Our firefighters may be heroes, but this unnecessary strike must be avoided

It's inconceivable that Blair wants a fight with fire crews if he can possibly avoid it; strikes are always more difficult to end than to begin

In New York yesterday fire crews were justly, indisputably, the public heroes of the hour. In Manchester tomorrow, they will become Tony Blair's potentially biggest domestic political headache. At a special conference, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) will overwhelmingly vote for a motion to launch a series of "discontinuous" strikes from the end of October in support of a 40 per cent pay claim.

Of all the disputes cited in the creation of that largely media confection, the supposedly looming "winter of discontent", the firefighters' dispute was always the one that mattered. It was the one the Whitehall Civil Contingencies Secretariat was – and still is – most brooding about. For the first time in 25 years, when the firefighters waged a nine-week strike against Jim Callaghan's Labour government in the long, cold winter of 1977-8, the Army's ageing fleet of Green Goddesses looks like returning to British streets.

If the strikes go ahead, the dispute could be a lot more serious than it was even then. "Discontinuous" could mean the union switching, guerrilla style, from region to region, making it much more difficult for the Army to co-ordinate replacements. This time, unlike in 1977 when they were in a separate union of their own and were available to guide the Green Goddesses (of which there are a mere 90 for London compared with 170 infinitely more modern and better manned fire engines in normal times), the fire officers will be called out on strike, too. Not to mention little details like the fact that then there wasn't a Channel Tunnel manned by nearly 30 FBU members that might well have to shut down if the strikes go ahead.

Any reporter who covered the last strike, standing on freezing picket lines outside fire stations or watching crews rattling collecting tins in market squares could not fail to be impressed by the strength of public support for their cause. They were very badly paid for people who went into burning buildings when everybody else was coming out. Their union leadership may have had a strongly left-wing tradition; but firefighters have always enjoyed a local popularity, thanks to their bravery and discipline (in those days much of it nurtured in service backgrounds) of a sort that the police often haven't.

Partly as a result, the 1977-8 dispute was the one unequivocally successful public service strike of the era. It secured a formula that would permanently link pay, in those days of continual private-sector wage push, to the upper quartile of male manual workers earnings. This was such a triumph that Terry Parry, the astute FBU general secretary, bought a greyhound to celebrate and raced it under the name Upper Quartile. The deal was designed to prevent firefighters from having to strike for another generation. Which it did.

But times change. Skilled manual workers, often supplanted by white-collar technicians, are no longer the labour market force they once were. The formula no longer delivers as it did. Although firefighters, at around £21,500 a year, still earn more than over half the country's labour force, their earnings in real terms have been falling, like those of many other public servants – by around a sixth since 1978. They want a change to the formula. And the local authority employers agree.

The problem is a big gap between the FBU's 40 per cent pay claim and the employers' offer, which is for a 4 per cent interim increase – slightly more than the upper quartile system has been generating in the past decade – and for a new permanent formula to be thrashed out by an independent review body, which was announced last week by John Prescott's Department of the Deputy Prime Minister and with which the union has refused to co-operate. Indeed the FBU is pretty angry about the Prescott announcement. One reason is that the review body's remit could, in keeping with Gordon Brown's mantra of reform for investment, propose changes to the firefighters' long-standing two-shift system (under which they work two days – when most of the fires happen – and two nights from 6 pm to 9 am, with beds available from midnight to 7 am other than when they are called out, which allows them to take other part-time jobs if they choose). And while the review is widely expected to take until December, the strikes are due to start in late October.

According to Mike Fordham, the FBU deputy general secretary, this means the Government "is making the strikes inevitable" because it isn't leaving room for time for normal negotiation until the pay review reports.

Maybe. But the union needs to be careful. Public support may not be as unequivocal as the FBU says it is at present or as it was in 1977-8. The review body is to be chaired by Professor George Bain, one of the shrewdest arbitrators in the business, by no means union-unfriendly and the man who successfully brought the national minimum wage into being. The local authorities sensibly asked for the inquiry because they believed that Bain would underline the special nature of the job, reducing knock-on pressure from other groups, and that the Government, having announced the review, would be obliged to fund its outcome. The review body makes a lot of sense, precisely because it's an attempt to reach the kind of compromise that in the old days only happened at the end of strikes.

There's no reason to think that if, God forbid, a twin towers happened here, British firefighters would behave with any less bravery than their New York counterparts (who, incidentally, haven't had a pay increase for the last three years). But that doesn't mean the public will warm to the idea of paying through their local or national taxes for a 40 per cent increase. That would be big at any time but even more so when the real sweated labour among mainly women council workers – cooks, cleaners and carers – look like settling for an overall 7 per cent, which gives them £5 per hour – around half of what the firefighters get before any increase at all

And if the rail unions carry out the threat by the militant RMT leader Bob Crow, on ostensible safety grounds, to stop the Underground and other urban transit systems in sympathy, there could be quite a backlash. The FBU might start to look, however unfairly, like a battering ram for the hard left. And with a pulsating 24-hour digital media, every untended fire will get the kind of saturation coverage it didn't in 1977. Which may not help the fire crews, either.

Which doesn't mean that the Government doesn't have a part to play too. Although some trade union officials claim to believe otherwise, it's inconceivable that Tony Blair wants an all-out fight with fire crews if he can possibly avoid it. But he therefore needs to tell Professor Bain to move very fast indeed. It surely can't be beyond his considerable wits to come up with an acceptable formula before the strikes get under way. Strikes are always more difficult to end than to begin. And this strike, which could cost lives, is one that badly needs not to happen.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk