28.11.2002

Fight Blair on all fronts in fire dispute

The firefighters strike has become very bitter and very political. Tony Blair has made the governments agenda all too clear - breaking the strike, jobs cuts and less cover. How should the FBU and rank and file firefighters respond? We canvassed opinions

Chris Jones, ex-chair, Merseyside FBU Reject 'modernisation' So far the strike's been completely solid, as expected. The Fire Brigades Union have done a lot of preparation. The firefighters understand well the issues involved in the dispute and were prepared for a sharp confrontation. Whether they are prepared for a very long confrontation is less clear. When we wrote a local leaflet for the Merseyside Socialist Alliance, we were criticised by members of the Socialist Workers Party for writing that it was likely to be a long and highly politicised dispute. But the government had already intervened in July to stop the agreement with the local employers. Then there is Tony Blair's recent statement that the government began to prepare for this dispute - very badly, I think - back in August of this year, immediately after they intervened to spike the employers' offer. So, even before the strike began, it was clear that it was going to be a critical political dispute for the government and it would be drawn out. 'Modernisation' is an empty phrase that Labour have used repeatedly since they were elected in 1997. They fill it with a content of reduction in costs. So in the fire service - with over 80% of costs going on labour - if you 'self-fund' a pay rise, it must inevitably mean a loss of jobs - as the government has now openly admitted. So their 'modernisation' agenda is one of reducing the number of firefighters. Less engines, less cover, etc. That fits in with the agenda the local authorities have followed in the past. So some of the things that are being proposed now are exactly the things that were proposed in the past on Merseyside and led to strikes. For Blair, 'modernisation' means less firefighters and those that are left having to cover for those that have been axed. The FBU has now had two years of debates about its relationship with the Labour Party. This strike will undoubtedly feed into that. Firefighters have been aware of the debates in the union and now they are living through the vivid experience of their powerlessness in relation to the Labour Party itself. The argument that trade unions could somehow influence the direction of Labour has been exposed. People are feeling real anger against the way that Labour is treating them. It seems to me that it is possible that the government has deliberately chosen a high-profile public sector union to break. If they have, then the responsibility is on all trade unionists and trade union leaders to make sure that they can't. On the other, perhaps they haven't deliberately chosen to do this. Perhaps it is just gross incompetence. But if I was John Prescott, and I believed that Tony Blair had been planning coherently since August, or if I were the local government employers, many of whom are local Labour Party politicians, I would be furious. Because they have both been hung out to dry. Did Prescott know when he was negotiating that the rug was going to be pulled out from under him? The question as to how much this government consciously understands what it is doing can't be answered at this point. The danger is that it does understand. That it has a clear agenda and that is to break with its traditional relationship with the trade unions. The longer-term Blair project is clearly to reunite with Liberalism. Firefighters are going to have to make as many links as possible with other workers in dispute. Unions like the GMB and Unison have made statements and bought advertising in support of the firefighters - they have begun to commit resources. The TUC - unlike in 1977 - formally supports the firefighters. Given that Blair has made it a question of either him or the FBU, this puts the TUC on the spot. Concretely, what is it going to do? My fear is that the TUC is positioning itself in order to be able to do a deal. So it's important rank and file trade union members start to make as many links as they can to guard against a sellout. I fear that they are not going to be able to generate sufficient organisational infrastructure in the course of the dispute. But we have to call to account trade union leaders who are formally in support of the fire service. They shouldn't be let off the hook. The strike will inevitably become more bitter. The 'gentlemen's agreement' between the firefighters, the army and the police is likely to erode. In 1977, we ended up picketing the army barracks in Bootle. There were flying pickets sent out to working retained fire stations. If this becomes a long and bitter dispute, that will happen again. Also, there is the question of how things are controlled. In one sense, the FBU leadership have already given a lead on that. They had that merry dance with Prescott about what would be called an emergency. Clearly now, it is the FBU that decides what qualifies and it is FBU watches that are making those decisions on the ground. In embryo, that raises the question of who should control fire service personnel in general. That question is