It's all about self-respect, say the men of Blue Watch

The firefighters of Blue Watch returned from their third false alarm of the day to discover that the main event was finally on.

News of the first strike for a generation was breaking on the television in the rest room, so they went back out to pick up an oil drum from a nearby goods yard to make the brazier for the picket line they would man 28 hours hence.

"The mood has gone from hopeful optimism to frustration to anger,'' said Marc Richards, 37, a firefighter for 15 years. "And tomorrow evening when we walk out of the doors, if nothing else, we will feel empowered.

"We are politically aware enough to know you just can't stick two fingers up at the Government and we don't expect to get anywhere near 40 per cent. But we're going on strike now for a bit of self- respect. They have taken the piss out of us.''

At Euston fire station yesterday, one of London's busiest, handling about 7,000 calls a year, the mood was grim. The 23-page Bain report was doing the rounds but had been dismissed as "not worth the paper it was printed on''.

This was not an opportunity to tweak the nose of the Government, they insisted. The talk was of self-respect if they went on strike and "total humiliation'' if they did not.

All four watches will return to the station at 6pm today when the Blue Watch, whose shift begins then, will lead the others out of the station doors. "A lot of our watch wanted to go straight out when they heard about the pay offer,'' said John Aldridge, 41, as he left the station at the end of his shift to go home to Hornchurch, Essex.

Sir George Bain's call for a more broadly based organisation of firefighters is received with dark humour here.

Mr Aldridge is one of the 79 out of 80 firefighters in Euston who live outside the area where they work because they cannot afford the high property prices.

His journey is hardly exceptional: others come from Wales and Sunderland, nearly 300 miles away, for their two-day, two-night standard shift before heading home. Many take on second jobs such as driving taxis and cleaning windows to make ends meet.

Mr Aldridge, who takes home £1,400 a month, said: "Nobody was expecting anything out of the meeting. If they came back to us with a decent pay offer we wouldn't have even thought about it. We don't expect to go on strike for three months and come back with £30,000.''

Demands by employers for reform because of the cost of the service pension were treated with equal contempt.

"I have had 20 years of commuting and not seeing my kids for half a week at a time,'' said Mr Richards. "I have had enough of this but I'll continue for 10 years because the 11.25 per cent of my salary that I spend a month on my pension will bear fruit.''

The firefighters are realistic about the potential for negative publicity during the strike.

During the two-day walkout they will maintain a continuous rota in case of calamitous events, although they snort cynically at the timing of Tony Blair's gloomy threat to Britain from terrorism.

However, they admit the normal service can not be kept up and predict a scenario similar to the 1977 strike, when buildings were left to burn down if nobody was in danger.

Popularity for the strike appeared high yesterday if the number of motorists hooting their horns as they drove past the station – with a banner draped across its entrance which said "support fair pay for your fire service'' – was anything to go by.

But would they win? "No,'' said Chris Connolly, 39. "But there's only one way that they'll listen to us and that's when they miss us.''