Interview with Bob Pounder

Bob Pounder interview

14 April 2015

Marne St, Ashton-under-Lyne

Summary

·         Royal Navy firefighter to 1978

·         Poor pay and conditions in the RN

·         Reading Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, Sillitoe, Trotsky while in the RN

·         Supporting the FBU in the 1977 strike

·         The Grunwick dispute

·         Greater Manchester Fire Service 1979 – 200? Working at Stalybridge Fire Station

·         The improved terms and conditions that followed the 1977 strike.

·         The Laurence Scott dispute 1982

·         The Stockport Messenger (Eddie Shah) dispute 1983

·         Solidarity with the miners 1984-5

·         Tackling racism and sexism in the fire service

·         The battle over the deputy chief officer saying ‘I’d rather be gay than black’.

·         Threatening the chief fire officer with industrial action to get an ill health pension for a member.

·         Bruce Springsteen, The River.

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Geoff: Ok we're on the 14th of April and I'm talking to Bob Pounder.  Bob, I’ve given you a few questions....

Bob:  Yep.

Geoff: How did you become involved? What did your working life look like?

Bob: Well I suppose my early political memories; we are always surrounded by politics. Anyway as a child, you know you would come home from school and see that some of the other schools were closed, because of polling day, and you would see people wearing their different coloured rosettes. And I used to wonder what was going on and I remember I was in the classroom one day and the girl that sat next to me told the teacher that her sister had voted for the communist party  so... I never forgot that. I suppose really that there's a constant throughout my life, a constant prodding politically until you reach a point when you wake up.

The story really starts in the Royal Navy because in the Royal Navy you had no trade union rights, you were subject to the Queen's Regulations and you have no say what so ever in your pay and your conditions of service. I took an interest in politics whilst I was in the navy. I was 15 when I joined the navy and over those years I read books by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, Animal Farm and so on, and I read quite a bit of Alan Sillitoe. Raw Material was one of his books which really moved me. It was a real tirade against militarism and it affected me. Then I bought some Marxist literature I bought Trotsky's My Life which I think is a fantastic book. I read this while I was still in the navy and I would boast about this.  Anyway when I came to the end of my career in the navy I was aware of two particular disputes.

The first one was Grunwick. We saw that unfold on the television, day by day, week by week. We saw the mass pickets and there we heard there the voice of working-class solidarity. There was a real passion in that dispute.  It was led by Asian women, Indian women and they led a very brave struggle. I remember the arguments that used to go on with my colleagues but certainly one of my mates Taff Turner his dad had been a stevedore on the docks I think and a card carrying member of the Communist Party as well.  Me and Taffy used to support the workers, we were very much in support then.

Not long after that the Fire Brigades Union went on its first national strike. I think it was the 14th of November 1977 and by that time I was a naval airman I was working on the Naval Air Station Culdrose in Cornwell. Basically I was a Royal Naval firefighter so there was a real kind of affinity there in that the firefighters were members of another sort of militarized organisation taking matters into their own hands. Armed forces pay was very low at that time. We were getting paid less than the firefighters and I remember that in that year I got a pay rise and ended up with a 50p a week's pay cut. So that certainly we felt that the firefighters were making a point and fighting for us. You could see it on the television at that time: there was a mass movement of trade unionists, thousands of firefighters. There was an energy there that was happening.  We were watching from a distance. I never actually got sent out on the green goddesses to scab on the firefighters.

Obviously I understand the need for fire protection. I always remember the words of Ken Cameron  the general secretary of the fire brigades union for over 20 years and one of his cries  was that it's not it’s not the right to strike that wants removing it's the need to strike that wants removing. And I've always felt that about public sector workers that, by and large, public sector workers are serving the majority of the population who are the working class and the poor. It's a difficult decision to remove those kinds of services from the people who need them. So it's the role of the wider working class to support and help them and protect those social services but that doesn't mean to say, of course, that the Fire Brigades Union and other public sector unions don’t have a responsibility to take some kind action.  Of course they do.

