Calling all firefighters: return to join the rest of us on Planet Earth

They have lost sight of how most people live. Most people are not investment bankers, footballers or corporate lawyers

Industrial action makes quite normal people behave oddly. Yesterday the Association of University Teachers (AUT) – as mild-mannered a bunch as you could hope to be lectured by – held a strike in the capital. The issue was their London weighting allowance, which – as far as I can gather – has not been raised significantly since the Boer War. On the same day Her Majesty the Queen (now she might do worse than consider joining some abstruse section of the T&G, so that her interests can be better represented) was at King's College, London, cutting the tape on a new block.

This, according to Sally Hunt, the general secretary of the AUT, was outrageous. Ms Hunt was "absolutely astonished that King's College would invite the Queen to open this building – paid for with money that could have been spent on London Weighting – on the day that university staff, across the capital, are striking to get a decent allowance".

"One cannot help feeling," Ms Hunt continued, "that by doing this, King's College is cocking a snook at university staff."

A number of observations here. The first (and digressive) one is to wonder whether lecturers often use the term "cocking a snook", and if they do, what their students (a literal bunch, these days) think it means? The second is that I do not believe that Ms Hunt is for one moment "astonished" that King's College invited the Queen to open a new building. Everybody asks the Queen to open new buildings. That's what she's for. Thirdly, the invitation was sent months before the AUT called its strike, and therefore no snook-cocking could conceivably have been intended. And last, the idea that you should decide to fund London weighting out of your capital budget is something that I bet the AUT itself would not do with its own staff, because it would be incredibly silly.

So the whole AUT press release is a daft and rather desperate effort to get publicity for a strike that has been completely overshadowed by the first firefighters' stoppage. The AUT's problem is that no one – not even those most affected – cares whether its members go on strike (they ought to, of course, but that's a different story) whereas a firefighters' strike is something that has an impact on us all.

The daftness, though, is common. Listening to decent, sincere firefighters as well as to their leader, Mr Gilchrist, you become aware that they have left earth's atmosphere and ascended – buoyed up by their own arguments – into another dimension. They have done that thing that is so often a necessary condition for taking action (but such a block to ending it), they have begun to believe their own propaganda.

Here we should remind ourselves of a few truths. Firefighters are not part of the low-pay culture. The formula by which they have been remunerated since 1978 (the one that they negotiated to end the last strike) was that firefighters should be paid in line with the upper quartile of male manual earnings, with annual increases being automatic and not having to be negotiated. Three years ago the Audit Commission reported that this formula, while restricting local flexibility and offering only modest increases, at least underpinned "relative industrial peace". In the same period, of course, other public-sector workers fared worse. Ask the AUT.

In addition, firefighters retire early on excellent final-earnings pensions, and a small cottage industry exists in advising 50-year-old firefighters on how to invest the lump sum they also receive. Despite the facts that they require no formal qualifications to become firefighters, and that there is no recruitment difficultyanywhere in the country, 19-year-olds in the fire service will earn as much as a 22-year-old-teacher with a degree. They will also, because of the shift patterns, be able to hold down a second job – and many do. The same is not true of teachers.

None of this makes firefighters into slackers or wreckers or anything but ordinary people doing the best they can – and often very bravely. But I think they have lost sight of how most people live in Britain. Most people are not investment bankers, footballers or corporate lawyers. Millions struggle to create retirement incomes for themselves and – right now, chronically under-pensioned – face the prospect of having to stay in work into their late sixties, if they can.

As the Audit Commission also acknowledged, the costs of the firefighters' pension scheme is a major drain on local authority funds, constraining pay or service improvements elsewhere. In the real United Kingdom, there is significant insecurity that firefighters, though they share problems such as housing costs, seem to have forgotten about.

Firefighters quote a job-evaluation expert who has concluded that "firefighters are no longer male manual workers, they are in fact associate, professional and technical grade workers". However, what firefighters don't seem to realise is that they already enjoy as good a pay package as many professionals (and better than many).

The whole thing now is mad. It was mad to take strike action before Bain, and the union didn't. But it's just as barmy now. The FBU has thrown every epithet it can at Bain (derisory, insulting, sham etc), and refused even to negotiate on an offer starting at 11 per cent over two years in return for modernisation.

Naive reporters outside fire stations have been counting the honks of passing motorists and concluding that the strike enjoys the support of the public. If the firefighters believe this, they are making a mistake. MPs are paid, in part, to feel the pulses of their constituents in a way that broadcast journalists aren't. In parliament yesterday, John Prescott took quite a hard line over the strike, making it clear that the escalation from strikes lasting 48 hours to ones lasting eight days would require a response from government. That response will have to be to let the Army begin to train its men and women on the newer appliances.

And all the real pressure on Mr Prescott was to take firmer action to safeguard the public. That's what the Tories – predictably – said. It was what the Lib Dem spokesperson, Ed Davey, less predictably also said. Mr Davey added that he wanted to see regional pay settlements in the service – which is complete anathema to the union. On his website Mr Davey added: "National union leaders won't like it. Tough."

As the Green Goddesses continue to trundle slowly off to deal with a spate of hoax calls and one or two avoidable fatalities, the stock of the firefighters will fall. Partly because the action is disproportionate to the situation, partly because some of the FBU's allies (notably Bob Crow's RMT colleagues) have managed to make the strike look political and opportunistic and partly because people will simply say, in that British way: "They've made their point".

The beginning of a strike is usually exciting. The end, however, can be bloody awful. It's time to come back down to earth.

David.Aaronovitch@btinternet.com