Red alert

Brad has been a firefighter for 23 years. He takes home £14,150 a year, which is just about enough to cover his mortgage and bills. When he's not working as a firefighter, he does another job. He cleans windows.

'I live off my second job, which brings in £100 a week,' he said yesterday. 'Firefighters are not allowed to have second jobs without permission, but if I didn't I couldn't keep my head above water.

'Even with the second job, it's a constant process of juggling priorities: my 16-year-old son needs winter clothes while my 14-year-old daughter needs art equipment for her GCSEs. I can't really afford either, but I can't even start to afford both - what should I do?

'Money is so tight that, when I'm doing the day shift, I don't go home for a week at a time - I just sleep in a corner of the office. We're not allowed to do that either and it creates problems at home with the missus, but when it's between that or getting further into debt what choice do I have?'

Brad, who works at a central London fire station, has had enough. On Friday, along with 50,000 colleagues, he voted to go on strike. It will be the first national strike of the fire service since 1977. A fleet of 800 50-year-old Green Goddess military fire engines will try to take the place of 3,000 modern fire engines. Just over 12,000 Armed Forces personnel will try to do the job of 52,000 firefighters.

Brad probably knows that people's lives will be put at risk. He probably knows that the strike could inflict severe political damage on the whole of the Government. He may even know that the strike is likely to spread and bring the virtual shutdown of vast swaths of British working life. But after the way he has been treated, he thinks it's time for action.

On Wednesday, within the sombre, wood-panelled London headquarters of the train drivers' union Aslef, two of Britain's toughest union leaders will meet for discussions that could lead to the gravest industrial dispute since the winter of discontent in 1979.

The two men, Aslef general secretary Mick Rix and his RMT counterpart, Bob Crow, will agree a plan that will see industrial action spread from the firefighters to the railways.

Crow and Rix believe that, without professional firefighting cover, rail workers will be at risk in the event of an accident. They have taken legal advice that says that, if a safety risk is posed to workers by the absence of firefighters, they do not have to work and cannot be cautioned for refusing to do so.

Bob Crow told The Observer yesterday: 'This could very well escalate into a national rail dispute. It could be the most serious industrial dispute since the 1970s. If an accident takes place like Ladbroke Grove, there is no cutting equipment or breathing apparatus in Green Godesses. They [soldiers] have not got the experience of getting people out of tunnels and trains. It is a scandalous situation to put the travelling public in.

'Aslef have legal advice on this, and I have been in constant contact with Mick about it. Basically, we have the right to refuse to work on the grounds of safety and we can't be disciplined. That is the advice we will be discussing at the meeting, and giving out.'

For the Government, one strike, in a sector as sensitive and essential as the fire service, is difficult. A whole rail network shutdown at the same time would be a disaster. Both sides are playing for very large stakes.

As has been seen in the Department for Education and Skills, reputations hard won over many years can easily be lost. Number 10 fears that a true 'winter of discontent' - fire and rail is about as bad as it gets - could soon badly tarnish the reputation of New Labour.

'What is every issue about, at its simplest?' said one key Number 10 official with extensive knowledge of crisis management within government. 'It is about getting a grip, it is about leading events, not following, it is about writing your own script. Here we are following. It makes everybody nervous.'

At present Tony Blair is keeping his distance. Officials say that he is aware that the public still has some residual fear of Labour and strikes, the former not being able to control the latter. The issue is constantly referred to in sections of the media and it plays badly with the public. With Crow and Rix, Blair has two significant thorns in his side.

The two are painted as hard-left Trotskyist militants bent on using strike action to embarrass a Labour Government that they feel has sold out on Labour principles.

That will not bother them at all, as they get down to business in Aslef's eccentric HQ, a converted house in Arkwright Road, north London. Crow has already called out rail workers on a series of strikes that have disrupted passengers from Tube commuters in London to office workers in the North. He has been supported by Rix, whose drivers have also held frequent strikes.

They are part of a growing group of left-wing union leaders that includes Derek Simpson, the former Communist who now runs what was the moderate engineering union Amicus, and Billy Hayes at the postal workers' union, who have openly questioned links between their organisations and Labour.

The other key member of that group is Andy Gilchrist, leader of the Fire Brigades Union, a left-winger who has gambled on public and union support in calling for strike action over a 40 per cent pay rise that would see average firefighters' pay rise from £21,531 a year to £30,000. The offer has privately been dismissed as 'ludicrous' by government officials - who are not supposed to be involved in negotiations. But union sentiment is building behind the FBU, particularly among other public-sector players such as Unison and the GMB, which have their own grievances over pay and the use of the private sector in providing public services.

Gilchrist says: 'We are asking for take-home pay for a firefighter, who risks life and limb, of £8.50 an hour. Is that unreasonable?' The Government answers 'not necessarily', and has already set up a review of pay and conditions. It will report in December.