Anyway the firefighters strike lasted 9 weeks. It came to an end in January 1978 and in the fullness of time, although the strike itself was defeated, the Fire Brigades Union were promised by that particular Labour government, the James Callaghan government that they would realise the objectives of their claim and, sure enough, they were and they obtained really good conditions of service and those lasted for quite a long time.  Unfortunately we no longer have them in the same way. Certainly it's right that it was a significant strike. It was inspiring and I was inspired by it. I wanted to leave the navy. I just got married and within about 18 months afterwards that I'd applied to join the fire service.  I was successful. I joined the Greater Manchester Fire Service (in February 1979) and I got my union card. Yes! I suppose that somebody once said that the only thing I ever wanted to be was a union rep. Well I suppose that's quite true really. I did want to be a union rep. I wanted to play an active part in the union movement. So I completed my training and got sent to Stalybridge. And while I was still in probation I became a station union rep. Probation was a two year period in those days - I became a branch official, joined the Labour party and I also got involved in the Militant tendency and it was all uphill from there

Geoff: can you say when exactly you got sent to Stalybridge?

Bob: Yeah, it was 6th June 1979

Geoff:  Four weeks after Thatcher gets into office.

Bob: It was horrendous. Just horrendous.  We didn't really know what we were in for, did we? I mean, you know, I knew it was going to bad and I had no idea that the unions were going to be so useless as well when it came to beating the challenge.  

Geoff: Have you any idea why we didn't win at Grunwick? ...

Bob: I think the establishment really got involved ensuring that kind of set piece confrontation.  We were fortunate to have these women, Jayaben Desai, leading that dispute and there was real courage there but I think there was an organisation the National Association for Freedom, George Ward the boss of Grunwick [was] open to them letting them help him.  It became a set piece class struggle even the posties, the post office workers at Cricklewood, they even refused to deliver the mail. We got a real sense of what working class power could be but I just think that the need to win, the need to step it up, the need not to back down was lost in some kind of way and the bosses exploited that weakness. And it did set the scene for future confrontations.

Certainly I felt the Eddie Shah [Stockport Messenger] dispute [1983] was again another set piece confrontation. I think that was basically because of the 3 day week, you know, the defeat the government had suffered in 1973-4 which obviously overturned the Heath government and the working-class were actually flexing their muscles for revenge. But it was still all possible in those days....

Geoff: Can you say something about what it was actually like working in the Stalybridge fire station and perhaps contrast with the way things are today, in terms of the conditions?

Bob:  Yes.  When I went to Stalybridge they had just come off the 48 hour week.  Before that they worked at 56 a week and before that they worked 60 hour week, a 70 hour week. And now we were on the 42 hour week.  We worked a system of two days, 9 in the morning to 6, and then we'd have 2 evenings, 6 in the evening till 9 in the morning, and it was absolutely spot on. It was a full 42 hours a week, there where beds on fire stations, during the quiet time you could have a kip.  There was a night cook and a day cook, there was a guaranteed pay formula, there was a good pension scheme, there was leave, there was NHS reimbursements, there was full acceptance of a proper discipline procedure. It was just a gold plated job and, as other public sector workers came under the cosh, we held on a lot longer to these conditions of service.  We had good health and safety, the equipment continued to improve, the union was supported by Thompsons, the trade union solicitors, the union was strong. Maybe some of the weaknesses came from some of the newer members; [they] would think these conditions dropped out of the sky, a kind of complacency. (But the union leadership is ultimately the crucial factor).  Once you've got these, you kind of relax and then obviously you got the employers and one of them turned round to one of my comrades and said you've got some of our jewels and we intend to have them back and it was always their objective to claw them back. But the conditions at the time were very good

Geoff: Can you say something about the actual job? Fire fighting is risky.

