ANDY Gilchrist, leader of the firefighters' union, certainly has an agile mind. He is brilliant enough to hold two contradictory opinions with equal fervour.

Last week he went to speak at a meeting organised by "Labour Against A War on Iraq" and declared that he was opposed to such a conflict because it would result in the deaths of innocent Iraqi children. This week he runs a strike that may result in the deaths of innocent British children. What does the word "innocent" mean in Gilchrist's vocabulary? It reminds me of Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass: "When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean - neither more nor less".

The point has to be made that there is no justification for a strike by public servants who are vital for the preservation of human life. The firefighters have no right to go on strike. The Government ought to outlaw strikes among those who have these key responsibilities. This is not to say that the firefighters' claim for higher wages is not to be heard. Perhaps they do have a case. But the point is that, however just their demand, it cannot be placed on the same scale as the issue of public safety.

Gilchrist spoke yesterday of the firefighters' "right" to withdraw their labour. There is no such right in the moral law. For their alleged "right" to strike involves innocent members of the public agreeing to the possibility that they may die for the firefighters' right. And no one has the authority to impose such an extreme condition on another human being. One might even say that anyone in such a position of responsibility as a firefighter who then goes on strike has, by that very action, disqualified his original wage claim.

I don't imagine that readers of this column come away with the idea that I have much time for Tony Blair, but he is right to resist the firefighters' claim. As it happens, they are not badly paid. They do not work the long hours that other public servants work. They have the option of early retirement on a generous pension. Gilchrist himself is hardly badly paid for a class warrior: it was reported over the weekend that he earns - or rather is paid - upwards of £82,000 per year.

But there are broader reasons why the strike must not be given in to. It would open the gates to a great number of similar claims from workers in the public sector - a public sector which, it has to be said, is not providing value for money. Everyone knows that the schools and hospitals are a shambles. Many children leave school after 11 years of full-time public education scarcely able to read, write and count. And we are told there are at least 5,000 deaths in our hospitals each year because many doctors and nurses neither understand nor follow the basic rules of personal hygiene.

Anarchic industrial relations always arise sooner or later under a Labour government. The gloss has come off New Labour. Scratch a Blairite and you will find just under the skin an old-fashioned socialist, red in tooth and claw.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.