The 'serious challenge' to Matt Wrack as Fire Brigades Union general secretary
Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU, addresses London firefighters in 2013 (Credit: Martyn Wheatley / Alamy Stock Photo)
8 min read
Left-wing FBU general secretary Matt Wrack is being challenged for the leadership of the firefighters’ union. Sienna Rodgers explores why the top job may be about to change hands
Matt Wrack has led the Fire Brigades Union representing firefighters and emergency control room staff for almost 20 years. But his time may be almost up – and not by choice.
Wrack is being challenged to the leadership by Steve Wright, the FBU vice-president who is variously regarded as a much-needed fresh face to steer the union away from controversy; as someone who lacks the required experienced and could distance the union from its current left-wing politics; or simply as an unknown quantity.
“This has come completely out of the blue to me”
Branch nominations indicate a win by Wright: he racked up a total of 415, while Wrack got fewer than half of that number, securing just 178. Whether these nomination results are an accurate reflection of how FBU members feel about their union’s leadership will be revealed in the new year, after voting takes place from 10 December to 14 January.
The preferences of the FBU executive council likewise suggest the union is heading for a change in general secretary, with just three of its 13 members publicly backing Wrack (plus one other is understood to be supporting him behind the scenes).
“Clearly it is a serious challenge when so many executive council members are backing Steve Wright,” Wrack admits to The House.
Asked how well he knows his competitor, the general secretary replies again in a characteristically direct manner: “We were quite good friends. This has come completely out of the blue to me.”
A left-wing former firefighter, Wrack, 62, first became FBU general secretary in 2005 after defeating incumbent Andy Gilchrist. At the next internal election in 2010, Wrack was challenged himself – by a Gilchrist ally – but won. He was returned for a third term, unopposed, four years later. And in 2020 he won 67 per cent of the vote against a challenger, Sean Starbuck.
“We have come through a very difficult period with the Tory governments. We’ve survived that. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, we started to make headway on pay, and I think the members are very well aware of that. We now need to continue that,” Wrack says, setting out his pitch.
“We’ve got new opportunities with a new government,” he adds, emphasising the work done behind the scenes to get pledges on national standards in the fire service into the Labour manifesto. “It’s now time to deliver on that. But that’s not going to be easy.”
The contention of Wrack’s critics is that the union needs to focus more on “bread and butter” issues concerning FBU members – i.e. pay and conditions. They are unhappy about the pay settlement agreed this year, a headline increase of four per cent.
“We got the worst pay settlement in the public sector this year,” says writer, broadcaster and firefighter Paul Embery. “That’s caused quite a bit of irritation.”
Wrack’s camp points out that members voted by 73 per cent to accept the offer, which also included a more-than-doubling of maternity pay to 26 weeks and a significant increase in the retainer for on-call firefighters.
Embery says members are turning against Wrack because there is “a civil war at the top of the union” and because they think “the main reason we’re here is for the bread-and-butter fire service stuff, and we shouldn’t go overboard on the political stuff”.
The FBU was disaffiliated from Labour between 2004 and 2015, restoring the link only after Jeremy Corbyn became leader. Wrack, an ex-member of the Socialist Party, himself rejoined the party the following year. Under his leadership, the union has been unashamedly left-wing; one Wrack-supporting communist regional secretary, recently retired, was even known to throw an office party on Vladimir Lenin’s birthday every year. Meanwhile, Wright describes himself as left-wing, but Wrack supporters say they are sceptical of this claim.
“Bearing in mind, the fire brigade is a uniformed, disciplined service. Not many of them, I don’t think, were particularly instinctively supportive of Jeremy Corbyn. A lot of them have been uneasy about that sort of thing. But, having said that, I don’t detect massive political differences between Matt Wrack and Steve Wright,” Embery adds.
A parallel might be drawn with Unite’s shift away from its past focus on internal Labour politics under general secretary Sharon Graham, who won in 2021 with a promise to concentrate on her strapline, “fighting for jobs, pay and conditions”. Is this another example of a union becoming more ‘workerist’, as some in the labour movement call it?