Bob: It is a risky affair but, again, because we were organised, because of health and safety, because of years of tradition, generally speaking, fire fighting is a calculated risk and, relative to the danger, the injuries and deaths are quite few.  There are scary moments when you're inside the building and the roof is coming in, you need to get out quick and, all of a sudden, finding the win that when your sent to the seat of a fire at the seat of the fire and finding the seat of the fire is acetylene cylinders   ... so you have your moments and in fairness Stalybridge was not one of the busiest stations and I won't claim great glory.  We served the community and we had the fires.  As you moved into the city centre, those were fires were more frequent and, if you were a city centre firefighter, you would become more experienced more quickly but you learn by the way and you can be killed out in the sticks fire fighting a barn fire as much as you can be killed in the city centre.  It is a dangerous job I wouldn't pretend that it isn't dangerous but it was a job with great camaraderie, a great sense of, I have to say, of brotherhood when I was there. You would work with these people, both men and women, and they become your family. I worked on a watch, I was 18 years on the same watch in Stalybridge, white watch on Stalybridge, and I spent more time living and eating, sleeping, you know, with these people    than I did with my own brothers and sisters.  There's a real sense of solidarity. I think that's one of the things employers didn't like, this kind of class solidarity that would naturally emerge when you're facing danger, you're together eating, sleeping together and your social time together.  It's very bonding.  It's almost tribal really but it's great. I love it, being with them, I love being with firefighters.  In fact I still like being with them now. I've got to tell you I've never met a firefighter that I've actually hated, I've always liked them. I've always found them a bit larger than life, maybe so am I. They are just great fun to be with.

Geoff: You mentioned how the Grunwick dispute was led by Asian women. Traditionally the fire service is very white and male.  How did that play out given that there was a women's movement and racism was a central issue?

Bob: I think racism definitely a central issue. Racism was a big issue in the fire service. The fire service as it was in those days in many respects only reflected the norms of the wider society which was racist and sexist and everything else.  And, of course, as a trade unionist and somebody who had become politically aware, I realised that it was as sin if you like, it was a defect we couldn't afford to have.  So because I was politically aware so I would spend time calling for solidarity with black workers with black people against racism and also on the issue of sexism that women have the right to join the fire service and to be treated with dignity and respect.  We have to grow up and acknowledge that the times are changing and there were lots of battles that I was actually involved with.  There was lots of battles I was involved with most of the battles ... There were very few women that came into the fire service.  Proportionally it will always be male dominated. That's just the way it is, the way men and women are.  Some women make better firefighters then some men but generally it’s kind of a boy's thing I suppose really.

But the big issues where on race.  Those were quite nasty at times and I was involved in quite a few struggles.  As you remember, the dispute with the deputy chief fire officer.

Geoff:  That was much later on.

Bob: That was about 20 years ago, quite a long time ago.   But we had to face it down.  I had black firefighters that were union reps. I once had this black firefighter that was a good union rep, a really good a solid lad he was and he was one  of my union reps - by that time I was the brigade secretary  - and he was getting abused.  So I went up to this particular fire station and said look, you know, you’re not on.  This is one of my reps and whether he is a black man or not, that's got nothing with it, I’m not having it.  We faced it down and, because of that stuff that happened much later in the 90s, we certainly created the acceptance and the realisation on fire stations that were all brothers and sisters together in the union and you can't do it anymore. The times are changing and that was it.  A lot of people didn't like it but at the end of the day it was something that had to be done and you cannot have a union and you cannot have solidarity when you are refusing your colleagues just because of the colour of their skin or because of their sexuality.  We can't afford to have that

Geoff: the deputy fire chief said something like 'I'd rather be gay than black'. Or was it the other way round?

Bob:    I can't remember myself ...  I think it was 'I'd rather be gay than black. It doesn't really matter which way he said it now.  ... at the time I just become the brigade secretary, it was '98 when it kicked off, I became the brigade secretary in '97 and, you know, it was in a mess. I was determined to pull it to make it a fighting union and to make the employer respect us.  I was fighting a battle at the time over another trade union dispute, which was about 'real fire training' it was called, and we'd not been consulted about that and I was going round stations telling blokes not to participate in this.  I even went on the training school and I argued it out with the staff and it went on and on.  Anyway, I was actually banned off all the stations.  The deputy chief fire officer said that I wasn't but when I went on the stations I was actually thrown off the stations.  A couple of days later I got all the union reps in down at the office on Liverpool Road and I said 'Right this is what's happening and we're getting tatered'.  I said you're all union reps; you're all members of the union.  If you don't do something about it, we might as well wrap up and go home.  Let's forget we're in the union. I'm calling on you now get stuck in, get on those stations and stop it. I put it in those terms for them 'cause there's nowhere to go.  You either become a bosses' union rep or you become a class fighter. That's how I saw myself I wasn't any great shakes but I wasn't putting up with that. Anyway, after the meeting somebody came up to me and told me what the deputy county fire officer had said in front of a bunch of young recruits in regard to this black firefighter.  And they gave me his mother's telephone number.  So I phoned the woman up and she was absolutely raging about it she said I can't believe this.  When my dad came to this country in the 50s they treated him like a dog and they’re treating my son like that.  Well it just got me going that did and I said don't you worry about it, they'll know about it.  And of course they did.

