Grenfell Tower: June 2017

It was like a burnt matchbox in the sky.
It was black and long and burnt in the sky.
You saw it through the flowering stump of trees.
You saw it beyond the ochre spire of the church.
You saw it in the tears of those who survived.
You saw it through the rage of those who survived.
You saw it past the posters of those who had burnt to ashes.
You saw it past the posters of those who jumped to their deaths.
You saw it through the TV images of flames through windows
Running up the aluminium cladding
You saw it in print images of flames bursting out from the roof.
You heard it in the voices loud in the streets.
You heard it in the cries in the air howling for justice.
You heard it in the pubs the streets the basements the digs.
You heard it in the wailing of women and the silent scream
Of orphans wandering the streets
You saw it in your baby who couldn’t sleep at night
Spooked by the ghosts that wander the area still trying
To escape the fires that came at them black and choking.
You saw it in your dreams of the dead asking if living
Had no meaning being poor in a land
Where the poor die in flames without warning.
But when you saw it with your eyes it seemed what the eyes
Saw did not make sense cannot make sense will not make sense.
You saw it there in the sky, tall and black and burnt.
You counted the windows and counted the floors
And saw the sickly yellow of the half burnt cladding
And what you saw could only be seen in nightmare.
Like a war-zone come to the depths of a fashionable borough.
Like a war-zone planted here in the city.
To see with the eyes that which one only sees
In nightmares turns the day to night, turns the world upside down.

Those who were living now are dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.
See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.

Residents of the area call it the crematorium.
It has revealed the undercurrents of our age.
The poor who thought voting for the rich would save them.
The poor who believed all that the papers said.
The poor who listened with their fears.
The poor who live in their rooms and dream for their kids.
The poor are you and I, you in your garden of flowers,
In your house of books, who gaze from afar
At a destiny that draws near with another name.
Sometimes it takes an image to wake up a nation
From its secret shame. And here it is every name
Of someone burnt to death, on the stairs or in their room,
Who had no idea what they died for, or how they were betrayed.
They did not die when they died; their deaths happened long
Before. It happened in the minds of people who never saw
Them. It happened in the profit margins. It happened
In the laws. They died because money could be saved and made.

Those who are living now are dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower
See the tower, and let a world-changing dream flower.

They called the tower ugly; they named it an eyesore.
All around the beautiful people in their beautiful houses
Didn’t want the ugly tower to ruin their house prices.
Ten million was spent to encase the tower in cladding.
Had it ever been tested before except on this eyesore,
Had it ever been tested for fire, been tried in a blaze?
But it made the tower look pretty, yes it made the tower look pretty.
But in twenty four storeys, not a single sprinkler.
In twenty four storeys not a single alarm that worked.
In twenty four storeys not a single fire escape,
Only a single stairwell designed in hell, waiting
For an inferno. That’s the story of our times.
Make it pretty on the outside, but a death trap
On the inside. Make the hollow sound nice, make
The empty look nice. That’s all they will see,
How it looks, how it sounds, not how it really is, unseen.
But if you really look you can see it, if you really listen
You can hear it. You’ve got to look beneath the cladding.
There’s cladding everywhere. Political cladding,
Economic cladding, intellectual cladding — things that look good
But have no centre, have no heart, only moral padding.
They say the words but the words are hollow.
They make the gestures and the gestures are shallow.
Their bodies come to the burnt tower but their souls don’t follow.

Those who were living are now dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower
See the tower, and let a world-changing deed flower.

The voices here must speak for the dead.
Speak for the dead. Speak for the dead.
See their pictures line the walls. Poverty is its own
Colour, its own race. They were Muslim and Christian,
Black and white and colours in between. They were young
And old and beautiful and middle aged. There were girls
In their best dresses with hearts open to the future.
There was an old man with his grandchildren;
There was Amaya Tuccu, three years old,
Burnt to ashes before she could see the lies of the world.
There are names who were living beings who dreamt
Of fame or contentment or education or love
Who are now ashes in a burnt out shell of cynicism.
There were two Italians, lovely and young,
Who in the inferno were on their mobile phone to friends
While the smoke of profits suffocated their voices.
There was the baby thrown from many storeys high
By a mother who knew otherwise he would die.
There were those who jumped from their windows
And those who died because they were told to stay
In their burning rooms. There was the little girl on fire
Seen diving out from the twentieth floor. Need I say more.

Those who are living are now dead
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.
See the tower, and let a world-changing deed flower.

Always there’s that discrepancy
Between what happens and what we are told.
The official figures were stuck at thirty.
Truth in the world is rarer than gold.
Bodies brought out in the dark
Bodies still in the dark.
Dark the smoke and dark the head.
Those who were living are now dead.

