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FBU needs a new strategy

The enthusiastic response of New Labour and local authority employers to the final Bain report proposals is a further blow to the Fire Brigade Union's hopes of negotiating a settlement to their pay claim. Implementing Bain amounts to destroying the existing fire service, along with thousands of jobs and fatally weakening the FBU. Proposals include a reduction in crewing levels at night, flexible shifts, merging of control centres, introduction of pre-arranged overtime and training as paramedics.

The FBU rightly boycotted the Bain inquiry because it lacked independence. But for the FBU to describe Bain as "irrelevant" is inaccurate. For the proposals will clearly become the basis of the offer the employers are preparing for the New Year. The FBU's call for the government to stay out of the dispute and allow a negotiated deal is equally unrealistic.

New Labour is set on a course aimed at breaking the FBU and the conditions it has fought for and achieved over the last 20 years. That is what the firefighters' leaders have to acknowledge. The sums involved to settle the dispute are not large but New Labour has another agenda.

Blair's government wants to demonstrate to every worker that There Is No Alternative to a public sector run like big business. "Modernisation" to New Labour means flexible working, a reduced workforce, weakened unions and doing exactly what management demands. That is why the full force of the state and the media is employed to denigrate firefighters, even though their productivity and range of skills have increased enormously.

The FBU has put its future on the line by organising two strikes and defying New Labour. Now it has to develop a strategy that is equal to the challenge posed by Bain's proposals and their endorsement by Prescott, the deputy prime minister. The FBU's proposed course of action of short strikes at the end of January does not address the seriousness of the position that firefighters and the whole trade union movement finds itself in.

They will make no impact on the Blair government and leave the FBU dangerously isolated at a grave moment in the union's history. Firefighters cannot win this struggle on their own, which is no disgrace. What the FBU leaders must do as a matter of urgency is grasp the reality of the confrontation and appeal to other trade unions for backing.

Support of a financial kind and warm words is useful but will make no real difference. Only sympathetic industrial action can create the conditions for defeating New Labour. It's time for unions like the RMT to stop hiding behind the anti-union laws and lead their members into action alongside the firefighters. The FBU, RMT and other unions opposed to the government should at the same time announce proposals to ask their members to approve disaffiliation from a party that has effectively separated itself from the labour movement.

The breathing space the FBU has bought by suspending the strikes over Christmas can be turned to good advantage. New Labour has a growing crisis on a number of fronts, including pensions, transport and education. Their reactionary policies are beginning to unravel as the economy slides into slump.

Within weeks, New Labour plans to help the United States invade and occupy Iraq in pursuit of oil and to impose the rule of the global corporations in the Middle East. This is certain to create deep opposition in Britain and other countries. New Labour is a shallow regime with a narrowing base of support. Now is the time, therefore, for the FBU to grasp the nettle and work night and day to educate their members about the nature of the struggle that lies ahead.

Movement for a Socialist Future
December 16, 2002