Why the Government will not surrender to the firefighters

There are many things the Chancellor and the PM don't agree about, but matching spending with modernisation isn't one

While holding out the encouraging prospect of serious negotiations in the fire dispute, Gordon Brown was at his most magisterially unequivocal yesterday in warning that the union was pursuing the wrong claim at the wrong time and with the wrong methods. Whether that will encourage the seductive idea that Tony Blair and perhaps his Chancellor set out to provoke this strike to show Thatcher-style machismo, it's hard to say. But either way, the notion is a wholly fanciful one, promoted in defiance of recent history.

Being old enough, so help me, to have covered every day of the last, nine-week, Fire Brigades Union (FBU) strike in the winter of 1977-78, I find it surprising to see it routinely described as a defeat for the union. In one important sense, this was true in that it did not succeed in the political objective of breaking through the Callaghan government's 10 per cent pay limit. Which is one reason why there were angry punch-ups on the prom at Bridlington on that bitterly cold January day when the union's conference finally voted to go back to work. And we'll return to political last ditches in a minute. But in another sense it turned out to be, for the best part of a quarter of a century, a signal victory in that the formula which linked its earnings to the upper quartile of male manual workers' earnings, then the fastest growing group, was so good that it resulted in one of the most reliably left-led unions not calling another national strike until now.

What's become clear, however, is that such a victory came, in the very long term, at a price. It wasn't merely that the remorseless mathematics of occupational sociology meant that the formula no longer yields what it once did ­ though this year's 4 per cent figure is still well over the inflation rate. It was much more that the automaticity of the annual increases meant that there was little opportunity and much less incentive for either the local authorities or ministers to open up issues of productivity and efficiency, which had been the nitty-gritty of pay negotiations in almost every other sector. Reinforced by a healthy and wholly deserved public respect for the consummate bravery and professionalism of the union members when they are actually fighting fires, that's why even a government as tough on the unions as Margaret Thatcher's did not try to do so. And why Labour might not have done had the FBU not handled things as it did. But it's also why a quarter of a century of distinctly archaic working practices ­ some dating back to the Forties ­ went unchallenged for so long.

For, in essence, the FBU leadership set itself a trap and then walked straight into it. By not only insisting that the formula had to be replaced, and then much less understandably making a claim for roughly 20 times as much as inflation, they cast an unwelcome spotlight on those very working arrangements ­ from the barmy provision that crewing in, say, the centre of London is at the same level for nights, when most people have gone home to the suburbs, as it is for days; to a shift pattern better designed to foster second jobs than the growth of potential earnings in the fire service itself (for example through overtime) and much more besides; to the absence of paramedic equipment and training for fire crews; not to mention the under-representation of ethnic minorities and women in the service. (Indeed the universal acceptance of the PC, gender-neutral term of "firefighters" would be more understandable if more than 98 per cent of the crews weren't men). Or that firefighters already enjoy one of the most enviable pension schemes in the country.

All that we know, of course. What's less understood is that the union's timing was especially bad for two reasons. The first was that in a climate where other groups were basing pay claims on the failure to recruit and retain staff, the argument simply didn't apply to the FBU's members. It isn't simply that, despite the life-and-death risks the job carries, there are on average 38 applicants for every firefighting job ­ and that's only an average, since in Cheshire, for example, there have been 1,600 applications for the last 25 vacancies. It is also that by contrast ­ and for example ­ there are currently 1,800 unfilled national vacancies for nursery and primary teaching jobs, and 2,550 for secondary school teachers.

The timing was also bad because the mantra of investment and reform had just become wired inextricably into the government motor, as Gordon Brown amply underlined in the Commons yesterday. There are many things, if anything a growing number, that the Chancellor and Prime Minister don't agree about. But the idea that increased public spending has to be matched by modernisation isn't one of them. The danger for the FBU is that if the conflict is protracted it will become a high-profile test case for just that idea exactly because, as Sir George Bain has already begun to demonstrate, the service, for all its true heroism, remains exceptionally under the control of the union. There are mutterings in government that the local authority employers aren't as determined as it is to change all this. For it's this that has now become the Government's last ditch, the equivalent of Callaghan's 10 per cent pay policy 25 years ago. This time around, it's less the exact numbers in the eventual pay package than the level of reform the Government extracts for it, which will determine whether it has or hasn't been defeated.

This is at once a threat and, conceivably, an opportunity for the FBU in talks starting today. It means that it will have to start talking seriously about a change in working practices. If it doesn't, we may be looking at a protracted and increasingly bitter dispute. True, the public played their part in containing the effects of last week's strike; on Friday, fire brigade calls went down from 5,500 to 2,000. But the Government could still come under political pressure to liberate red fire engines if the strikes escalate.

But it also means that if they are ready to talk about working practices, it may not be beyond the wit of the parties to find a way through. The timings in Sir George's interim report have some flexibility; for example, bringing forward the planned new permanent pay formula ­ so that its first fruits overlap with at least some of the 11 per cent already yielded by his inquiry ­ could provide an increased offer.

Labour's antennae are nothing if not acute when it comes to public opinion. Mr Blair knows the Government will be seriously damaged by a defeat. But he will also know that the public don't want the strikes to continue if they can be avoided honourably ­ another factor that gives the lie to the idea that he wanted to provoke the FBU. That dilemma could just be resolved by funding an increase in the offer this week, which would make it easier for Andy Gilchrist, the FBU general secretary, to sell a once-again long-term deal to the hardliners on his executive. But only if the FBU starts to get with the long overdue modernisation programme.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk