Rob Williams, Socialist Party executive committee
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) general secretary election has seen national vice president Steve Wright elected, after defeating incumbent Matt Wrack by 5,188 votes (59%) to 3,436 (41%) on a 29% turnout. Matt was first elected in 2005, winning with over 12,000 votes, after the national strike in 2002-03 under Tony Blair’s New Labour government, as firefighters looked for a more militant leadership. The Socialist Party had written to both candidates offering them the opportunity to put their case in our paper and on our website.
New Labour austerity
Now the FBU and its members in the fire and rescue service have to face up to Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves’ s New Labour mark II promising more austerity after 14 years of massive Tory public sector spending cuts, as well as the huge cost-of-living squeeze. By the FBU’s own figures, “Over 12,000 firefighter jobs have been cut and central funding slashed by 30% since 2010.” This was the backdrop to the general secretary election.
Under Steve Wright’s leadership, the FBU will face more cuts as chancellor Reeves looks to make the working class pay for continuing capitalist crisis, revealed further by the current government bond market pressures.
It will pose the need for the union to examine its industrial and political strategy. The FBU is a relatively small union, but has a militant history and culture with an enduring high union density. In 2013-14 it took national strike action over pensions, and has fought local campaigns against fire service cuts. The FBU can also act as a lever on the wider union movement, if it is prepared to play this role.
Right now, with Reeves limiting pay rises to 2.8%, the FBU should publicly call for all public sector unions to come together in a united demand for a far-higher wage increase that could claw back what has been lost across the public sector since 2010. This should be backed by serious preparation to take united strike action.
The FBU was one of the first unions in the public sector to settle on pay, in a two-year deal of 7% for 2022 and 5% for 2023, during the Tory cost-of-living squeeze when inflation was nearly at double figures. This offer was achieved after more than 80% of FBU members had voted for strikes, but no action was taken after the union’s executive recommended acceptance.
Political strategy
It is essential that the militant action which will be necessary in the period ahead is backed by a serious review of the FBU’s political orientation. The Socialist Party warned that in its rush to reaffiliate to Labour in 2015, under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership but with the Blairite party structures still in place, the union was giving up its ability to act independently in its own political interests.
The FBU had disaffiliated from New Labour in 2004, as a direct result of the 2002-03 dispute, which saw Blair use the army to try to break the strike. Matt Wrack argued that reversing this move in 2015 was to support Corbyn against the Labour right wing, but the bridgehead gained unexpectedly by the Labour left wasn’t sufficiently strengthened and consolidated by taking on the Blairites.
The result has been that the FBU has been emasculated politically within Starmer’s Labour, blunting its political demands and preventing its ability to act independently, by supporting candidates in elections or standing its own, on a workers’ programme. This is all the more needed now to sharpen the fight against cutting councils, of all parties, that run the fire authorities.
But this debate has to happen now. Like all other unions, the FBU cannot stand aside from the political arena. Over 120 years ago, workers drew the conclusion that they needed their own voice to supplement and strengthen their workplace organisation and industrial action. Faced with Starmer’s New Labour, the Tories and now the right-wing populist Reform UK, workers need a political alternative that stands on a socialist programme that offers a way out of capitalist crisis.