Geoff: There was a walk out as I remember...

Bob: Well, they hadn't taken industrial action for about six years or something. Somebody moved industrial action and all the rest of it and they all put their hands up and then they all cleared off out of the office and left me to sort it out, you know, Friday night, 7 o'clock, getting them all sitting down for Monday morning.  What do you do?  Well, can you imagine? Anyway, Monday morning, whshooo..., every station, emergency calls only. The whole lot came to a halt.  It was on the news, on the television, everywhere.  So, you know, it kicked off. We wrong footed them.  I said 'There, you've got your equal opportunities policy.  There it is'.  And they said 'What do you think should happen?' I said 'Well he's obviously said that, he should be subject to disciplinary action shouldn't he?’ I didn't actually think the deputy chief fire officer would lose his job.  I later found out that the chief fire officer, instead of pouring oil on troubled waters and sorting it out properly just ran a mile. For me, apart from the emergency calls only, in boxing terms, it was just a love tap.  But, you know, they just went down.  Well that was it.  You know that, by that time, we were well on the way.  All of a sudden, and it was on the issue of race, and stuff like that, that actually helped us strengthen the union, it brought us together because, about a year later, when they came for our national conditions of service,  we were the only section of the union, in Greater Manchester, that really fought it and fort it and the crowning moment, it was just wonderful,  we turned up at the Lancastrian Hall in Swinton, 800 firefighters cheering their rocks off for a strike, it was just great.  And it was just great and it was an officers' issue as well.  It wasn't for the blokes. I'd got the officers on board. The blokes were saying at first 'Forget the officers; they’ll never unite with the blue shirts'.  - because you had the blue shirts and the white shirts -  and I said 'No, no, it's the principle and people came on board and it was fantastic.  It went to a ballot and we got 85 percent yes vote for strike, reversing the defeat that they had a few years before, before I became brigade secretary.  So that was it.  I organised a victory march the following week through Manchester .  The union leadership didn't like it, they were telling people to keep away, 'Oh, it's too much, he's pushing too hard'.

I'll tell you, they were great times, and in the run up to the 2002 strike, stations with festooned with posters and all the rest of it, and some of the officers were trying to take them down because obviously they would do that's what the bosses wanted them to do and they're officers. I went to the officers’ branch and I told them to lay off and they laid off and the reason they laid off was they might not have thought there were any great shakes but they remembered and I respected them and they respected me. They knew that I would fight for their interests as much as anybody else's.  It wasn't a sectional union, it was a union. One union and we fought it together and they thought 'OK' and they just packed up.  That was it. And you know I had some great moments. It was tough, you know, 60 or 70 hours a week I would be putting in, no family life.  The union was my life. 

I remember other times.  This woman rang me up.  She said her husband, a firefighter, had been banged up in a psychiatric ward and she wanted him pensioned off and out of the fire service and...    and I phone up the chief fire officer and I told him he's got 24 hours couple to do  it . Anyway what happened was you know there's just so many of these things that happened, people when we've won one victory they're enthused by another. You build the confidence up and so, anyway, when it came to the 24 hours, I gave him from dinner time to dinner time, to 12 o'clock noon the following morning and it got to about 11:45 and we still hadn't got it, so I phoned him up there - of course all the union reps are in the office - I say 'Right, have you got him retired now?  Have you sorted his pension out?'  I mean it's virtually unheard of.  Just a fireman, me, telling the chief fire officer.  I mean you know what it's like to get someone a pension.  He says 'Give me another 3 hours.'  'Just hang on a sec, I'll phone you back.' and I say to the reps 'He's just said '3 hours'. 'Tell him to fuck off.' they say. So I say to him 'I'm sorry. I can't hold. You've got 15 minutes, otherwise the whole brigade is going out and we will tell the press all about it'. He went from 'Give me 3 hours.' to 'Give me 3 minutes.' and it was done and dusted.  And I got this lovely card from his wife.  But there was a whole history of neglect there. And I remember... I went to organise the Manchester May Day down in Bootle Street [police station] and I was talking to one of the cops down there.  I told him I used to be in the fire service and he told me about his pension scheme, so I told him about that and he said 'Bloody hell, I wish we had you in the Police Federation.'

