Chapter Three: Fire Service Literatures

Fire service/police similarities

Research around policing is a well established field, with a number of significant publications (Stott, Reicher 1998, Reiner 1992), dedicated journals (Policing and Society, Police Review) and specific research centres. In contrast, research around the fire service tends to be limited to either fire behaviour (Quintiere 1998) and emergency management, or identity and equality issues within the service (Baigent 2001, Ward, Winstanley 2006, Yarnal, Dowler et al. 2004), although there is also a growing field of psychology studying the fire service (Brunsden, Hill 2009a). At a policy level, this is also the case, with a considerable department within the Home Office dedicated to policing research, compared to a small unit in Communities and Local Government with a fire service remit. Even emergency service blogs are weighted heavily towards the police, with many police officers writing their own or collaborative blogs (PC Bloggs 2011, The Thinking Policeman 2011) but none, as far as I know, from fire fighters or even fire control staff. This presents a problem for the fire service researcher, as that research which does exist is not necessarily relevant to the study in hand. Further, this process is self perpetuating, where researchers build on existing research, rather than branching out into new fields, ensuring that fire service research remains within rather narrow confines.

Superficially, there are a number of similarities between fire and police services: they are uniformed, emergency services; they are popular stereotypes, and easily picked up roles for children (and fantasies for adults). They both have a civic protection and contingency role, as do the army, and are part of the partnership structure of local government, discussed below. However, for certain sections of society, the police represent a threat to ‘survival strategies’ (Mathers, Parry et al. 2008) invoked by residents in deprived areas, and contribute to a negative stereotype of ‘authority figures’ which are not well regarded. Further, policing practices in problematic neighbourhoods can reinforce this image (Lersch, Bazley et al. 2008), resulting in a vicious circle of resentment and poor policing (Skogan 2006). Even where residents are law abiding, they might resent the police, either for failing to control crime, for perceived injustices elsewhere in the system or for not taking their particular concerns into consideration (Sunshine, Tyler 2003a, Sunshine, Tyler 2003b). These issues tend not to be seen to concern the fire service (Bradford, Jackson et al. 2008), who are imagined to have a far healthier public image. However, this is not universally the case, and fire fighters face a number of difficulties in conducting their work, including attack (Labour Research Department 2005, Labour Research Department 2008a) and obstruction. Media representations are not always favourable either, with fires services at loggerheads with local media over equalities, community fire safety and deployment (Salkeld 2007, Bristol Evening Post 2009). I suggest that there are four areas of similarities between police and FRS, based on cultural and functional factors and internal and external perspectives. I have called these: operational issues, structural issues, organisational culture and symbolic function.These are discussed in turn below.

Operational issues refers to similarities in what fire and police services do in the day to day course of their work, examining operational and procedural issues as they are played out by personnel within each service. As members of the core emergency services, police and fire both have duties to prevent, protect and respond, although to an extent, with regard to different ‘enemies’. This very superficial similarity, however, reveals a lot more similarities, for example about the role of emergency services in our country, and the expectations that we have of them. Broadly, we expect our emergency services to be non partisan, and to respond where and when they are required, whether police or fire service (or indeed, ambulance). Recent experiences, for example, in Northern Ireland, where both police and fire services had sectarian affiliations (and are still paying the consequences of them), demonstrate that the neutrality of the emergency services cannot always be taken for granted. This also presents the fire service with a similarity to the military who also have a public protection role, although (in our society) with less public contact. Further, the ongoing reliance on the military for assistance in natural disasters and to provide strike cover demonstrates that there are similarities above and beyond those with the police, and that the links with the military are far from being a thing of the past.

