The union has a proud and illustrious history. Since 1918 — the year of its founding as the “Firemen’s Trade Union” — it has played a hugely significant role in delivering better conditions of service for the nation’s firefighters and improving public safety. It is in no small measure thanks to the FBU that firefighters have been able to enjoy decent pay and pensions, collective bargaining rights and enhanced health and safety standards, while the public has benefitted from the union’s tireless campaigning for robust fire cover provision in local communities.

The union plays a big role, too, in the wider labour movement, always punching above its weight and standing alongside other workers in the fight for a better, fairer society.

I was proud to join up as a member of the union when becoming a professional firefighter 24 years ago, and prouder still to be elected to represent my work colleagues as an official in various positions for much of the period afterwards. Trade union activity, as it does for most officials, became a major part of my life.

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The betrayal of Paul Embery

By Kate Hoey

So when, in 2019, I lost my job with the union — at the time I served as a full-time official on its national executive — it came as a bitter blow. My great crime was to give a speech at a rally called by the non-partisan, pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave. The rally took place on 29 March of that year — the date that the UK had been scheduled to leave the EU until, controversially, the Theresa May government and Brussels agreed to a delay. Other speakers were drawn from across the political spectrum and included Kate Hoey MP, the chair of Labour Leave.

There were thousands in attendance at the rally from all walks of life and of all politics and none. Some were rank-and-file trade union members. For others, this was their first public demo.

I attended the event in my own private time (it took place on a Friday evening) and spoke in my capacity as the national organiser of Trade Unionists Against the EU, a marvellous little group of principled activists with which I have been involved for some years. There was no mention whatsoever at the rally of my role as an FBU official, nor of the union itself.

That evening, however, and without prior notice to me, the general secretary of my union — an old friend but a vociferous opponent of Brexit — issued a public statement condemning me and others from the Left who had spoken at the rally as a “disgrace to the traditions of the labour movement”. I didn’t need a crystal ball to tell me where this was heading.

Within a fortnight, I had been placed under investigation. Four weeks after that I was suspended. And within two months, I was in front of the union’s executive council defending myself against a raft of disciplinary charges — some of which were completely unrelated to my appearance at the rally but had plainly been dredged up for good measure by the senior official conducting the investigation. As a 20-year trade union official, I had represented countless members in the disciplinary arena and knew a witch-hunt when I saw one.

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How patriotism came home

By Paul Embery

In working as a columnist for UnHerd, I had apparently prejudiced the interests of the union. In sharing a platform with those who would normally be considered political opponents, I had allegedly breached a union policy stipulating that FBU officials must not engage in joint campaigning with traditional opponents during the referendum (that the rally in question was taking place three years after the referendum and was therefore plainly beyond the scope of the policy seemed to cut no ice with my accusers). In publicly criticising leaders of the labour movement for their attempts to subvert the referendum result, I had again apparently acted in a way prejudicial to the union.

It was this final charge that led to my being removed from my role and banned from holding office again in the FBU for two years. I received other, though lesser, sanctions for the other “offences”.

The backlash across the FBU and media was fierce. Many people understood acutely that the sacking of a union representative for expressing a personal view in his own private time conflicted with the deep and longstanding traditions of the labour movement. Wasn’t our movement supposed to defend the principles of free speech and the right to dissent? Did we no longer tolerate the expression of alternative views? As the Labour MP Jon Cruddas argued in my defence:

“The history of the movement in Britain has always been one of debate, argument and civil disagreement. Union members have always been allowed to argue for positions contrary to their union’s own view, as long as it is made clear that they are representing themselves or another organisation. The Left’s traditional commitment to freedom of expression, and indeed the necessary right to express personal dissent, demands that union officials are not held captive to their union’s line at all hours of the day and in all situations.”

He was right, of course. But I reminded people that this was a new age, one in which a different kind of Left was increasingly imposing a rigid conformism in the public square — especially on Brexit, where things were presented as a struggle between good and evil. It seemed that my union leadership had fallen prey to this phenomenon.

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Labour isn't working

By Paul Embery

My internal appeal was rejected, but I chose to fight on. In February of this year, my claim for unfair dismissal came before the employment tribunal. The case was heard over three days. The union was represented by Oliver Segal QC, one of the country’s leading employment silks. I shudder to think how much was paid out in membership contributions to secure his services. I represented myself.

Judgement was handed down on 4 August. There it was on page one: “The claimant was unfairly dismissed under the Employment Rights Act 1996.” Judge Robin Postle did not spare the union leadership’s blushes. “It would appear right from the start of the investigation process conducted by the vice-president that there was an agenda to have the claimant removed” … “The investigation looked like no more than a witch-hunt, a fishing exercise” … “The tribunal overwhelmingly felt the matter was pre-determined” … “Quite how the claimant [in writing for UnHerd] had breached that rule was a mystery to the tribunal” … The union’s argument that a policy written specifically and exclusively for the 2016 referendum was still in force three years later was “a nonsense” … “How could any fair-minded member come to a reasonable belief on the facts that the claimant had committed any form of misconduct?”

An additional argument from the union — that my claim was invalid on the grounds that I wasn’t technically an employee of the organisation — was flatly rejected.

The ruling was a bittersweet moment for me. I am of course glad that, after two years, justice has finally been served, but I remain a proud member of the FBU and retain a deep affection for the organisation. It is filled with good people driven by noble ideals. It just happens that, on this occasion, they were badly let down by a leadership which tried to muzzle a dissenting voice and, in doing so, caused an awful lot of reputational damage. So, all things considered, I’ll not be popping any champagne corks.

