Book Reviews
remaining 10 per cent. It is not clear who
or what is being warded off by repeated
invocations of the talisman that material
interests are not a sufficient explanation
of social action; but when exemplary
Roger V. Seifert and Tom Sibley
United They Stood: The Story of the 2002–2004
Firefighters’ Strike
Lawrence & Wishart, 2005, 304 pp.
ISBN 1-905-00718-3 (pbk) £18.95
Reviewed by Richard Leitch
Public-sector reform has become a key
political battleground in recent years.
In the UK, it has been the centrepiece of
New Labour’s domestic policy since
2001. Elsewhere, struggles have marked
the neoliberal ‘restructuring’ of health,
education and the provision of other
basic amenities (especially water) across
the globe. Seifert and Sibley’s analysis
shows how the uk firefighters’ dispute
of 2002–2004 clearly belongs within this
overarching dynamic—a regular
industrial clash over pay, hijacked by the
government and used to further its
project of public-sector ‘modernisation’
in opposition to organised labour.
In terms of the book’s methodology,
the authors offer a time-line of the events
that punctuate this lengthy dispute, plus
an analysis of its political context. This
leads to certain imbalances in the book.
Extensive coverage is given to the
recollections of people who were
involved in each stage of the dispute, at
the expense of a more structured
approach; and particular issues are
covered again and again as they surface
at different points in the proceedings.
Other key events—especially the nego-
tiations of late-November 2002—are
covered in such detail, since we hear
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195
scholarship of the kind displayed in this
book demonstrates the power of
historical materialism, it should be
noted, even celebrated, and certainly
not hidden from view.
from all those involved, that the minutiae
of the dispute gains precedence over the
underlying concerns for the Left. Most
significantly here, the authors show too
little concern for the importance of the
Left’s having an effective strategy against
the public-sector reform programme in
general.
They certainly appreciate the wider
ambitions of New Labour policy, since
their framing of the dispute within this
larger dynamic of public-sector reform
is one of the best aspects of their work.
Here, the Blairite neoliberal equation of
‘modernisation’ with ‘marketisation’ is
laid bare. Its re-creation of market
constraints and conditions within public
services involves their reorganisation as
‘business units’ operating under local
management control, which is in turn
subject to tightly drafted, centrally
determined performance indicators
(targets, budgets, etc.). The resulting
conflict with public-sector workforces
around issues of working practices and
industrial relations is followed all too
often by a marked deterioration in
working conditions and union influence.
In the case of the fire service, this
modernising agenda came face-to-face
with an alternative, developed by the
196
union (the Fire Brigades Union—fbu).
Seeking to preserve existing systems of
national joint consultation and industrial
relations alongside a substantial increase
in investment, the union wanted to frame
any moves towards locally determined
working patterns and resources within
the development of local fire-risk
plans—plans that would be agreed on
by both sides, rather than being left to
local management diktats. Saving lives
and property and encouraging fire
prevention through educational prog-
rammes were the FBU’s priorities, rather
than cost-cutting and flexible working.
As for the dispute itself, it was
triggered by the pay claim made by the
union in spring 2002, which moved
outside the National Pay Formula in
order to recoup declining relative
wages—a move that was recognised by
both sides as significant, say Seifert and
Sibley. The employers knew that this was
their opportunity to trade substantial
pay increases for radical changes to
working practices in the Fire Service,
previously denied to them by the
operation of the pay formula (and by
successful fbu action at local level to stop
changes being imposed). The fbu,
aware that New Labour’s overall drive
for public-sector reform would not leave
the Fire Service unscathed, broke cover
from its established position (which had
kept it relatively secure during the
Thatcher years), and felt that central
government would look favourably upon
its claim for pay justice and its
willingness to negotiate over ‘moder-
nisation’.
As the authors point out, this would
prove to be a significant miscalculation.
Although employers were prepared to
trade pay for new working practices,
central government refused any rise that
would break its self-imposed cash limits
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Capital & Class #92
and its wider economic policy. Anything
above these limits was to be ‘self-
financing’—paid for through savings
made by ‘modernisation’, including job
cuts. Unable to meet the fbu’s pay
demands, employers were effectively
tied to the government’s position; and
as the protracted negotiations unfolded,
New Labour came to play an increas-
ingly directive role. Indeed, in effect the
dispute became a test case for its prog-
ramme of public-sector reform and its
desire to act tough with the unions.
Strategically, the fbu adopted a dual
approach of action plus negotiation,
balloting its members for discontinuous
strike action—a tactic previously used
successfully to block management-
imposed changes at local level. By the
end of 2002, however, this had not
delivered any meaningful shift in the
employer/central government position.
Calling for an ‘independent review’ of
the Fire Service as the solution to the
dispute, stalling in negotiations, and
refusing to talk while the threat of future
strike action lay ahead—all of these were
clearly delaying tactics, used by the
employers to see if the union would
falter or lose membership support. On
the ground, fbu actions were successful
to a degree—solidly supported, with
wider labour-movement sympathy—but
there was no appetite for escalating the
struggle and launching a continuous
stoppage to force the hand of central
government, according to Seifert and
Sibley. Central government intentions to
impose a settlement through the
provisions of a new Fire Bill, announced
in 2003, further signalled the balance of
forces in play.