Structural issues refers to similarities in what fire and police services do in relation to other authorities and public services, and in relation to the public, and again, there are a number of similarities. The role of both the fire service and the police in community safety partnerships, and in taking a preventive role in terms of community (fire) safety demonstrates similarities in actual work and in role. This is reiterated by the position in local government that the services take, as peripheral to the main business of local government, but still responsible for a number of core measures. There is a further similarity in how the services have responded to the shift towards prevention, which has often been seen as not real police work (Waddington 1999) or proper fire fighting (Baigent 2001), and which I will discuss further below. There is also a tension for these services in the public response to increased preventive working, whereby the public seem to think that preventive work comes at the expense of response work, when in reality it is more likely to complement it (Murphy, Hinds et al. 2008). Police and fire services also share democratic accountability through police and fire authorities, separate democratic bodies comprising elected representatives from the geographic region that they serve. This is in marked contrast to, for example, the armed forces, who have no democratic or local remit, and the other emergency services, such as the ambulance service or coast guard, who are not democratically accountable.

A further role, which has been growing for both police and fire services following the 9/11 attacks in New York, but more particularly the 7/7 attacks in London, pertains to counter terrorism and civil contingency. Again, this links both services to the military, who are also involved in this function, although it also has the potential to alienate certain parts of the population who may feel that they are unduly targeted by this type of work. Embracing a more social approach to terrorism prevention may have pay offs for the fire service as much as for police and other agencies (Shaftoe, Turksen et al. 2007), in what is indisputably a growth area. This also demonstrates a cultural difference between Britain and the US, where in the wake of 9/11, fire fighters have been lionized, and elevated above and beyond the status of folk heroes; whereas in the UK, the emergency services have seen their reputation very much tarnished by the inquiry into the 7/7 London bombings (Topping 2010).

Organisational culture relates to similarities in police and fire service ‘culture’, examining how police and fire fighters view themselves, their function and their organisation, especially where this departs from official ‘versions’ of the culture. Both the fire service and the police have quasi-military structures, with rank systems and uniforms not dissimilar to those employed in the military, and whilst the police are, perhaps, closer in operational function to the military, the links are also strong within the fire service, which developed out of the navy at the end of the second world war. Further, a number of recruits to the fire service have traditionally come from the armed forces, and this remains the case today. ‘Officially’, both the fire and police services have strong internal cultures of public service, duty and respectability. However, research, intuition and the popular imagination suggest that unofficially, this is not always the case. Writing about ‘canteen culture’ in the police has been a popular genre for both academics (Reiner 1992, Waddington 1999) and journalists (for example the undercover exposé of racism in Manchester police recruits), and particularly for television writers, with police series from The Sweeney to Luther focussing very much on officers not entirely doing things ‘by the book’. Over the years, the canteen culture has been seen as problematic in a number of different ways, perhaps culminating in the accusations of ‘institutional racism’ following the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry, or for the fire service, in some of the documents looking at their record on equalities (Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Fire Services 1999). However, there are also positives to some of the informal culture produced and reproduced within these organisations. Strong group ethos and affinity is no doubt of particular importance in life threatening situations (Hill, Brunsden 2009, Regehr 2009), and the very specific humours which develop are in some way response and defence mechanisms for the stressful work of dealing with danger and with normalising their work (Waddington 1999, Brewer 1991). As such, there seem to be a number of similarities in the culture of police and fire services, in their development either from the military or along military lines, in the formal culture, in the informal ‘canteen culture’ and both positive and negative associations with that. As discussed above, there is also much of the military in the culture and language of the FRS. For example, the watch system mirrors that of the navy, one set of shifts is referred to as a ‘tour’, and non fire fighters are called ‘civilians’, clearly demarcating fire fighters from external groups and, as shall be discussed in the first study, demonstrating social identity at play.

Finally, the idea of symbolic function looks at how the public view fire fighters and police officers and the roles they think they play. Popular conceptions of both police and fire fighters abound, with no shortage of material aimed at younger children, especially boys, including, for instance police and fire fighter dressing up outfits. This not only shows these job roles in a ‘heroic’ fashion (other outfits would include knight, astronaut, superhero, fairy, princess and nurse) but also in a strongly gender stereotypical fashion. And although this thesis is not overtly concerned with issues of gender, it is scarcely possible to mention fire fighters without, at some stage, mentioning gender. This feeds directly into the gendered and sexualised representations available to more adult audiences (Cooper 1995), that both hyper-masculinises male fire fighters whilst also undermining the contribution of female fire fighters. And whilst macho prowess might once have been the sole virtue required for fighting fires or criminals, the shift to prevention in both of these services requires a new skill set, whilst challenging what it means to be a fire fighter or a police officer, both within the services and amongst the general public, which will be discussed in more detail in both the Literature Review and the studies.

