THREE members of the Fire Brigades Union were hit and hurt by speeding vehicles driven by strikebreakers on Monday.
A statement by the FBU said that their President Mick Shaw was present when a Croydon firefighter was hit by a speeding car driven by a non-union manager at Croydon fire station.
He described what happened: ‘A fire engine returned from an incident and drove into the fire station, its crew refusing to wind down their windows and talk to the pickets. . .
‘It was followed by a car driven by the officers, and as the pickets tried to talk to the driver of the car, it accelerated suddenly and one of the striking firefighters was thrown up and into the windscreen, then several feet in front of the car.
‘We asked the AssetCo employees who had control of our fire station for the first aid kit and some blankets, but they would not give them to us despite the obviously serious nature of the injuries.
‘An ambulance was called at once, and the ambulance crew asked for an air ambulance. Our member was not able to move during the 25 minutes between being hit and being taken away in the ambulance.’
The London Fire Brigade (LFB) manager was arrested at the scene.
Two hours after Monday’s strike, Dagenham firefighter Graham Beers held his hand up at the side of a road in Southwark, to signal to the crew of a fire engine being returned to Southwark fire station that they should stop and speak to him.
‘The fire engine swerved towards me and hit my hand’ says Beers, who suffered a sprained and badly bruised hand.
In a third incident, a fire engine was deliberately driven into the FBU London representative Ian Leahair, at Southwark fire station. This happened more than two hours after the strike ended on Monday.
There was a huge police presence at Southwark, and FBU members who were there accepted with cheerful good humour being penned in across the road, away from the incoming fire engines. Just eight pickets were allowed.
Although the strike ended at 6.00pm, the fire engines did not start coming until about 8.00pm. When they did start coming, the permitted eight pickets, in the midst of dozens of police officers, stood in front and asked the drivers to stop while they spoke to them.
The first two fire engines stopped, and waited for the two minutes or so the police allowed the eight pickets to try to talk to them, without winding down their windows.
The FBU alleged: ‘But the third didn’t stop. It just kept coming. As the pickets fled before it, the great, heavy fire engine actually picked up speed.’
It hit Ian Leahair and then one of the police officers, before the police finally persuaded the driver to stop.
By then, Ian Leahair’s legs and half his body were underneath the fire engine and he was clearly in pain. If he had been standing an inch or so further left, his legs would have been crushed under the fire engine’s wheels.
FBU pickets yelled at the driver to reverse, but he would not do so until instructed to do so by the police.
FBU General Secretary Matt Wrack said: ‘This has been a day of shocking violence directed at London’s firefighters.’
He alleged: ‘They have brought hired thugs into London who have driven around at speed with their faces hidden by balaclavas in an attempt to menace and intimidate our members. . .
‘Tragically, three of our members have been injured as a result.’
