Grenfell and Rwanda: from Good Right to a party gone wrong
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Speaking at the launch of the Good Right Group in 2015, Michael Gove, then (briefly) Tory chief whip, said: “ Only if we remind people of our commitment to social justice, demonstrate our belief in equality of opportunity and affirm that we are warriors for the dispossessed will we be able to win arguments, and elections, and then be in a position genuinely to help the vulnerable and the voiceless. People need to know what ’ s in our hearts before they are prepared to consider our arguments in their heads.”
The speech was made when the Conservatives were failing to pull ahead of Ed Miliband’s Labour Party in the polls. This was despite the perception that they were light years ahead of Labour when it came to competence in government, especially in economic management. Back in 2015 the Conservative brand was already seen as tainted: the “nasty party” , in Theresa May’s words — the party of the privileged and wealthy.
This week marks the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy. What could be the first of many flights deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda was hindered only by the courts. This week also marks the destruction of that noble Govian ideal.
The Grenfell Tower calamity was so tragic and sobering because, when we saw the faces of the deceased, we saw people who were, in effect, in the care of the state. The people who burned alive or suffocated in that tower block were the vulnerable and voiceless, the very people whom Michael Gove had said the Conservatives needed to support. Those were the people whom the state has let down for decades. To say that the Conservative government of five years ago alone had blood on its hands is to misjudge the scale of the issue. The victims of Grenfell were let down by the whole apparatus of the state for years — by Left and Right alike.
There is an inquiry into the disaster which will report later this year, and it must be allowed to run its course before anyone jumps to conclusions. At the same time, it is wrong to use the inquiry to dodge questions and let the indignation so many felt five years ago splutter into disinterest. It’s already clear that the residents of Grenfell had foreseen and warned of the tragedy before it took place, but were ignored by a system which should have been designed to help them. It ’ s also clear that the inquiry will paint a picture of victims, not only killed in their homes, but neglected through numerous iterations and layers of the state. However, it is a stain on the memory of all those who died that nothing of any real worth has been done to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.
To go back to that speech by Gove: “ It ’ s vital that we stress our reason for being in politics is to help others, not to implement an ideological blueprint about the size of the state or defend the interests of the already fortunate. We are in public service to help the people who need us, not just those who agree with us.” Grenfell stands as a cindered totem of the failure to give substance to that sentiment.
If Grenfell happened because of disinterest and inaction, the Rwanda deportation policy represents the exploitation of the vulnerable and voiceless for political gain. Thanks to ranting from the likes of Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel and Liz Truss need to be seen to be doing something — anything — about people coming over the Channel on dinghies. They seem to think the answer is to be found in the crime and punishment policies of the 18th century. In 1788 the starving were punished for poaching by being transported to Australia. In 2022 asylum seekers are flown to a 21st century penal colony in Rwanda. It’s sickening.
Of course, we should be trying to disrupt and take down people traffickers. This should be done through policies which we know will work (but might not play to the gallery so well). For example, the police, or even security services, should be infiltrating the gangs. This was highly successful in destabilising the IRA towards the end of the Troubles. More recently intelligence services have infiltrated Islamic terrorist cells and stopped numerous acts of terror. The infiltration of gangs should be accompanied by a joined-up, global refugee policy which would create access for refugees from the countries they come from. It would demonstrate the best of “ Global Britain ”.
If that plane to Rwanda ever takes off later it will represent the ugly impact of all that ’ s wrong with the wanton polarisation of British politics; you might call it populism. Seven years ago, Gove wanted his party to become “warriors for the dispossessed”. Instead, the Conservative Party became an army for Brexit, then fighters for culture wars and now cannon fodder for “Operation Save Big Dog”. We will see what the result of all this will be in the upcoming by-elections, but I think Johnson and his advisers have underestimated the public mood outside the echo chambers they inhabit. They are blinded to the severity of their peril because, when faced with such polarising policies as the creation of a Rwandan penal colony for asylum seekers, there are no grey areas. By design there is only one question: which side are you on?
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