Don't let Blair smash the firefighters!

Submitted by AWL on 25 November, 2002 - 1:25
  • A victory for the FBU will be a victory for all workers.
  • An appeal to serving soldiers: Refuse orders to scab!
  • Solidarity can win! reports from firefirighter' support groups
  • Don't help the Government break the strike!
  • The main enemy is the boss class at home!

A victory for the FBU will be a victory for all workers

"The anger in the fire service is greater than ever", said Geoff Ellis, Fire Brigades Union (FBU) Campaigns Organiser, on 21 November. "The Government are just playing games with us".

After hours of negotiations, an insulting four per cent was all the employers could come up with on 21 November - not a penny more than was on the table weeks before the dispute started. All the hype about a 16% pay offer from the employers has turned to dust. They backed down when the Government said it would concede not a penny more. They offered four per cent and then 12% in instalments, conditional on the employers getting their way on "modernatisation". In substance, it was four percent, not 16%.

The Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, look set to take this dispute as far as they can in order to cut short the emerging revival of trade-union confidence. If that means risking life, they don't care. At least there'll be no misunderstanding about who's boss.

Yet, for the moment, the Government is fighting this position from a more isolated position. Public support for the firefighters has risen from around 46% to 54%. Even the armed forces of the state are giving Blair the cold shoulder.

So we have a supposedly Labour Prime Minister and his Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, threatening to use troops to break picket lines and take equipment out of the fire stations - and a pillar of the capitalist Establishment, Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, Chief of Defence Staff, refusing to consider such action.

Boyce warned that the 19,000 troops on standby in the firefighters' dispute are already overstretched and demoralised. Just hours after the Government press-released US President George W Bush's formal request for British participation in his war in Iraq, Boyce stressed that he was "extremely concerned" about trying to use the army to fight two wars at once, one against firefighters in this country and one in Iraq.

Defence minister Geoff Hoon said that police would be used instead of troops to break the picket lines - but the Association of Chief Police Officers has said that he would not ask police to do that.

We should not think that the army and the police are above class battles. When it comes down to it, the top brass will always be on the bosses' side. But for the moment, they may not be prepared to do Blair's dirty work for him in this strike. And that makes our side that bit stronger.

The Government may tighten the screw and force the police or the army into action. Or they may resort to another part of the unelected machine of government - the courts - getting the strike ruled illegal. They may claim that by standing up for decent wages and conditions the union is taking the side of "terrorism" in George W Bush's "war against terrorism".

Whatever they do, the FBU deserves the support and solidarity of the whole working class. With that solidarity, the FBU can win. And a victory for the FBU will open the door for millions of other workers, in the public services and outside, to demand and win decent pay. Already London teachers will be striking on 26 November.

Since their first strike, on 13-14 November, the mood among firefighters has become more resolute. They see the modernisation issue for what it is. Every union is always prepared to talk about making the job more "modern". But what the Government wants, under the name "modernisation", is something very old-fashioned: cuts in jobs and services, and attacks on conditions of work designed not only to save money but also to undermine the FBU. Few firefighters want to sell out their working conditions for a few extra pounds.

On 13-14 November, firefighters on picket lines all over the country were talking about this being a long dispute and a political dispute, one in which Blair is out to wreck the FBU. But they were confident. "We're expecting a long fight about our pay. We have prepared for a long fight. Firefighters with kids were doing their Christmas shopping back in August. We've sorted out our mortgages. We're digging in for a decent pay rise", said one firefighter at Euston Fire Station, in London, during that strike.

Brown and Blair will not let a reasonable deal be negotiated for the firefighters because they know that a win for the FBU will be a green light for every low-paid worker in the public sector - health service, education, council workers, civil servants - and outside too.

They know that they can't please everyone. They can't please both the bosses, the rich and big business on one side, and the working class on the other side. With the world-market outlook gloomy, they know they will have to be sacrifices, and they want the working class to make them.