The avenue of negotiation remained
blocked for the FBU until the intervention
of the head of the Fire Service National
Joint Council, Frank Burchill, in early
Book Reviews
2003. His compromise proposals,
offering the FBU some leverage over the
implementation of changes put forward
by the employers at local level, were
accepted by the union and formed the
basis of the settlement reached in
summer 2003. Crucially, the union had
managed to secure an agreement that
locally-initiated changes would be placed
within the context of local fire-risk plans
jointly agreed on by both sides. However,
as the authors note, the success of this
move would depend on what happened
when these plans were rolled out.
In terms of its pay demands, the fbu
secured a substantial rise in firefighters’
pay, a new improved pay formula, and
greater equality of pay for control-room
staff and retained firefighters. This fell
short, however, of the fbu’s original
claim for a £30,000 wage, leading to
significant discontent within union
ranks. Seifert and Sibley strongly
support the position of the union
leadership throughout the dispute.
Though internal factions within the
fbu—centred around the ‘£30k’ website
and the ‘Red Watch’ bulletin—were
critical of the limited strategy of discont-
inuous strike action and the outcome of
the pay claim, Seifert and Sibley main-
tain that this was about the most that
could be done or expected when the
membership had no appetite for
anything further.
More ominous are the events
surrounding the implementation of the
settlement, as recounted by Seifert and
Sibley. fbu leader s gravely
underestimated the employers’ and
central government’s resolve to
demonstrate their increased powers
along the ‘frontier of control’ within the
Fire Service. Blocking and delaying
tactics were repeatedly used in order to
frustrate the union and weaken its
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197
resolve and unity, with stages of the pay
deal failing to be delivered on time;
control-room reorganisation being
imposed without agreement; and
working conditions whittled away. At
each stage of this lengthy saga, which
lasted fourteen months, the fbu could
offer only limited action in response—
unofficial, local stoppages—resisting
further management attacks on working
conditions, but unable to reverse the
overall direction of change.
For Seifert and Sibley, the fbu’ S
campaign was a success, extracting
significant gains for its members and
retaining some say over the future
‘modernisation’ of the service. I consider
that to be an optimistic judge-ment, and
one that in fact contradicts the substance
of their analysis of the implementation
of the dispute’s settlement. Further-
more, as the events of the post-dispute
period show, the union remains unable
to reverse the general thrust of
‘modernisation’. Both central govern-
ment and the employers have pressed
on with attacks on shift patterns, staffing
levels, pay and job re-grading, pension
provision, and on union representation
on the National Joint Council. Local fire-
risk plans have become mere vehicles
for the cuts agenda, and public safety
has been put further at risk by moves
towards a regionalised emergency
control-room structure, reliant on
customarily dodgy private-sector it
systems, and in hock to pfi rents. (The
fbu online magazine carries extensive
coverage of these ongoing attacks.)
In addition, the sheer scale of New
Labour’s modernisation programme
across the whole of the public sector
clearly calls for more than the isolated
and limited actions the FBU was able to
take during 2002–2003. Four years on
from the end of this dispute, the
198
‘marketisation’ juggernaut is sweeping
through ever more areas of public-
service provision, and confronting trade
unions with broadly similar problems
and issues to those the FBU faced. In
response, a number of these unions
have launched a joint campaign—
‘Public services not private profit’—
including the FBU itself, now under new
leadership. What the outcome will be is
unknown as yet. What is clear, however,
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello
The New Spirit of Capitalism
Verso, 2006, 656 pp.
ISBN 1-844-67165-8 (hbk) £75.00
Reviewed by Paul Blackledge
When the original French edition of The
New Spirit of Capitalism was published in
1999 it immediately established a
reputation as a centrally important
contribution to recent anti-capitalist
literature. For this reason alone, both
Verso and Gregory Elliott, its translator,
are to be congratulated for producing
such a fine edition in English.
From a broadly Weberian pers-
pective, Boltanski and Chiapello argue
that capitalism, because of its frankly
‘absurd’ nature—they define it minimally
as a system based on the ‘imperative to
unlimited accumulation of capital by formally
peaceful means’—must employ ideologies
through which the commitments to it of
individuals are realised. These ideologies
must necessarily include a more localised
justification for action than is to be found
in Adam Smith’s general conse-
quentialist defence of the welfare benefits
of the free market. In particular, the
authors insist that capitalism needs to
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Capital & Class #92
is that the ‘ultra-Left’ critics of the fbu’S
leaders during the 2002–2004 dispute
were correct then and correct now in
their argument for joint action in order
to effectively resist public-sector
reform. In ignoring the need for this
strategy, in their defence of the old FBU
leadership, Seifert and Sibley have
provided us with little of use to the
ongoing struggles against capitalist
modernisation.
appeal to those managers who play a
pivotal role in its reproduction so as to
provide them with, first, an exciting
model of their own potential to flourish;
second, an account of how their security
will be realised; and finally, a moral
justification of their position through
some model of capitalism’s fairness. They
argue that belief systems that synthesise
these three elements can act as ‘spirits of
capitalism’, and claim that capitalism has
known three such spirits. The core of the
book is an analysis of the third of these
spirits, which, they argue, emerged in the
wake of the events of 1968. Moreover,
through a rejection of Marx’s
‘redundant’ base-superstructure meta-
phor, the authors insist that spirits of
capitalism are not simply apologetic
ideologies, but that they do in fact help
shape the accumulation process.
According to Boltanski and
Chiapello, the first, entrepreneurial,
spirit of capitalism was best described