Patrick Crozier pins the blame for the strike firmly where it belongs
The firemen (don’t expect me to use the virtue fascist term “firefighters”) have kicked off an eight-day strike. The Evening Standard (and I am sure a whole host of other worthies) have chosen to single out the unions for blame.
Poppycock. It is the sole responsibility of the government to provide firefighting services as no alternatives now exist. If it fails to do so then it is it (the government) and no one else who is at fault. If they find that they can’t sack striking firemen then that is again their fault for either signing no-dismisal agreements or making such action illegal (I am not sure which, if any, applies in this case.)
I think (but I am damned if I can find the quote) Enoch Powell once described unions as “pure as the driven snow”. He was right.
In expectation of an obvious comment… Yes, I know ultimately it is our individual responsibility to provide ourselves with fire-fighting services. I do not know if it would be legal or not to do so but the fact that the state usually provides one and taxes us for the privilege tends to crowd out the alternative.
Patrick Crozier
Wasn’t it “pure as the driven slush”?
That is a very good point. There is no reason in logic why a group of persons should decide that firefighting should be a monopoly, any more than that should be the case with sea rescues, ambulance services, or such like.
There is – as has been mentioned by Perry de Havilland before – a wonderful voluntarist tradition in the UK in sea rescues through the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.
If logic were to prevail (yeah, right) then the fire service would be a free market competitive industry.
There may already be a few signs of this happening. I cannot imagine major companies would be willing to tolerate the situation without developing specialist firefighting facilities of their own. Take a large chemical factory for example.
I believe that some areas in the U.S. have private for hire fire fighters.
I believe that allowing civil servants to unionize and, worse, to allow Union Shops where membership is mandatory was and is a big mistake. I believe tha right to strike should be reserved for private, non-monopoly companies, and that mandatory union membership should go the way of every other form of slavery.
Here in the U.S. there are in fact some private fire services. Or quasi-private anyway, as most negotiate monopoly contracts with a local government. It’s also notable that for the vast majority of communities, firemen are unpaid volunteers.
For an interesting look at the transition from an all for profit system to the current one go to the Hall of Flame, located in Phoenix, AZ.
Don’t trivialize this event!
We’re seeing in action one of the major political innovations of the 20th Century.
A unionized civil service creates a voting bloc focused on expansion of state power, and provides massive funding and labor to campaign for like-minded public officials.
Fascism and Communism will go down as small scale, unsuccessful alternatives to this great engine of the State.
Hmmm…. The UK dosen’t have private firefighters? Figures.
This is quite common in the US. Although firefighting in large cities is usually provided by the city, in the vast majority of the country firefighting is done by volunteer fire departments.
Also, fighting of large forest fires is largely done by private companies. I live in Southern Oregon, and we just had one of the largest forest fires in living memory out here this summer. We have alot of private construction companies that “change their stripes” and become firefighting companies when a blaze pops up. Erickkson Air Crane is a big one, providing helicopter water/fire retardant drops. I also recall reading about a local company that’s making a good living off a piece of firefighting equipment they invented, and lease out (it’s an odd beast, think a cross between a tank, a firetruck, and a giant robot out of some Japanese anime, and you get close. It’s dual purpose and serves as a logging machine when there’s no fires.) We also have alot of “nomad firemen”, guys in their 20’s or so, who roam the Western US during fire season, making a living by going from forest fire to forest fire, putting out blazes. You see ’em wearing t-shirts with the names of the blazes they’ve fought.