“I’ve never been someone who thinks that the trade union shouldn’t get involved in politics,” says Embery. “Politicians are pretty much deciding everything in terms of the fire service. They decide what pay we’re going to get, what our pensions are going to be, whether there’s going to be cuts in the fire service.”
A senior Wrack supporter acknowledges, however, that not everyone in the union is happy with the level of attention paid by the general secretary to causes such as Palestine.
“Some people disagree with our outward-looking international solidarity,” the source says. “But decisions of our conference bring that through, which are then enacted by the executive council. Perhaps not every member backs these decisions, but they’re certainly democratic.”
“To be honest, I did get rattled by Diana Johnson’s questioning in the Home Affairs Committee”
In Wrack’s defence, they highlight the FBU’s “firefighters’ manifesto” initiative – demanding investment in the fire service, national standards for crewing and response times, and a new advisory body – and how as TUC president he strongly opposed the Minimum Service Levels Act, which Labour now plans to repeal.
The real problem, according to Wrack backers, is that the union is under attack. For some FBU members, an executive council member says, “the only way to stop these attacks against the union is for Matt to no longer be the general secretary”.
Shaping the general secretary race is a long-running feud between Embery and Wrack. Embery, who comes from the culturally conservative Blue Labour movement, was dismissed from his FBU role in 2019 after speaking at a Leave Means Leave rally, which the union said violated its anti-Brexit policy. FBU delegates agreed to bar him from holding office. After Embery's dismissal was first ruled unfair, the FBU won on appeal on the basis that Embery was only a lay official and not a union employee.
The London firefighter is now secretary of the Campaign for a Democratic FBU, a group that runs a blog publishing critical stories about Wrack. One of its central arguments against the leadership centres on the use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with departing employees and national officers.
In March, the Home Affairs Select Committee then-chair Diana Johnson questioned Wrack over the FBU’s policy on NDAs, leading to a tense exchange before the general secretary eventually replied: “There are no cases in the Fire Brigades Union that I am aware of where there are allegations of discrimination or bullying that have led to a non-disclosure agreement… But we have used settlement agreements. They are quite a common practice in employment.”
Embery says: “He got a bit flustered, a bit combative, and was eventually sort of forced to admit, ‘Yes, we have’… This caused an enormous blowback in the union, because the video of that exchange circulated online, and lots of union members were saying, ‘This looks terrible for us.’”
Asked about the meeting, Wrack concedes: “Clearly, he has scored some points against us, Embery. To be honest, I did get rattled by Diana Johnson’s questioning in the Home Affairs Committee, which I shouldn’t have done.”
Responding to the claims made against him around the alleged use of NDAs as effectively “gagging orders”, the general secretary says: “We’ve been honourable and complied with joint agreements we reached with the individuals. They wanted confidentiality, and so did we.”
He adds: “It’s very complex. To be honest, most people glaze over and are not interested. But clearly, by endlessly throwing the mud, Paul thinks some of it will stick, and probably it has with some people.”
So, what do we know about the man who could replace Wrack in January?
“He’s an unknown, and he certainly doesn’t have the experience to lead a union, especially at this time, with a new Labour government in power,” one executive council member says of Wright.
Wrack complains of his challenger: “He refuses to debate with me. We’ve invited him to hustings, and he hasn’t, so far, accepted. He said that hustings are divisive.” A row over whether holding official hustings contravenes union rules is ongoing.
Approached by The House for comment, Wright replied that “it’s an internal matter that members need to be considering through the structures of our union” and “at this point in the election I don’t think it would be appropriate”. He has also instructed members of his campaign team not to engage with the media.
Wright has received praise from some quarters for his approach. “He hasn’t got involved in any sort of dirty tricks. He hasn’t personalised his campaign. He’s run quite a professional, level-headed campaign,” says Embery.
Some believe, given the general secretary’s status as a critic of Keir Starmer, No 10 would welcome a change in leadership – it would make the Prime Minister’s life easier in Tulo (trade union liaison organisation) meetings, says a source in Wrack’s camp.
As voting gets underway, many in Westminster will be watching carefully to see whether FBU members choose Wright or Wrack, but few will be watching as closely as those in No 10.
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