Instead, I shall continue, as a rank-and-file member, to use whatever influence I possess to change the FBU for the better, and to support the union’s commendable campaigns to defend public safety and improve the working lives of firefighters. It is these things that brought me into the union in the first place. And, in the end, it is these things that matter most.

What is uncivil society? First, let’s define its more familiar cousin, civil society. If business is about buying and selling things, and government is about setting rules and distributing the resources we hold in common, civil society is all the ways people organise outside these two structures. Churches, charities, clubs, societies, ad hoc groups — civil society incorporates any social organisation driven by ethical or community objectives.

Uncivil society is angrier and more militant than churches and clubs. It emerges when a significant grassroots group comes together to campaign for ethical or social aims that the mainstream views as foolish, wicked or simply unattainable.

This was the year we saw the emergence of Extinction Rebellion, the mass mobilisation of the Brexit pressure group Leave Means Leave (which morphed, in 2019, into the Brexit Party) and an increasingly organised feminist resistance to transgender activism. All these are, in different ways, social organisations driven by ethical and community objectives. But all have been largely excluded from institutional support — effectively excluded from civil society — by a process called ‘policy laundering’.

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Pity the poor avocado-eating graduates

By Mary Harrington

In its most blatant form, policy laundering looks like government departments using taxpayer money to pay lobbyists to influence government. Back in 2012, the IEA released a report outlining all the ways taxpayer funding was being used in just this way, for example on food or alcohol regulations.

In response, in 2015 the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles tightened up charity funding guidelines with the aim of clamping down on this practice. His changes banned the use of government funding to support any activity that aimed to influence Parliament, government or political parties.

But this is easier said than done. Let us consider an example: the Scottish Trans Alliance. This is a project funded by the Scottish Government Equality Unit and delivered by the Equality Network, which is largely funded by the Scottish government as well as by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (funded by UK government).

The project delivers research, advisory, and training, including to government-funded bodies, who in turn repeat the ideas received via reports, training and consultancy back toward policymakers. Thus, a nested series of public sector grants has enabled government to conjure into existence a body that shapes public sector policy. Meanwhile, the pronouncements and statistics produced by this arms-length government body are treated by the (government funded) BBC as though emanating from independent civil society voices.

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Why Boris should be more 2012

By Polly Mackenzie

The whole cycle amounts to a process of laundering, by semi-independent bodies, a series of policies the government already wanted to adopt so they look as though they come spontaneously from the society upon which they will in due course be visited.

The result looks like a thriving voice for civil society in the national debate. But in reality it is more like the government having a conversation with itself, via a series of proxies. Meanwhile, that part of civil society without insider status sits scratching its head trying to work out which form to fill in to get a seat at the table.

Under those circumstances, you might expect differences to emerge between the official conversation and what people actually think and feel on the ground. Taking our example of transgender activism: in 2018 then-Equalities Minister Maria Millar launched a consultation on changes to the Gender Recognition Act. The proposed changes would effectively have turned legal recognition as the opposite sex from a bureaucratic years-long procedure involving medical testimony into a simple matter of form-filling.

The initial proposal was developed in consultation with government funded LGBT charities, but included little input from women. Opposition to the GRA reforms first gained traction on the parenting messageboard Mumsnet and over 2018 morphed into the campaigning organisation Fair Play For Women (government funding: nil) and swelled the ranks of Transgender Trend (government funding: nil).

These groups, aided by a coalition of social conservatives, radical feminists, transsexuals, ordinary concerned women and the occasional man, challenged the GRA reform campaign led by Stonewall (2018 UK government grant funding: £233,000, Scottish government funding £90,000, earnings from delivering paid-for training courses to the public sector: higher still). The activism of this uncivil society movement drove so large a response to the consultation that at the time of writing, over a year after the consultation closed in October 2018, the consultation’s official web page still just says ‘We are analysing your feedback’.

This resistance was not received kindly. Women speaking up on the topic have been harassed, threatened and even sacked. But their uncivil society campaigning was effective and unmistakeably grassroots.

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What if you regret transitioning?

By Julie Bindel

Elsewhere, 2018 saw a polite ecosystem of climate change lobbying to government disrupted by the October 2018 launch of Extinction Rebellion, whose (today) approximately £2.5m war chest comprises crowdfunding and donations from private individuals and charities — but no government funding. With its colourful stunts and ability to annoy free-traders and eco-incrementalists alike, Extinction Rebellion is both grassroots and unmistakably a product of uncivil society.

A tour of 2018’s newly-militant uncivil society would not be complete without the Brexiters. Ordinary Leave voters displayed a touching faith in the political process, and largely stopped campaigning following the 2016 EU referendum in the expectation that their vote would simply be implemented.

But by 2018, concerted resistance by most of official civil society to the prospect of leaving the EU prompted a groundswell of astonished popular anger that drove the rapid growth of Leave Means Leave (government funding: nil). This movement morphed in 2019 into the Brexit Party, which then became the primary vehicle for Leavers to express their outrage, which they duly did by sending 29 Brexit Party MEPs to Brussels. This result, and the obvious passion of its raucous, well-attended rallies, arguably helped end May’s premiership.

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Why the Greens should stop playing God

By John Gray

The Brexiters are the only one of 2018’s largest uncivil society movements to receive any kind of official acceptance so far. The quiet fury of Leave voters, mobilised by the Brexit Party, found recognition in Boris Johnson’s election slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’, and landed Boris Johnson an 80-seat Conservative majority.

What other widely held views are still obscured by a too-narrow ideological consensus in ‘official’ civil society? Will other uncivil society movements be heard as well? Boris Johnson’s freshly-minted electoral majority may give us cautious ground for hope. But while the ecosystem of policy laundering remains largely unchallenged, we still have a long way to go.