Firefighters, hospital workers, council workers - we are all the same to Blair and Brown, voting fodder every four or five years, contributors through our trade unions to the Labour Party's funds, but we should not expect anything in return.

For five years they have been able to get away with that attitude. Maybe no longer. FBU support groups are gaining momentum. Collections in workplaces and on the streets are showing there is public support. Tube workers who refused to work in the unsafe conditions created by lack of fire service cover brought three lines of the London Underground almost to a halt in the 13-14 November strike.

  • Back the firefighters!
  • Build labour-movement support groups!
  • Link the struggles of different unions!
  • Check the fire risks in every workplace: refuse to work during FBU strikes where they are high, demand extra precautions everywhere.
  • Prepare for solidarity action if the Government uses troops, police or the courts against the FBU.

An appeal to serving soldiers
Refuse orders to scab!

Firefighters are on strike for a decent living wage. The Government has deliberately provoked the strike. It stepped in to prevent a settlement between employers and the firefighters.

Why? Because they want to smash the FBU and thereby crush growing trade union militancy. The firefighters are being used as scapegoats.

They have cast you, soldier, in the role of strikebreaking scab in this strike. You are to do their dirty work against the firefighters.

They tell you that their concern is to save lives. But if that were their concern, then they would not choose to make the firefighters a test case in which to prove how tough they, the friends of big business and the rich, can be against the working class.

As far as they are concerned, this is a political strike. They want to do to the firefighters what Margaret Thatcher did to the miners in the 1980s.

Some of you come from areas of Britain, the former steel and coal districts, where the lives of a generation of working-class people have been blighted as a result of the defeat of that labour movement by the Thatcherites. Over many decades the labour movement won most of what is good and decent in Britain. When the labour movement was defeated - remember the miners! - all working-class people felt the bad effects.

The New Labour government is a Tory government - Tory values, Tory priorities, a hard-faced Tory determination to beat down workers who get uppity.

They may ask you to smash through picket lines of firefighters, many of whom are ex-services, to take out the red fire engines. Maybe they will have police try to smash through the picket lines, and then expect you to work the red fire engines they bring out. Don't do it! They have no right to order you to scab against working-class people. When they give you such orders, don't obey them. Stand by your class!

A precedent is worth remembering. When engineers struck work in 1944, during World War 2, there was a great outcry in the Tory press, who claimed that the strikers were stabbing British soldiers in the back. A few people were jailed.

The British Eighth Army - the men who had beaten Rommel's Afrika Korps and fought their way up through Sicily - held a meeting in Alexandria, Egypt, and, after debating the issue, passed a resolution insisting that the right to strike was one of the fundamental rights that separated Britain from Nazi Germany. They backed the right of the engineers to strike in Britain. They told the 1944 equivalent of today's Sun where to stick its witch-hunt against the workers.

Today this government of the rich, for the rich, by the rich, keeps on the statute book the Tory anti-union laws passed in the 1980s which outlaw solidarity strike action - that is, in many cases, outlaws effective trade unionism.

Don't be their tool against the firefighters!

Don't scab!

Refuse all orders to break the picket lines!

Stand by your class!

Sean Matgamna

Spot the scab!

Normally we would back an elected government against the army. However... this one time we'd just like to say that when it comes to respect for picket lines Admiral Sir Michael Boyce has the right line and John Prescott - who once used to boast of his credentials as a union man and leader of seafarers - does not.

Solidarity can win!

Solidarity groups and work with the firefighters began to get off the ground in most places around the UK, especially during the 48 hour strike last week. Reports from Soldarity supporters nationally...

Birmingham

At Cotteridge fire station, strikers were met and applauded by the South Birmingham Socialist Alliance as they walked out. At Erdington fire station North Birmingham Socialist Alliance greeted the strikers and an open-air public meeting was held with speakers from the FBU and the Socialist Alliance.

