Abstract
The 1947 Fire Services Act re-established key pre-war traditions in the fire service. Firefighting became a legal function of local government, albeit as the statutory responsibility of 50 counties and 75 county boroughs (as well as ten brigades administered by joint boards) in England and Wales, ranging from large full-time municipal brigades to largely part-time units in the more rural counties. In this sense, firefighting was ranked alongside other environmental services like town planning, and personal services like policing and childcare, which were also made the responsibility of the county tiers of local government during the late 1940s.1 The largest bodies remained London Fire Brigade, with over 2000 full-time firemen, and the larger county borough brigades, including Birmingham (with an authorized strength of 650 firemen), Liverpool (500) and Manchester (351).2 The police model of service administration was adopted, with the stick of national inspection counter-balanced by the carrot of an exchequer grant of 25 per cent of the fire authority’s annual charge. The remaining 75 per cent largely fell upon local taxation.3
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Notes
K. Young and N. Rao (1997) Local Government since 1945 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell), pp. 51–2.
PP (1948–9) Report of His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Fire Services [hereafter Report of HMCIFS] for the Period 1st April to 31st December, 1948, XVI, Cmd. 7763, p. 3.
PP (1950) Report of HMCIFS for the Year 1949, XI, Cmd. 8049, pp. 3–4. The 1947 Act was modified by the Fire Services Act, 1959, which incorporated the percentage subvention into a single general grant for local authority functions.
PP (1951–2) Report of Her Majesty’s Inspector of Fire Services [hereafter Report of HMIFS.] for Scotland for 1951, XII, Cmd. 8524, p. 8.
Ibid., HO/346/68/FIR/561/1/10, NJC for Employers’ Side Minutes, 27 February 1950, pp. 3–4; V. Bailey (1992) ‘The “spit and polish” demonstrations’ in Bailey (ed.) Forged in Fire, p. 163.
D. Englander (1992) ‘The Fire Brigades Union and its members’ in Bailey (ed.) Forged in Fire, p. 130.
On the ‘labouring aristocracy’, see E. H. Hobsbawm (1984) Worlds of Labour (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson).
Fire Brigades Union (1951) In Defence of Britain’s Fire Brigades (London: Fire Brigades Union).
LBFRSL [unreferenced], Report of the Firemaster of South-Eastern Fire Brigade 1948–49 (Edinburgh: William Nimmo, 1949), p. 10.
R. Johnston and A. McIvor (2004) ‘Dangerous work, hard men and broken bodies: Masculinity in the Clydeside heavy industries, c.1930s–1970s’, Labour History Review, LXIX, 135–51;
Pat Ayers (2004) ‘Work, culture and gender: The making of masculinities in post-war Liverpool’, Labour History Review, LXIX, 153–67.
PP (1950) Report of HMCIFS for the Year 1949, XI, Cmd. 8049, pp. 4–5;
PP (1951–2) Report of HMCIFS for the Year 1950, XII, Cmd. 8388, pp. 3–4;
PP (1951–2) Report of HMCIFS for the Year 1951, XII, Cmd. 8622, p. 4.
LBFRSL S.123, SEFB Cuttings, Daily Express, 19 November 1951, n.p.; LBFRSL [unreferenced], Report of the Firemaster of South-Eastern Fire Brigade 1951–52 (Edinburgh: William Nimmo, 1952), p. 5;
BCA MS/1303/258, BFB Newscuttings, Birmingham Post, 21 November 1951; Birmingham Gazette, 7 December 1951; 20 December 1951; 21 December 1951, all n.p.
NA HO/346/68, Report of a Board of Arbitration to the Right Honourable, the Minister of Labour and National Service in the matter of a difference between the Employers’ and Employees’ Sides of the National Joint Council for Local Authorities’ Fire Brigades in England and Wales on the Remuneration of Firemen (London: Fire Brigades Union, 1952), pp. 5–6, 11, 15.
PP (1955–6) Report of Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Factories [hereafter Report of HMCIF] for the Year 1954, XVII, Cmd. 9605, pp. 12–17; PP, Report of HMCIF for the Year 1963 (2450), XIII, p. 10.
PP (1959–60) Report of HMCIFS for the Year 1959, XIV, Cmd. 1122, p. 10.
U. Beck (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage), pp. 60–1;
A. R. Everton (1972) Fire and the Law (London: Butterworths), pp. 30–2;
LBFRSL [unreferenced], Report of the Firemaster of South-Eastern Fire Brigade for the Year Ended 31st December 1961 (Edinburgh: William Nimmo, 1962), pp. 8–9.