latent in the situation and is bound to come up more forcibly as the dispute becomes sharper. The broader programme of revolutionaries and the political nature of the dispute are writ large. It has been pushed onto firefighters and all active trade unionists. So our opponents - centrally Tony Blair - have themselves disabused those who believed this fight would not be a political dispute of that idea. At a low level, the dispute is being made political by the actions of the government itself. The question of 'modernisation' has a political side. For example, MPs voted themselves a 40% pay rise in parliament - the same place where somebody called 'Black Rod' taps at the door of the Commons. The institutions of the state have an air of being archaic - a phrase I believe Tony Blair applied to a shift pattern that is a mere 25 years old. This is an immediate argument that would cut with firefighters. Actually, if we are going to look at modernisation, why don't we look at the modernisation of the state? And of course, we should have a different view to capital of the content of that 'modernisation'. The question of power and the state come very quickly to the fore. Underneath that there is also the question of solidarity. To me, one of the biggest questions is raising trade union solidarity as an active question. Not just dropping money in a bucket or minor actions within the law. We need to actually start to think about what trade unionists can actually do to stand together as a class. That doesn't start to address broader questions about socialist politics. At this stage, the dispute has not thrown those up, but it does raise questions about public service, about who pays and about which section of society gain benefits from it. There are a raft of issues in the public sector - around higher education, student fees. There are a number of wage battles about to take place. It is clear that the government's hard line is being fed by the same sort of issues that feed into a political generalisation which raises welfare and socialism in a way they haven't been raised for a long time. But my feeling is that the first things that will be raised are questions around the nature of the state and political power, the nature of solidarity and trade union action. The second element will be that wider set of social elements around socialist questions. Matt Wrack, London regional organiser Clear strategy needed I now think it could be a long dispute. My impression was that the government and employers were in a bit of a state of disarray at the start of the eight-day action, and the intention of Blair's speech on Monday was to try to draw them together. To cohere a single line of attack. So they seem to be adopting a harder line. Now they have come out explicitly and said that 'modernisation' does mean job cuts. So everything is becoming clearer. So firefighters need a clear strategy. First, internally, we need to ensure that our members stay together as a fighting unit. Second, for the wider movement. Third, there's public opinion. We need the organisation of strike committees everywhere they haven't already been set up. We need more regular information flowing out of the union to keep the rank and file abreast of developments. Picketing must be maintained and strengthened. Then, wider solidarity is becoming key from other trade unions and from the TUC. There have already been health and safety arguments, but we need to widen the argument about public sector unity. There are teachers and local government workers taking strike action at the moment. The impact of that is lost on the members of our union - we need practical unity for common action across the public sector. We can't rely on the union leadership to do that, but we can use the statements that have issued to make appeals at a rank and file level. There are the first stirrings of a movement across the public sector. A lot of our branches have been organising meetings with teachers' and local government unions and so on. We've had very interesting meetings like that in some fire stations. We need to build on that, but using the official structures as far as we can as well. One thing we definitely need is a national demonstration, called by the FBU and supported by the TUC and all trade unions. That would be a massive boost to the campaign and put a lot of political pressure on Blair. I have noted the increase in the number of individual applications to withdraw from the political fund. The danger is that it just becomes a widespread individual reaction. What we need to discuss is how we respond collectively as a trade union. My view is still that democratisation of the fund is the way forward. But when we raise that idea, there will be a wider support for the idea of just disaffiliating. While we should understand that mood, we should argue with the members that we go to war with Blair on as many fronts as possible. If that means we create a split in the Labour Party, by taking other unions with us if they try to kick us out, then that would be preferable to the FBU walking out alone. But because of the understandable frustration and anger with Labour, it is going to be harder to hold that line. The left of the union really needs to discuss our response urgently. There