Geoff: can I pull you back

Bob: A lot of bragging they but these are moments to be savoured.
Geoff: These are the moments that have been buried. And you can forget them all too easily. I want to go back to the Stockport Messenger dispute.  You mentioned Grunwick. That was a heroic battle which could easily have been won. Warrington was a much tougher battle.

Bob: It was terrible, absolutely terrible. I was there, I remember going down with Mary [Littlefield] and Peter [Waters] and another lad who was like a contact for the SWP and, after we got away, he said he was terrified, he said  'I've never been so scared since I watched the Exorcist'. But it was bad.  We got columns of marching cops and they were all in those industrial units [where] they were all tooled up and they'd got CS gas as well, gallons of stuff in there and they were really going to give it to us and they did. I mean I was involved on the first night in the picketing.  It was ... it was ... you know it wasn't ... it was really bad, that was really the set piece confrontation. It was like before a building collapses or before a thunder storm.  You get a little bit of a warning first that was the first tremor leading to the 1984 miner's strike as did  I think Grunwick set the scene in many respects.  But then again so did the 1974 Labour government because, despite everything they promised, they made more cuts and reduced wages that they'd never done since the 1930s and that's a fact.

Geoff: It's a key moment.

Bob: Yeah, when you're being chased. It ended up I remember being on this road with pickets must have been about 4:30 in the morning and then all these robocops with shields and batons started chasing us and then instinctively I ran. I just ran because I saw this machine coming and I thought 'You coward.' And, when I looked to my left and looked at my right, everyone else was running too so I thought I'm with the crowd ... a member of the Self Preservation Society.

Geoff: I've got a view that the Warrington dispute had a national impact but very strongly in the North West, one of the strongest areas for trade unionism, the union officialdom, the bureaucracy who were there on that night in Warrington, having their own heads cracked open along with everybody else that didn't run fast enough, the point is that the bureaucracy took a lesson from that, what later was called the 'new realism', that you've got to trim your sails, you've got to recognise the shift in class forces.  It set the scene for the lack of solidarity in the miners’ strike which then comes along.  So my next question is - it’s only a matter of months before the miners’ strike kicks off in March...

Bob:   Warrington was November '83 then in March it kicks off.

Geoff: So what do you remember of the miners’ strike? We all collected money.  How did it work in the fire service?

Bob: Well I had a collection every week, every week there was a collection for the miners' strike. I was the president of Tameside trades council. Dave Hallsworth was the secretary.  We gave all the funds away and the right wing complained that we given all the TUC's money to the miners' strike. We knew then and everybody knew then if this dispute was lost that that would be it.  The miners were the shock troops of the working class and there's absolutely no question about that. I collected every week at the fire station. I would stay behind at night [for the evening shift] because it was an ideological struggle. Even if they only gave me 50p I would get it off them and I would send it.  I never stopped collecting for them and writing to them and supporting them and going on the demonstrations but it was obviously a defeat. They said it wasn't a defeat but I don't care [what they said] and it was a significant defeat for us and it was a tragedy, an absolute tragedy. It was the last time in any significant sense that the working class was on the political stage. And that was it. 

And we don't really see the pervasive nature of that kind of ideology. We're drip fed an idea all the time. It's the way the establishment works, it's the way the bosses work Like In the fire service, they would have the green paper on the fire service in the 'Line of Fire' report then the Out of  the Line of Fire report  then they would go to the press and say about all these firefighters having second jobs and an easy life and all the rest of it and ripping the back out of a pension scheme, softening people up, so in the end you get the psychology of inevitability.  So people would say to you on fire stations 'You know, it's going to happen, it's got to happen there's nothing you can do about it. So it's the psychology of inevitability. Nothing's got to happen. If you say it's not going to happen, if you resist it, you can curve the ball. You can stop it; you can create your own history.  If you are allowing their ideas to become predominant, that's what's hit people, people are beguiled by it and I think a lot of that is because of the lack of vision in the working class movement, a lack of courage, a lack of any kind of independent ideology and the lack of compassion as well, a lack of understanding that once you go down this line of a service economy without workers there are going to have a whole swathe of people who have no means of subsistence, no means of living who are then going to be castigated as chavs and scrotes and all the rest of it and they become a subsection of society and they are ridiculed.  There's probably two generations who have never known full employment.  Work is a thing that we should be proud of.  We should live to work; we should take a pride in work. We make the means of production and by producing the means of production we should be the people that have a say and say how society should work not be run by a few psychopathic elites who lead us into pointless wars and all the other things that's wrong with society. Leon Trotsky said that the crisis of humanity is a crisis of proletarian leadership and I think there's a lot of truth in that.

