revealed to be a charade when it was pointed out that the tragedy had only occurred on July 20!
Nevertheless, the non-arrival of the NAC report had the desired effect of allowing the LGA hard-liners to regroup in order to scupper the deal. And now, having received the report (after due respect has been paid to the two dead firefighters), the LGA, with its new hard-line majority, is saying it requires six weeks to study it. (An NAC insider had previously leaked information to the FBU to the effect that the commission had been leaned on to play down the progress made after its first draft had been seen by ministers.)

The idea is to wait until after the ballot result. It is clear that the employers’ representatives will not even talk to the FBU again, let alone pay a penny they owe firefighters beforehand. “Whether talks will be started up again really depends on whether there is support within the FBU for discontinuous strike action,” an unnamed LGA spokesperson told Reuters. “It is a fact that talks with the FBU cannot be resuscitated this side of the outcome of a ballot.”

So either there will be a ‘yes’ vote or the FBU will be forced to cave in yet again - the EC has already made concession after concession, much to the disgust of FBU rank and file militants. In fact many are questioning whether the issue of bank holiday stand-down is worth going on strike over, since they regard these concessions (which the EC falsely claims have been ratified by conference) as a sellout anyway.

Nevertheless, in the absence of a strong ‘yes’ vote, the NAC report could be used to fabricate the need for a speed-up of ‘modernisation’. One way or another, New Labour aims to leave the FBU an impotent, spent force. Either it must be made to jump through any number of further humiliating hoops or it will be crushed after a strike - at least that is the intention.

The game was rather given away on the BBC’s Today programme on August 6. Brian Coleman, leader of the London Fire Brigade authority, told the interviewer: “The LGA is supposed to speak up for local government - instead they are just doing the government’s bidding in this dispute.” Apart from wanting “a knighthood, CBEs and large allowances”, the hard-liners are “in hock with the government’s agenda”, said Coleman.

In case you think Coleman is a leftist sympathiser of the firefighters’ cause, he went on to add: “Well, that’s fine - I actually support the government’s agenda, but let’s be open and honest … The government and local politicians of all parties have a clear objective to defeat the FBU once and for all - that is said in semi-public meetings and certainly in endless private meetings over the last 18 months ... every time … the moderate employers, if you like, get near an agreement … the guns are wheeled in to scupper any sort of deal.”

But it is not at all clear that this strategy can be pulled off. Many local authorities are not prepared to go through a repeat of 2002-03, when the army had to be called in to provide cover. From their point of view, the new deal is workable and they do not see the point of further confrontation. Indeed some local authorities are likely to break ranks and begin paying the overdue rises.

Rotten though the wrecked deal is, members must clearly vote ‘yes’ to take advantage of these divisions. Otherwise their union’s fighting capacity will be further compromised. And, of course, there is the small matter of the unpaid wage increases - remember, the original strike was to back up a claim for £30,000, yet not even the paltry rises the FBU leadership eventually settled for have been received. What a triumph for general secretary Andy Gilchrist!

Not unsurprisingly perhaps, Gilchrist is still on long-term sick leave and the so-called ‘hard left’ EC leadership now finds itself in alliance with rightwing assistant general secretary Mick Fordham, one of the few survivors of the old school.

Meanwhile, following Gilchrist’s announcement in the spring that the rank and file grouping, Grassroots FBU, was acting like “a union within a union” and was therefore to be targeted for disciplinary action, national officer Paul Wolstenholme has been suspended since June for allegedly leaking the voting patterns of EC members to the Grassroots FBU website. According to the left reformist bureaucratic leadership, informing the members of the actions of their representatives, so that these can be judged against membership interests, is a heinous crime. How they vote is ‘confidential’ and none of the members’ business.

To their shame sections of the leadership still intend to dismiss comrade Wolstenholme. If they are allowed to get away with it, they are sure to step up their witch-hunt against other rank and file activists. Members must fight to defend comrade Wolstenholme with the same determination as they fight to defend their union.