Back in 1974, 30 young men gathered at Durham County Brigade to be trained as firefighters. They slept in an old appliance room, the windows boarded up for privacy, with makeshift beds and no ventilation.
“Health and safety would have a fit these days,” says Ian Ferguson, who was 18 at the time. “But we bonded and had a great time.”
Today, 50 years on, Ian is a 69-year-old retired firefighter. He’s a busy man – the editor of the National Association of Retired Firefighters magazine and a warden in a nature reserve, he has a wife and grown-up daughter, a part-time job, a vintage van to keep on the road, and a saxophone which he plays with enthusiasm.
As if that wasn’t enough, this year he gave himself a project: to track down all the men (and they were all men) on the course, and get them to a reunion. It was not easy. Four have died – the course included not just very young men like Ian, but also ex-servicemen in their thirties. There was one he could not trace. A few could not come because of illness and prearranged holidays.
But 20 retired firefighters assembled one bright Spring day in the same pub where they held their end-of-course celebration 50 years ago – the Queens Head in Framwellgate Moor, Durham, where the manager welcomed them with open arms and told them: “It’s an honour to have you here”.
ORIGINAL INSTRUCTORS
They included two of the original instructors, John Short, now aged 90 (with the beard in the picture) and Tom Nattrass, 80.
Among the memories they exchanged, the great firefighters’ strike of 1977-8 figured prominently. Ian says: “Without what we did then, the FBU would not have been where it is today. We made history when we took on and beat the government of the day to get a fair pay and conditions deal. It was ground-breaking, and maintained stability in the fire service for many years.”
By 1977, firefighters’ wages had been reduced to about three quarters of average male earnings. Ian recalls the abysmal pay of those pre-strike days: “I delivered bread for £44 a week, then I joined the fire service for £33.”
He goes on: “We tried work to rule. It didn’t have any effect, so we went for strike action. It caused a national emergency.” The strike resulted in a pay formula for the future, which tied firefighters’ pay to the top quarter of male manual workers’ earnings, guaranteed against.
They included two of the original instructors, John Short, now aged 90 (with the beard in the picture) and Tom Nattrass, 80.
Among the memories they exchanged, the great firefighters’ strike of 1977-8 figured prominently. Ian says: “Without what we did then, the FBU would not have been where it is today. We made history when we took on and beat the government of the day to get a fair pay and conditions deal. It was ground-breaking, and maintained stability in the fire service for many years.”
By 1977, firefighters’ wages had been reduced to about three quarters of average male earnings. Ian recalls the abysmal pay of those pre-strike days: “I delivered bread for £44 a week, then I joined the fire service for £33.”
He goes on: “We tried work to rule. It didn’t have any effect, so we went for strike action. It caused a national emergency.” The strike resulted in a pay formula for the future, which tied firefighters’ pay to the top quarter of male manual workers’ earnings, guaranteed against any future government incomes policy. The working week would come down to 42 hours by 1 April 1979.
The pay formula was the big gain from the 1977 strike, and it served firefighters well for more than two decades.
“What won that strike,” says Ian, “was solidarity. We were out for nine weeks, which is a long time with nothing in your pocket. I was 21 and my parents looked after me, but it was hard for men with families.” He only knew one person who broke the strike. “He disappeared afterwards, he wasn’t accepted any more.”
Most of them had stayed in the local fire service, like Ian himself, who worked in the Durham brigade for 34 years on the pumps, ending as a watch manager on a two-pump station, and retiring in 2008 aged 52.
“It was a great life. I could not imagine doing anything else. The job was always different every day, the camaraderie in the fire service is second to none, there’s a bond between us all. Look, 50 years on, 20 of them came back for a reunion.”
At the end of the course, they all worked in the Durham area, and most of those at the reunion stayed in the fire service, with one, Peter Williams, proud of having become an FBU official.
OVER THE MOON
One was forced to leave the service after an accident permanently damaged his leg, and took up driving heavy plant like bulldozers. “I was over the moon that he came to the reunion though he’d been 47 years out of the fire service” says Ian.
Another, Bill Roberts, rose to be a divisional officer. When he left, he decided to do something far less senior and far less stressful – he became a porter in a university, and he told his old colleagues that he’s loving it.
They remembered the fun, the jokes, the camaraderie, the triumph they felt in 1977 when they changed the direction of travel of the fire service – but also the bad moments that were part of their lives. “I lost two colleagues in an accident – a fire appliance overturned” says Ian. “It’s burned on my brain. It’s like losing two brothers.
“I’ve been at fires where children have died. That’s terrible, but if you don’t know them you can put a buffer there. You can’t do that when it’s the guys you work with.
“There was no counselling in those days. We just sat round the mess room table and talked about it. We basically counselled ourselves.”