There is then a tension between these representations, which are presented as authority and aspirational figures to children, but fetishised for adults, while on both counts reinforcing the masculinity of the role (Hall, Hockey et al. 2007) and their link to an exemplification of social norms (Sunshine, Tyler 2003a). As such, fire fighters and police officers play a strong role in the public imagination, demonstrated through the numerous television programmes (Fireman Sam, London’s Burning, The Bill etc) devoted to covering them, to the range of children’s (and adult) toys. Further, fire and police services both protect us from a number of base fears, both instinctive and manipulated. The fear of fire no doubt predates society (Bachelard 1964, Goudsblom 1994), and whilst crime is an essentially social phenomenon (Rock 2002), fear of crime has been manicured by the press and commercial interests to its current fever pitch. Our reliance on both police and fire services to counter these fears is a strong similarity between the services. Further, both organisations have, with comparable amounts of hostility from the public, sought to transfer responsibility for these areas back to the public through their crime prevention and community fire safety schemes (MacLeavy 2009). The resistance with which these have both been met points to both further comparisons, but also the strength of feeling we have about the role of these two services in our communities. This will be picked up particularly in the chapter on the Focus Group study.

Police research is not, however, a straight forward proxy for FRS research, and there are a number of important differences. A key difference is with regard to enforcement: clearly the police and the fire service both have a prevent, protect, respond function, but for the police this is also accompanied by an enforcement component. However, this is to an extent becoming blurred, with fire fighters being granted the same powers as Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs), and potentially becoming part of the extended police family. This differs widely across service areas, with some forces and services maintaining a very strong ‘separation of powers’ but in other areas, police and fire work closely together in enforcement operations, for instance using ‘trojan’ fire engines to covertly deploy police officers (Case 2008). Fire fighting appliances are also often deployed in crowd control situations and the continuing debate over co-responding (where fire fighters deliver first aid), which is akin to the French system of fire fighters being the first response demonstrates that it is not only police tasks that can be taken on by fire fighters.

A further difference is with the relative ‘popularity’ of police and fire fighters. Whilst the majority of law abiding citizens respect the role of the police, many will sympathise with those who fall foul of structural and procedural injustices, such as through stop and search, and may be cynical of the police’s power to affect change or to deal with their priorities (Bradford, Jackson et al. 2008). Some may even have had negative experiences of the police themselves (Drury, Reicher 2000). Further, people also seem capable of understanding that in the ‘war on crime’ there are as likely to be police casualties as ‘criminal’ ones. However, when hostility to the fire service is discussed, this is frequently met with incredulity (although, as I shall discuss in the findings, this is sometimes also followed by at least latent hostility). Whilst this goes someway to demonstrating the high standing of the service in certain sections of society, it also undermines the difficulties that fire fighters face in a number of neighbourhoods (Labour Research Department 2008a), and can result in assistance, for example by the police, not being given. That fire fighters do come under attack, and in certain areas with depressing familiarity, suggests that in this respect they are not actually so dissimilar from the police. Further, they are, to an extent, powerless to respond under attack other than to call on the police for help, potentially undermining an identity based on strength and manliness.

In this section, I have considered research around the police as a proxy for research on the fire and rescue service, of which there is considerably less, both exposing gaps in literature relating to fire and rescue services, and proposing one potential way to fill those gaps. This also starts to set the context for relations between FRS and the public, by positioning the FRS within the public sector and allied in a number of ways, both actual and perceptual, to the police. In the next section, I will turn to an area of research on the fire service which is much more developed – fire fighter identity.