Fire Fighters, Neighbourhoods and Social Identity: the relationship between the fire service and residents in Bristol

Change over time

For many of the older focus group participants, the early days of the estates really were exciting times, with people recounting the novelty of electricity, freezers, spaciousness and indoor plumbing, having moved from inner city slums that were bombed during or cleared after the second world war. Perhaps it is inevitable that as the novelty of these amenities wore off over the intervening fifty years that residents would come to find the estates less alluring?

Ivy, Hilton

Further, and in relation to life stage changes which will be discussed below, many residents felt that the last decade or so had seen a particular decline. It must be said that the average age for the group which Ivy attended was probably seventy five.

Life stage

Laura, Pilot Group

New parents, such as ‘Laura’, acknowledged that aspects of the neighbourhood that they ignored or found, at worst, an irritation, might come to weigh more heavily on them as their children got older. However, for parents of babies, the fire service was not of particular interest, despite their being considered a vulnerable group, in fire service terms.

Parents of young children (as opposed to babies) universally commented on pointing out fire engines to children:

Jeanette, Upperfield

This sort of activity, alongside ubiquitous toys and games targeted at this age group (although predominantly at boys), was spoken about by many parents, with young children being particularly interested in appliances such as fire engines, diggers and trains. This sort of interest is reinforced through programmes such as Fireman Sam, which perpetuate a heroic image of fire fighters and add to their popularity with young children (Cooper 1995). I can attest to the fact that a walk with young children is inordinately enlivened by the site of a fire engine, and so it is no wonder that the fire service attempt to capitalise on this good will by taking fire safety messages into schools to target children from a young age. However, as I shall discuss in the next chapter, these responses are not universal.

As children reach adolescence, the fire service and other public services start to lose their allure. Respect for adults diminishes and authority is widely challenged (Smith 2002) Although not every teenager will resort to standing on street corners abusing or assaulting fire fighters, it is fairly safe to assume that they will not hold these professionals in the same thrall as when young children. The same can likely be said for their interaction with many public services, and indeed, for those services’ view of young people as they go from children to be engaged with to teenagers to be managed (Drury, Dennison 2000).

However, even for those who do stray from the straight and narrow, this is often a temporary aberration, which becomes tempered by familial responsibility, as Linda explains about a ‘rough’ group in Upperfield:

But they’re growing up a bit now, they’re moving on, like Craig and that, their gang used to be really bad, but they’re growing up a bit now, getting girlfriends and that. Growing out of all the violence.

Linda, Upperfield

This reflects how, as parents and householders, many residents assume a mantle of responsibility that a few years earlier they would have eschewed – although it is likely that a number of fire fighters would disagree with this! However, again, this is not entirely uncomplicated: although a number of residents agreed that becoming a householder enforced a degree of responsibility on them, for many taking responsibility seemed a step too far. There was an expectation that the fire service, or other agencies, such as health visitors, were obliged to provide for their safety, including fire alarms, fire guards and stair safety gates, the latter two of which can be obtained on referral from social services or health visitors. When these were not forthcoming, this caused a degree of resentment:

Ellie: They shouldn’t be advertising if they can’t do them…

Jeanette: … I know equipment costs money, but it’s people’s lives at the end of the day

Ellie and Jeanette, Upperfield

This suggests a sense of entitlement that a number of participants seemed to hold, feeling that they were entitled to goods (such as stairgates) or services (such as HFSVs) with a minimum of input from themselves, and that where this was not forthcoming, this was a source of resentment.

As residents age further, they enter a period during which few agencies are likely to be interested in them. They may continue to have contact with, for example, housing officers if they are a council tenant, but in the main part, the middle aged have less to do with public services than other age groups might.

Bill: but when you got children, that’s another worry isn’t it

Robin: well, my youngest is 56, so it’s not so much for me

Bill and Robin, Shiregreen HFSV Group

However, as they pass retirement age, once again, residents appear to public services as requiring interventions and as a vulnerable group. This is also likely compounded by an increase in time available to the newly retired who, finding that services are again offered to them, also have the time to avail themselves of such services. This is reflected by a number of participants who describe their experiences both as older people, and of other older people who they are, perhaps, caring for. Unfortunately, this increased exposure to services can also result in an increase in dissatisfaction with those services, for example when smoke alarms are not fitted immediately, or if fire fighters are called away mid installation. However, there is also the possibility that those who attended my focus groups felt they had particular issues with certain services, including the fire service, that they wanted to air through the focus groups.

Decline in respect

Ivy, Hilton

This particular quote relates to antipathy to the fire service, and reflects a number of these concerns: of people coming from outside of the neighbourhood to live there, of bringing their problems with them. It suggests that problems do not originate within communities, but creep in from outside. Clearly this is frightening to Ivy. She does not want people coming from other places to live in her neighbourhood. She particularly does not want to admit that the neighbourhood in which she lives, which has formed a part of her identity for the majority of her adult life, is capable of spawning these problems itself.

In another group, the decline in respect is linked to the ascendance of ‘rights’, reflecting the lack of intergenerational respect. Paul does not think young people are deserving of ‘rights’, and that, in turn, young people, and their parents, do not respect other people. This is associated with a decline in moral standards, exemplified by single motherhood and a concomitant lack of discipline.

Paul, Upperfield

However, this statement was not accepted by other group members unequivocally, with two participants, both of whom knew Paul well, springing to the defence of single mothers and their children – somewhat surprisingly to me. This reflects that even in outwardly homogenous groups, certainly groups who meet regularly and out of common interest, there is not a moral consensus, and that even where people express a consensus amongst ‘us’ versus ‘them’ in their neighbourhoods, this is not complete, universal or unchallenged. As such, looking for a prevailing identity in neighbourhood terms is not as clear cut as it might be with the fire service.