Geoff: I've covered almost all my questions.  Just one or two more.  The Laurence Scott dispute, not far from here.

Bob: The Laurence Scott dispute was '82.  Dave Hallsworth, as you know, was in the Laurence Scott dispute and I remember that Dave was one of the unofficial leaders of that dispute. Obviously that was a strike that was the AUEW, Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers.  It was in Openshaw as I remember and they made ...

Geoff: Mining equipment?

Bob: Yeah and they decided to resist and they occupied the place and Dave was calling for them to physically occupy with batons and stuff He said to me 'Once you've been hit with a baton a couple of times you know it hurts but you know it's worth it .

Geoff there was a lot of hand to hand stuff.

Bob:  I've got the information on that.

Geoff: I finish with that.  There is the question of papers and photos but I've got a question here about music and poetry and theatre.  There is a tendency to see the movement as a grey affair, meetings and picket lines and so on but no real movement is worth calling a movement unless it is able to express itself properly.

Bob: Yeah.

Geoff: You play an instrument.

Bob:  I play the buffoon.

Geoff: If we go back to these... is there anything when you go back?  You mentioned watching TV, that's not really what I'm getting at. I'm getting at the question what was...

Bob: Something to inspire people. The songs of the time.

Geoff: Yeah.  Is there anything from the time that we need to go back to and listen to again?

Bob: I think you mean what kind of songs were prevalent?  I think... what's he called, the American...

 

Geoff: People like Woody Guthrie belong to an earlier time. Bruce Springsteen.

Bob: Yeah, yeah... well Bruce Springsteen, The River, ‘I come down from the valley....’ That was a great song because in many ways that summed up working class life for many people.  He gets his girlfriend pregnant and, of course, he is forced to marry. The judge puts it all to right. For my 19th birthday I got a union card got wed in court.  It sums it up.  You're a worker. You've got your girlfriend pregnant, you are responsible for her, you go out now, you earn a thing and here's your union card. I find that very moving. It's not romantic. It's quite tough but that's what, you know, we need to be tough.  We have to be tough to defend our rights, to defend our families and the future and you see when people have got self respect, when they respect themselves they got a future. You become an aspirational class, you become a class not 'in itself' but a class 'for itself. That's the thing.

 A few years ago, there's a meeting at my church and the Church of England came down and one or two other people and they asked us to get involved in this Street Angels project which involves going round picking people up off the streets who are drunk and helping them to get home.  Obviously it's a nice little social service and if it was your kid that was helped by them you'd be grateful to them and I don't disparage the motive.  But then I said to the vicar 'What's the message? And he says 'Message? What do you mean?' We're not here to proselytise. The church has come so low in people's opinion that this is what we can do for people'. So I said, 'The church in the 19th century, whatever you might think of it, did have a message. It was abstinence and as a result of abstinence, especially in the Methodist tradition, the great working class religious movement, you got an aspiring working class and the labour movement came out of that working class'.  I said, 'That's the message. The great Irish revolutionary, James Connolly, said the powerful, the great are only great, appear great, because we are on our knees. Let us rise'. I said, 'How can you rise when you're pissed? And that's the message'.

And what I mean by that, we have a society where, first of all, we feel there isn't a message to be given and, secondly, we have a society where whole swathes of the population are sedated by drink and drugs with the blessing of the establishment.  I mean if I wasn't there it doesn't help. It keeps people down. To change the world, we've got to raise our consciousness to what we could be. We are not animals. We are human beings and we are made something far greater than the condition we find ourselves in and that's what I believe.

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