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Adam Bannister is a contributor to IFSEC Global, having been in the role of Editor from 2014 through to November 2019. Adam also had stints as a journalist at cybersecurity publication, The Daily Swig, and as Managing Editor at Dynamis Online Media Group.
August 30, 2017

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Interview

“They’d never seen a black firefighter before”: LFB’s Michael Nicholas on diversity drives in the fire service

LFB staff take part in the Pride in London parade 2016 (photo: Katy Blackwood, under CC.4.0)

Black and minority ethnic (BAME) firefighters only make up 3.8% of employees in England’s fire service, yet account for 14.6% of the total population, according to Home Office figures.

The service is also male-dominated, with just 5% of firefighters in England and 6.5% UK-wide being female.

A black firefighter has recounted how upon joining the London fire brigade (LFB) in 1990, people were “patting me on the shoulder and clapping” when they saw him emerging from a fire engine because they’d never seen a black firefighter before.

If that sounds friendly enough, then Michael – or Micky – Nicholas also experienced discriminatory language and behaviour in his formative days at the LFB. “I didn’t have a particularly nice time when I first joined,” he admits.

Last year, Theresa May, then Home Secretary, criticised fire and rescue services for being 96% white and 95% male and for its “culture of bullying and harassment”.

But speaking to the Guardian, Nicholas, 53, implies that things have improved somewhat when he says: “Many years ago I couldn’t even think of encouraging my kids to being in what I saw as a fairly negative environment for black people and for women. Now, certainly in the London Fire Brigade, I would support that – dare I say encourage it.”

Nicholas is secretary of the Fire Brigades Union’s (FBU) black and ethnic minority members section and involved in drawing up the LFB’s 10-year inclusion strategy, which aims to increase the number of BAME recruits from 13% to 25% and of operational female recruits from 7% to 18% by 2026.

Read the full interview on the Guardian.

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