'The union should await the outcome of that review,' said Nick Raynsford, the Minister responsible for the fire service. 'We are very sympathetic to the firefighters, we recognise the case for increased pay. But there are ways to do this. And it is not through strikes.'

So far Gilchrist's gamble has paid off: polling evidence collected by the unions suggests that 60 per cent of the public support the firefighters. The Government believes that figure will soon fall as the strikes bite.

'We support the FBU as a moral argument,' Crow said. 'We believe they should get the money for what they do. And we have been through enough crashes - King's Cross, Ladbroke Grove, Hatfield and Potters Bar. I am not going to put my members' lives at risk over this.'

Two days before the meeting at Aslef HQ, the 13-strong RMT executive will convene to decide the way forward. Crow says that, without fire cover, the whole network should be closed. The executive will discuss how to liaise with the train operating companies, London Underground and Docklands Light Railway, and how to respond.

At the same time as that Monday meeting, in a bunker under Downing Street, the doors of the emergency briefing room will once again be unlocked as the Government prepares itself for a drawn-out and dangerous battle.

Cobra - Cabinet Office Briefing Room A - will be brought back into service for the first full session since the fuel crisis of 2000, the last time the country was nearly brought to a halt. Leading figures from the police, the Ministry of Defence, the NHS, the Department of Transport and Number 10 itself will start meeting from tomorrow to try to find a way of reducing the risk to public life.

Hospitals will be contacted to see what expertise they have available to deal with people trapped in road accidents. Garages will be asked to provide cutting gear. The MoD has already said that its Green Godesses will be available. The Government admits that the fire service, itself an emergency service, will become an 'emergency' emergency service. Asked if he thought people would die because of the dispute, Raynsford paused briefly before saying: 'Yes.'

The Government fears two things. First, that each day of the firefighters' strike, politically damaging in itself, will see the whole country grind to a halt. The second is that the firefighters' resolve to strike over what is seen, even by their allies, as a bold claim for a 40 per cent increase on the basic salary will spark similar claims across the public sector.

There is a new mood of militancy abroad and the one thing that New Labour knows could damage it at the polls is a growing belief in the public's mind that strikes are on the way back. New figures from the Office of National Statistics reveal that the number of days lost to strikes since 1997 has grown from 65,000 to 331,000 last year.

The firefighters could be the start of a new wave of industrial action. Two weeks ago nurses put in a pay demand for a 15 per cent increase to give them the same starting salary as teachers and the police. Teachers have already asked for a 10 per cent rise, a request dismissed by the Government. In the next fortnight teachers in London will ballot for industrial action over London weighting, the extra money public-sector staff receive for living in the capital. Teachers' leaders say it is not enough to afford a house.

And more. Hospital consultants, although they will not strike, are likely to reject a 19 per cent pay offer on starting contracts. Further education lecturers want parity with teachers, an increase of 26 per cent. They have been offered 2.3 per cent. Prison officers want a 'substantial' increase over and above inflation. They have been offered 0.75 per cent.

Government officials point out that, with inflation running at 1.5 per cent and private-sector pay increasing by 2.7 per cent, most public-sector workers have received a good deal. According to Income Data Services, two-thirds of recent public-sector deals were above the economy average of 3 per cent. University lecturers have received 3.5 per cent, police 3 per cent and prison officers 4.2 per cent increases over the past 15 months.

'We can't just keep paying out on all these deals, it is ridiculous,' said one Minister. 'One sector gets a large rise because we are sympathetic to their arguments. All the other sectors want parity and the spiral goes up and up.'

The chain of events leading to the current crisis started in May 2001, when the FBU's annual conference voted to review the national pay framework.

A year later, on 28 May, the FBU executive made its claim to the National Joint Council, which represents both local government employers and unions. This was the first time the 40 per cent claim was made.

The employers suggested that they were preparing to offer £25,000 - a pay rise of about 16 per cent - which would not have satisfied the FBU, but would have formed the start of a negotiation.

However, in the first week of July, John Prescott told the Local Government Association's annual conference that a robust line should be taken on pay claims. Gilchrist says: 'Privately, we were told that Prescott said of our claim "You are not doing that".'

The Government says it was simply making it clear that no substantial increases could be agreed without modernisation of the whole service.

'We can't just agree to throw money around,' one Minister said. The Government said that a review should decide what happened on pay. The FBU refused to agree.

The day after the sombre commemoration of the anniversary of 11 September, 245 FBU officials met in the ballroom of the Piccadilly Jarvis Hotel in Manchester and unanimously backed calls for a national strike.

Brad, at his post in central London, waiting for the next call, which could be anything from rescuing a cat to rescuing a child, knows that the stakes are high. Very high.

'If it were possible to survive on air, I'd do the job for nothing,' he says. 'But it's not possible and it's not fair, on me or on my family.'