MATT WRACK is running for re-election as general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union. First elected in 2005, when Tony Blair was PM, he’s now on his eighth prime minister and recently completed a year as president of the TUC. But he’s still up for the fight.

“There’s still a lot to do,” he tells the Morning Star as ballots begin to land on firefighters’ doormats. “We’ve been through some tough times under all those prime ministers, we’ve come through it in one piece, and we have plans to try to rebuild the fire service, make Labour deliver on workers’ rights and repeal anti-union legislation. I think I’m the best person to see that through.”

Fourteen years of Tory cuts have hit the fire and rescue service hard. Response times are at their highest in 30 years. There are 12,000 fewer firefighters than in 2010 — a decline of a fifth.

To get back on track, says Wrack, “we need investment in the fire service, investment in all public services.

“Labour is saying ‘there’s no money,’ and in many ways they intend to continue with the economic approach of the previous government. 

“But you can’t deliver a modern fire service, with all the new and emerging risks, with 12,000 fewer firefighters. The most obvious case is perhaps in relation to climate change, the extreme weather events we’ve already seen. Within just a couple of weeks we’ve had three major storms and major flooding here.

“The data shows that a significant number of houses in the UK will face a risk of flooding over the next 10 years. And on top of that we have the increased incidence of moorland and grassland fires.

“These major incidents are protracted and require large numbers of people to tackle them. To be resilient, as the buzzword is, we need investment in the fire service.”

The political culture Wrack wants to see change goes back further than the 2010 Tory government. He points out that it was Blair’s government, in 2004, that abolished national standards for fire cover.

After years of campaigning, Wrack says the union managed to secure from Labour two significant manifesto pledges: national standards would come back, and a ministerial advisory body would help set them.

“That was remarkable because it was Labour that abolished the standards in 2004, and the advisory structures were also abolished between then and 2010.

“So there hasn’t been a meeting that would include ministers, fire chiefs, employers and the Fire Brigades Union in more than 20 years: but we won that pledge and the first meeting did indeed take place two weeks ago.

“It’s just a start, but it’s an important start and one that shows through careful planning, campaigning and lobbying we have secured a real chance of change. For me, it was the abolition of national standards that drove a race to the bottom, allowed governments to keep cutting forever.”

The FBU has set out clearly what it wants and expects from Labour, including with a huge firefighters’ rally at Westminster in October that put forward 10 demands around investment, standards and workers’ rights.

Given his criticisms of Labour’s economic policy, does he see a need to maintain the street campaigning and protest unions helped organise under the Conservative governments?

“I think it’s a mistake to treat this government as exactly like the last one. It’s not, particularly on the issue of workers’ rights.

“If you take our rally in October, we decided against holding a protest march on Parliament, opting instead for a mass lobby: putting the demands, but to show MPs, especially new MPs, that we want to work with them.

“That doesn’t mean there is no place for protests. I argued in the TUC we should have had a major rally early on focused on trade union rights, which didn’t come off. We do need to put pressure on ministers.

“On issues from public services, public-sector pay, we need to be building up pressure.”

The FBU has had a rocky relationship with the Labour Party, disaffiliating under Blair because of his government’s attacks on firefighters’ pensions, and reaffiliating when Labour was led from the left by Jeremy Corbyn. The politics of the party have done another about-turn since then; how are relations?

“Dialogue with ministers and the Prime Minister is part of my job as general secretary.

“But I don’t hold back from being firm on the policies of our union, the affiliated unions and workers’ interests.

“And challenging Labour over attacks on internal party democracy, the victimisation of particular MPs, the closing down of constituency parties and witch-hunting of socialists is part of standing up for workers’ interests. We will not back down from that approach.

“That doesn’t mean jabbing my finger in Keir Starmer’s chest. It means making a coherent case for different choices when necessary.”

One area where the FBU has long campaigned for different choices is the deregulation of the construction industry and fire safety standards, so tragically exposed in the Grenfell Tower fire. Pamphlets produced by the union such as The Grenfell Tower Fire: a Crime Caused by Profit and Deregulation outlined the steps by which safety standards in the building industry were dismantled over the course of the Thatcher, Major and Blair governments.

“Grenfell was not just about cuts, but about the way profit-seeking in the construction sector was at the heart of why the fire happened, and the role of central government in allowing self-compliance regimes to replace proper fire certification processes.

“I worry that Labour has not grasped that. We did win a battle to include the phrase ‘including through regulation’ in the Labour manifesto section on preventing another Grenfell: but it was quite a battle, which tells you something.

“I worry the new government will look for what it sees as easy solutions, to deregulate and allow the private sector to fill the gaps in, say, the huge housing need: but a whole host of safety factors are ignored in that, and we know there are thousands of buildings, still, with flammable cladding.

“There are many other fire safety failings in residential buildings all across the country. To take just one, some journalists are now researching issues with large panel system building.

“To simply allow a free-for-all will not deliver good quality homes and stores up huge risks.”

Aside from the direct impact of Labour failing to tackle these issues, the far-right riots of the summer indicate another growing problem: the far right are on the rise, and every Labour failure advances that process.

The FBU itself barred a former member (Grant Mayos resigned just before a disciplinary panel found against him) this autumn for alleged far-right social media posts and promotion of the extremist Britain First group.

“I think the far right is on the rise because of two main factors,” Wrack tells me.

“One is that mainstream politicians have allowed a nasty anti-refugee dialogue to develop.

“So politics has turned migration into a problem, rather than addressing it in a rational way.

“The second reason is something the labour movement has to face up to: our own failure to offer viable alternatives to people.

“The far right thrives off the lack of hope. If you look at where those riots took place, they are in very run-down, deindustrialised towns where many people have no decent job prospects.

“If mainstream politics doesn’t offer a solution, if the labour movement doesn’t offer a working-class solution, they will thrive.

“We have to deliver by building council housing, unionising jobs so they are more secure and better paid. This is an international trend, and Labour needs to face up to the fact it faces exactly the same risk as similar parties across Europe unless it changes.”

He has a positive vision for what this country needs, but Wrack is frustrated that the FBU leadership election is not focused on such questions.

He says his opponent, the union’s vice-president Steve Wright, has refused a debate with him face to face.

“That means there’s nowhere members can test two sets of ideas, put their own questions, assess the answers.

“No alternative is being presented on how we campaign over pay, or pensions, or win investment, the questions I think members want to hear about.

“And that vacuum pushes people to focus on the only thing that can be identified, which is individuals.

“The contest has become very personalised as a result. I think I’ve seen the worst behaviour I’ve ever seen in a leadership election in this contest, particularly through social media abuse.”

Wrack says the attacks are hurtful. “But I’ll deal with it. We have to carry on with the campaign — putting policies and strategy to members, offering a way forward over the next five years for the FBU, the fire service and the wider trade union movement.”