THE firefighters are ''angry'' that the Government expects them to

take the same pay increase as other public employees. The 1.5% limit has

already provoked resentment among local authority workers, and the

firefighters' leader says that strike action already seems

''inevitable''. Fortunately, the Fire Brigades Union's annual conference

is still two months away and the usual date for a pay settlement is

November, which may afford sufficient time for discussion. The trouble

concerns the pay formula agreed after the last firemen's strike in 1977.

The union wants more than the bare 1.5% because it does not meet what

was previously agreed. The formula achieved after the last strike in

1977-8 may not offer them very much more than that this time round, for

wage awards everywhere have been falling fast -- it merely promises to

put them firmly among the top quartile of male earnings -- but it is

what was negotiated and it seems foolish of the Government to provoke a

collision by abandoning it unilaterally. The union thinks it a matter of

principle.

The Home Secretary, the combative Mr Kenneth Clarke, always seems keen

for a scrap. He has been adamant that the local authorities must find

any extra cash needed from their existing resources but since their

hands are firmly tied by the inflexible pay norm it is easy to see why

the union scents a strike without actually wanting to stage one. Mr

Clarke may be counting on the way in which mass unemployment has

undermined workers' confidence in strikes for more pay. His opinion may

have to be tested by events, but if part of his calculation includes the

use of the armed forces and their emergency fire-fighting equipment, he

could be badly wrong. The forces' manpower, especially in the Army, is

already stretched, and the equipment, the so-called Green Goddesses that

were considered obsolescent 15 years ago, must have deteriorated since.

The Government has landed itself with a pay policy, possibly without

considering all its implications. In this case that policy involves

rejecting an agreement that guaranteed industrial peace in a vital area

of public service. The last firefighters' strike ushered in a sour mood

among public service workers that culminated in the famous winter of

discontent of 1978-9. Then, too, a Government under financial and

economic pressure sought to impose an unrealistic pay norm. History

looks set to repeat itself.