P. Bartrip (1987) Workers’ Compensation in Twentieth Century Britain (Aldershot: Ashgate).
Fire Brigades Union (1957) Annual Report of the 37th Annual Conference at Bournemouth (London: Fire Brigades Union), pp. 118–19.
Fire Brigades Union (1960) Service for the Sixties (London: Fire Brigades Union), p. 118.
V. Bailey (1992) ‘The first national strike’ in Bailey (ed.) Forged in Fire, p. 233.
LBFRSL [unreferenced], Firefighter, VII, no. 1 (January 1967), 1.
PP (1969–70) Report of the Departmental Committee on the Fire Service, XII. Cmd. 4371, p. 91;
PP (1969–70) HMCIFS Report for the Year 1969, XII, Cmd. 4397, p. 2.
LBFRSL [unreferenced], FBU Various [Box 2], Letter Book: FBU Lauriston Branch, Letter from Branch Secretary to Officer-in-Charge, August 1969, p. 49; LBFRSL [unreferenced], Report of the Firemaster of South-Eastern Fire Brigade for the Year Ended 31st December 1971 (Edinburgh: William Nimmo, 1972), p. 5.
PP (1971–2) Report of the Cunningham Inquiry into the Work of the Fire Service, XIII, Cmd. 4807, p. 66; NA HO/346/223, Minutes of Cunningham inquiry meeting, 26 March 1971, p. 1.
NA HO/346/195, Minutes of meeting to discuss contingency arrangements to deal with problems arising from a strike of London firemen, 29 October 1966; NA HO/346/194, Emergencies Resulting from Strike or Threat of Strike by [London] Firemen, October–November 1969; LBFRSL [unreferenced], SEFB Cuttings, The Scotsman, 21 December 1970, n.p.; The Scotsman, 5 January 1971, n.p.;
D. H. Aldcroft and M. J. Oliver (2000) Trade Unions and the Economy, 1870–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate), pp. 97–9, 112.
J. Flockhart (1992) ‘The Glasgow strike’ in Bailey (ed.) Forged in Fire, pp. 386–401.
J. A. G. Griffith (1966) Central Departments and Local Authorities (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul); Chandler, Explaining Local Government, p. 184.
Trainor, ‘The “decline” of British urban governance’, pp. 28–46; Shapely, Tanner and Walling, ‘Civic culture and housing policy’, pp. 410–34; R. A. W. Rhodes (1999) Control and Power in Central-Local Government Relations, 2nd edn (Aldershot: Ashgate).
PP (1968–9) Royal Commission on Local Government in England, 1966–69; Volume I: Report and Maps, XXXVIII, Cmd. 4040, p. 89.
A. Forbes (2005) Everyday Heroes: The 30-Year Story of Strathclyde Fire Brigade (Edinburgh: Black & White Publishing), pp. 12–24; NA HO/346/209, confidential minute by R. F. D. Shuffrey, 7 July 1975;
PP (1975–6) HMCIFS Report for the Year 1975, XIII, Cmd. 6530, p. 2.
Firefighter, V, no. 1 (February 1977), 1; T. Claydon (1998) ‘“Images of disorder: Car workers” militancy and the representation of industrial relations in Britain, 1950–1979’ in D. Thoms, L. Holden and T. Claydon (eds) The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the 20th Century (Aldershot: Ashgate), p. 229.
Fire Brigades Union (1977) Annual Report of the Annual Conference (London: Fire Brigades Union), p. 48.
B. Roxburgh (1992) ‘Unofficial action on Merseyside’ in Bailey (ed.) Forged in Fire, pp. 402–3.
Ibid., Musselburgh News, 16 December 1977; Herald, 21 December 1977; Daily Mail, 14 November 1977, in Fire Brigades Union (1997) Twenty Years Ago We Realized Things Would Never Be the Same: Reflections of the 1977 Strike (London: Co-operative Press), all n.p.
K. Laybourn (1992) A History of British Trade Unionism (Stroud: Sutton), p. 201;
C. Wrigley (2002) British Trade Unions since 1933 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 60–4.
A. I. R. Swabe and P. Price (1983) ‘Multi-unionism in the fire service’, Industrial Relations Journal, XIV, no. 4, 56–69.
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© 2010 Shane Ewen
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Ewen, S. (2010). From Fighting Fires to Fighting Firemen: A Fractured Fire Service, 1947–78. In: Fighting Fires. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230248403_9
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