will be some elements in the left who will simply want to go along with the idea of disaffiliating. Ian Foulkes, Merseyside chair Not an exception We've been 100% solid and there have been no defections. It's been a magnificent strike action. We should be proud of our union members. If the government insist on attacking the fire service, then we are prepared to fight it out to the end. The government's attitude has definitely hardened the resolve of our members to see it through. After all, this is not just a fight for fair pay, but to save the fire service itself. The whole of the trade union movement needs to stand shoulder to shoulder with the firefighters. It must be clear to trade unionists now that our fight is not just about a dispute in our industry, but the basic right to fair pay in any sector. The government is saying, 'What do we tell the nurses if we make an exception of the firefighters?' Well, we don't want to be an exceptional case. We just want fair pay. And we'll fight for that same right for any group of workers. It's disgraceful that the government tries to blackmail firefighters with the low pay of other sections of workers. There's talk of Blair regarding this as his version of Thatcher's battle against the miners in 1984-85. There is a big lesson here for our movement. Millions of workers have been suffering ever since for the movement's failure to stand alongside the miners. Every fire station we go to, they're asking for the form to opt out of the political fund to the Labour Party. It is a mass sentiment among firefighters now. I'm sure that at next year's conference, some move will be made either for disaffiliation - which is my preference - or the democratisation of the fund, which will give us the ability to fund other candidates who support the policies of the union. After the attack on us that the government is presiding over, I'm sure it will be an easy victory. The unions must rethink their links with Labour. Blair is clearly more interested in talking to the CBI than with us. We should start to use our political funds to back a proper, trade union-orientated Labour Party. We need a party that truly represents the workers - this one clearly does not. Jane Clarke, region 10 treasurer Free the funds The deputy prime minister has admitted that 'modernisation' means job cuts - the Labour Party leadership have shown their true colours. Most firefighters are now prepared for a long haul - it doesn't look very hopeful as far as a compromise is concerned. I can't imagine that the FBU is going to accept job losses - we already have a conference policy that says we won't accept redundancies. And what Labour is talking about is decimating the fire service. The service could not be sustained at the current level if you leave our conditions as they are now. But of course, they want to introduce overtime, they want to introduce whole-time retained duty, which is how they would aim to make up the deficiencies in staff numbers. In practical terms, it would mean a big increase in our hours to make up those deficiencies. At the moment, we have a three-shift pattern. The management is saying that these are not particularly family-friendly. Of course, we do work long hours, we do work nights and that is a problem for people. But if they introduced job-share, for example, that would be family-friendly. We could do that with the same shift pattern. But they are actually being hypocrites, pretending to be for women and against a 'macho' culture. If people have to do lots of overtime, or whole-time retained duties, then that is going to impact on family life very dramatically. At least with the shift system, you know when you are working, so you can plan childcare and your life around work. If you are doing overtime and you are being called in as and when, you can't plan anything at all. People across the board have had enough. Over and over again, I'm hearing people on the picket lines say that there is no way they can vote Labour again. So then, the question is, what are the other options? As a member of the Socialist Alliance, I obviously push that option. Unfortunately, apart from what I and a few individual members have done, I haven't seen any SA work around the fire strike at all. SA members are all turning up with a different hat on. We have had to issue en masse forms for individual members to opt out of the political levy to Labour - something I was not very happy with. At conference next year, the disaffiliation argument will definitely come up again. The EC seems to have a very tight grip on the dispute and, unless some clear arguments are put forward on the picket lines, the gut reaction of most people will be to disaffiliate. I still think the correct position is for democratisation of the funds - that is also more winnable than disaffiliation. The argument we are going to get from our executive is, 'Look, we've been in Prescott's office. Let's not turn our back on that sort of influence', etc. We need to up the stakes through fighting links with other public sector workers. The day of action in France shows us the way - we need the same here. As a minimum we need a national demonstration in defence of public services and in support of the firefighters, but better would be a day of action.