#JusticeForGrenfell💚
I haven’t seen much noise about this on tumblr and because it’s a topic that is very close to my heart, I thought I would write my own thing...
Today (14th June 2020) is the three year anniversary of the Grenfell Tower Fire. In the early hours of 14th June 2017, a fire broke out in a 24-storey tower block in Kensington, West London. The fire quickly spread, engulfing the entire building. The tragedy resulted in 72 recorded deaths, and more than 200 people were left homeless. It was 100% avoidable, and the fire was a direct result of funding cuts and cutting corners and finding loopholes to avoid adhering to fire safety legislation. News outlets across the country described this as a tragedy. It was not a tragedy, it was a travesty. Mass murder by any other name.
The Grenfell Tower Fire was one of the most visceral visual manifestations of racial and socioeconomic injustice in modern memory. I’m going to include a brief history/explanation as to why and how, but I am by no means an expert so I encourage you to read about this further.
Grenfell Tower was in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but was managed by the Kensington & Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. In 2015-16, Grenfell Tower was significantly ‘redeveloped.’ as part of a £10million refurbishment project in partnership with Rydon and other contractors, which was part of a £57m neighbourhood regeneration scheme. As a part of the redevelopment programme, the building was installed with new windows, cladding, and thermal insulation. As part of this, new aluminium composite rainscreen cladding was introduced, of which two types were used: Reynobond PE and Reynolux aluminium sheets. The changing of the cladding was mainly to ensure ‘that the character and appearance of the area are preserved and living conditions of those living near the development suitably protected.’ - in other words, fire safety was compromised to make the building more aesthetically pleasing to the wider (note: wealthier) community in K&C. The company doing the cladding, Arconic, knew that it was unsuitable for high rise buildings over 10m (Grenfell was 63m tall). The new FLAMMABLE RS5000 insulation, produced by Saint-Gobain, failed several fire safety tests and was generally deemed unsafe for high rise buildings. The combination of flammable insulation and cladding caused a fire that should have been compartmentalised to one flat to engulf the whole building. The residents were subject to a ‘stay put’ policy that meant the majority of them were left unable to escape. I have highlighted the companies that are complicit in this corporate murder in bold here, because I believe their names should not be forgotten and they need to be heard so they can be held to account.
The building had no central fire alarm, no proper fire exits/fire-safe doors, no sprinkler system, no evacuation plan. It failed fire safety checks. Grenfell Tower’s infrastructure was illegal. The area had also suffered cuts to the fire brigade under Boris Johnson, who was at that time Mayor of London.
In January 2016, the Labour Party tried to introduce a bill that would require all rented housing to be ‘safe for human habitation’, and would have given residents of accommodation like Grenfell Tower the power to sue their landlords for breach of contract. It was voted down by 72 Conservative politicians, who at this stage has a majority in Parliament. They voted it down because they were landlords themselves deriving income from property. Landlord MPs can affect all decisions to do with housing legislation as long as they declare their interests, and they had a financial interest in the rented sector that led them to vote down secure safety protections.
The Grenfell Action Group raised concerns about fire safety in the building for years prior to the fire. In a blog post dated 20th November 2016, about 6 months before the tragedy, the Grenfell Action Group warned that “It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders.’ ‘The Grenfell Action Group predict that it won’t be long before the words of this blog come back to haunt the KCTMO management and we will do everything in our power to ensure that those in authority know how long and how appallingly our landlord has ignored their responsibility to ensure the health and safety of their tenants and leaseholders. They can’t say that they haven’t been warned!’ [emphasis added]. The government’s own equalities watchdog found that the management of the tower breached their rights to life and adequate housing of the residents, as well as many human rights inquiries since.
The Grenfell Tower tragedy is inextricably tied with race and class. This was a council estate, which meant it was occupied primarily by working class people, the majority of them council tenants, Muslims, immigrants, and refugees. Grenfell tower stood in the most deprived area of the wealthiest borough of London: it was a stark, brutalist block surrounded by cushy mansions and estates. Furthermore, the process of concentrating processes of urban “regeneration” and gentrification is a wider symptom of the privatisation of social housing, and is trauma from neoliberalism. I could go on forever about how political history and gentrification and the ways in which this ultimately led to disaster, but I’ve already gone on for too long so long story short: this was an entirely avoidable tragedy that is a culmination of racist and classist policies, where profit for the companies and aesthetics for the affluent upper class neighbourhood was prioritized over the lives of members of one of the most deprived communities in the UK.
Today, not much has been done by way of justice. Although the ‘safe for human habitation’ bill was passed post-Grenfell, it only applies to new buildings. Current households with unsafe flammable cladding, of which there are approximately 24,000, are not required to be retrospectively made safe. The government has missed the target of June 2020 to get rid of flammable cladding. Some 246 buildings still have Aluminium Composite Material installed. The public inquiry into the fire has been put on hold because of the pandemic. It has already revealed that companies such as Arconic, Saint-Gobain etc. knew that their materials were unsuitable for Grenfell Tower, but the council went ahead with the regeneration project anyway to save some money. Survivors of the fire say nothing has changed. The survivors of Grenfell Tower are yet to be offered permanent housing and were even threatened with being branded as ‘intentionally homeless’ if they refused significant relocation outside of London.
Please do not forget about Grenfell Tower. Do not let corporate greed and murder go unforgotten. This was one of the starkest illustrations of racial inequality and poverty and our lifetimes, and we must keep fighting for justice. The poor and the weak should not be cooped up in these unsafe buildings as lambs for the slaughter.
Please please email your MP and demand that the inquiry is continued and that the findings are widely publicized and lead to proper policy change implementing proper regulation of these criminal regeneration projects. Pressure your MPs to push for funding to be reallocated to these deprived communities. Please keep fighting for the Grenfell residents who are dealing with the trauma of losing their loved ones and gross incompetence by their council and potential permanent homelessness all at once.
Please follow Grenfell United, an organisation made up of survivors and bereaved members of the community and sign up to their newsletter for ways you can actively get involved. Please also consider donating to the Grenfell Foundation. Most of all, please do not allow Grenfell to leave the public consciousness. Don’t allow these to be covered up. Keep talking about it, please keep fighting for it. Love and solidarity 💚 #justiceforgrenfell