Selly Oak Labour MP Lynn Jones visited the Bournbrook picket line (in her constituency) to show support. By contrast, Hall Green Labour MP Steve McCabe denounced the strikers comparing them unfavourably with the New York firefighters of September 11. He was answered in the Birmingham Evening Mail by firefighter's wife Geraldine McLeish "Firefighters never know what they are going to be facing, so given a New York-type situation they would have reacted in exactly the same way".

Birmingham Trades Council passed a resolution calling for the creation of a support group. So far, it has failed to act upon this, leaving support activity up to the Socialist Alliance who have raised hundreds of pounds on street stalls and with workplace collections.

Cambridge

Some union branches in Cambridge have adopted policy in support of the FBU strike. So too has the local Trades Council. Members of the local Socialist Alliance have also already been active in support of the dispute.

Lewisham

A public meeting is taking place on Monday 25 November, 7.30pm. At St Mary's Centre, Ladywell Road. Organised by Lewisham FBU and NUT. Contact 07968 865985.

Solidarity sellers collected collected £74.87 for the firefighters in one hour as well as many signatures on the FBU petition.

Mitcham

The local GMB donated £500 to the firefighters. A fledgling support group is being organised: 07719 283132

Manchester

In Manchester the stations were used as organising centres for the strike. The FBU had organised "'community fire safety lecture" ing Moss Side, the idea being to get local people in and talk to them about the strike.

About 250 firefighters, some with their families, and a relatively small number of supporters attended a rally at Piccadilly Gardens on Thursday 14th. The mood was enthusiastic with horns blowing every time a speaker expressed determination to win the strike and booing every time the name of the local councillor in charge of the fire service was mentioned.

Other trade unionists have already expressed their support including the CWU Region, which has offered to put its facilities at the disposal of the FBU.

Northampton

When Billy Bragg played in Northampton a stall with FBU T-shirts, stickers and caps and a FBU collection bucket was organised.

Lots of people signed the petitions; £120 was raised for the firefighters. Billy said that firefighters were welcome to do collections on his tour.

Norwich

Members of Green Watch walked out of the doors of the city-centre's Bethel Street fire-station to be met by a contingent from Norwich Trades Council and applauded onto the picket-line. GPMU, NATFHE and NUT members were among those bringing banners. Support for the firefighters is particularly strong in Norwich where firefighters and residents have campaigned against plans to close the Bethel Street station and relocate its crews to a suburb, a move which will increase response-times and dilute the service firefighters offer the people of Norwich.

Both the city's fire-stations were closed, as were stations in outlying Norfolk towns such as Dereham, Acle, North Walsham and Hethersett, whose part-time fire-fighters are FBU members.

Norwich Trades Council has established an FBU Support Group, and will hold a public meeting at 7.30 pm on Tuesday 26 November in the Labour Club, Bethel Street, Norwich.

Oxford

Oxford Trades Union Council Dispute Support Committee held its first meeting on 18 November. The group agreed to meet every Monday at 6.30pm for the continuation of the dispute; to circulate Oxford TUC affiliates with a checklist of things to do in solidarity with the FBU; to do a petition and money collection this Saturday, meet at the Rowley Rd fire station from 9am, or in Cornmarket Street opposite HSBC from 10am; to organise a demonstration on the dispute and low pay in public sector in Oxford on Saturday 7th December. Venue for next meeting: East Oxford

Community Centre, Cowley Road.

Scotland

Employers in Kilmarnock took all the keys to the engines and put them in the safes in the stations in Strathclyde. They then took the keys to the safes and put them at HQ in Hamilton. An employers representative was questioned on the Scottish news and said that should firefighters need access to the engines if they were breaking the strike to rescue people then they would need to use the cutting equipment on the engine to open the safe.

Big firefighters rallies were held in Edinburgh and Glasgow yesterday, but haven't got a report on it yet.

Stockport

Debate inside Stockport social security office: a bit difficult convincing civil servants on £10-15k of the FBU's case, although it did help that three women in the office are married to firefighters! Discussion also about the possible war against Iraq and why there were resources for that but not the firefighters.

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