The question that Grenfell should make you ask
(Photo by Hollie Adams/Getty Images)
There is little in this world that makes me as angry as the tragedy of the Grenfell Tower, the events leading up to it and the governmental and local governmental response to it.
I say that in light of the fact that Donald Trump is president, Boris Johnson is Prime Minister, government politicians are standing up and declaring their intention to break the law and — at least in part thanks to this government’s incompetence — our lives are being restricted once again. To make me more angry than all of that takes some doing.
But what happened with Grenfell is so emblematic of all that is wrong with this government and the society that elected it, that if you were to put it in a film script even Ken Loach would consider it a bit heavy handed.
Grenfell Tower burned because the company that put on the cladding cut costs and corners by using shoddy material. Grenfell Tower was clad in the first place — instead of that money being spent on sprinkler systems and fire doors that work — because its snooty neighbours wanted to disguise the look of local social housing. They didn’t want to think about the fact they lived cheek by jowl with poor people.
When Grenfell Tower burned, the people who stayed inside did so because they trusted the advice of the people in charge. But there were too many failures. The landlords — the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea — did not have a proper fire safety practice and contingency plan in place and instead lazily relied on outdated “stay put” advice. As for the London Fire Brigade, while the individual firefighters proved themselves heroes on the night, their leadership suffered systemic failures that meant they had no proper plan for rescinding that “stay put” advice in time to save lives.
People who live in rented housing — be it social or privately rented — deserve the same right to safety as those who can afford to buy. This shouldn’t need saying, but it clearly does. People in social housing are sometimes the more vulnerable in society. They aren’t a problem to be dealt with, but human beings with rights and needs. At Grenfell they have been transformed into a community to be reckoned with.
Theresa May’s inability to show empathy when visiting Grenfell Tower after the fire highlighted perhaps the most important reason why the public had cut her majority at the election that had concluded only a few days beforehand. She seemed on the surface incapable of even the most basic human emotions. The public, and in particular the residents, let her know what they thought of that.
But this week, it has passed without much notice that Boris Johnson, that all too human buffoon we decided was the best person to see us through our worst times, has displayed a far greater lack of character. This week he whipped his MPs — including the newly-elected MP for Kensington (in whose borough Grenfell Tower sits) — to vote against a Labour amendment to the Fire Safety Bill that would have put the recommendations of phase one of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry into law.
Never mind that there are still around 2,000 buildings still covered in flammable cladding. Let’s not hurry this through in case it gives Labour a win, eh lads. Boris is all tactics and no strategy. Compassion and decency don’t even crack the top ten. May was a robot. Johnson is worse. He does this while smiling.
I know I come at most of the things I write on this site with a particular perspective. I have been a Labour member for most of my life and I’m open about that. But usually, I try to be as analytical as I can be. It try to accept and acknowledge my prejudices so that I can better see where they are blinding me or making me unreasonable.
I’ve tried here. I know my tone may not make that obvious, but I have. But I just can’t see a reasonable explanation for 72 people burning to death. Too many people failed them, and failed to prioritise them, because they were poor. I can’t be even-handed about their homes being cased in cheap, deadly materials, because hiding the ugliness of their poverty was a higher political priority than dealing with it. I can’t be OK with the kind of council that waves this through, or a government that forces a delay in dealing with it.
The Grenfell Tower fire makes me angry about the kind of society we have become and the poisonous kind of politics we have allowed to seep into the national bloodstream. But the question isn’t why I am so angry. The question is — why aren’t you?