And while the tower flamed they were tripping
Over bodies at the stairs
Because it was pitch black.
And those that survived
Sleep like refugees on the floor
Of a sports centre.
And like creatures scared of the dark,
A figure from on high flits by,
Speaking to the police and brave firefighters,
But avoiding the victims,
Whose hearts must be brimming with dread.
Those who were breathing are from the living earth fled.

But if you go to Grenfell Tower, if you can pull
Yourselves from your tennis games and your perfect dinners
If you go there while the black skeleton of that living tower
Still stands unreal in the air, a warning for similar towers to fear,
You will breathe the air thick with grief
With women spontaneously weeping
And children wandering around stunned
And men secretly wiping a tear from the eye
And people unbelieving staring at this sinister form in the sky
You will see the trees with their leaves green and clean
And will inhale the incense meant
To cleanse the air of unhappiness
You will see banks of flowers
And white paper walls sobbing with words
And candles burning for the blessing of the dead
You will see the true meaning of community
Food shared and stories told and volunteers everywhere
You will breathe the air of incinerators
Mixed with the essence of flower.
If you want to see how the poor die, come see Grenfell Tower.

Make sense of these figures if you will
For the spirit lives where truth cannot kill.
Ten million spent on the falsely clad
In a fire where hundreds lost all they had.
Five million offered in relief
Ought to make a nation alter its belief.
An image gives life and an image kills.
The heart reveals itself beyond political skills.
In this age of austerity
The poor die for others’ prosperity.
Nurseries and libraries fade from the land.
A strange time is shaping on the strand.
A sword of fate hangs over the deafness of power.
See the tower, and let a new world-changing thought flower.

Source: Counterfire

Thousands of people marched in silence on the anniversary of the Grenfell Tower Fire in a powerful show of solidarity

The front of the march was led by survivors and families of the victims of the fire. Most people at the march were wearing green for Grenfell and there were placards calling for justice and for the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea and the Tenant Management Organisation to be held accountable. The final rally was compèred by Lowkey, who released a second song about Grenfell to mark the anniversary.

A year ago, the fire was a shock to the whole country – except to tenants of Grenfell Tower themselves who warned the council that something exactly like this would happen if they didn’t take their concerns seriously. But this fell on deaf ears. Worse, some of the tenants were threatened with legal action for campaigning for fire safety. The chilling words of the Grenfell Action Group, who raised the alarm on the lack of fire safety at the Tower years before the fire, should never be forgotten:

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 Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO)

The government’s response to the tragedy was abhorrent. Theresa May refused to meet the survivors. Instead, she paid a quick visit to the emergency services personnel – the same people that her government has kept under a 1% pay cap and who her government are now trying to shift the blame of the fire onto.

And the relief efforts were just as shoddy. There was no centrally organised relief operation, it was down to the resilience of the community and the thousands of volunteers who flocked in to organise shelter, food and clothes for those who had lost everything in the fire.

A year on not much has changed. Only 82 of the households from Grenfell Tower have been given permanent accommodation. Dozens of families are still living in hotel rooms, often sharing one room between a family, and over 100 families are living in temporary accommodation. The 68 flats bought by the council in 375 High Street Kensington that were reported to be fast-tracked for completion and house survivors, hasn’t materialised.

A number of council leaders that were involved directly in the decisions that resulted in the fire resigned, but not an ounce of justice has been done. People like Rock Fielding-Mellen, responsible for the regeneration of Grenfell Tower and who the contractors said they opted to use the cheaper, flammable cladding for, should be behind bars for murder – not lounging in his multi-million-pound mansion.

In the aftermath of the fire, tests on the cladding of tower blocks around the country revealed that hundreds of buildings had the same flammable materials making up their facades. The government have yet to provide funding for a number of austerity-hit councils that have said they can’t afford to replace the cladding of over 250 buildings without central government funds. A year later, thousands of Britons continue to live in buildings that are at risk of spreading fire like Grenfell, and private landlords like Vincent Tchenguiz have told their residents that cladding will only be changed if they pay for it.

And the public inquiry that has now begun has already faced a number of issues from the onset. The presiding judge is one that has ruled in favour of social cleansing, the terms of reference are limited and despite some concessions, it’s clear that the inquiry will not be likely to direct blame at the government or any individuals – much like Chilcot.

Most shamefully still, is the recent government-media-police coordinated attack on the firefighters that bravely risked their lives to rescue people from Grenfell Tower, some even disobeying orders and going above the line of duty. But at the silent march, as has been the case with all the marches that have taken place every month since the fire, the heroic firefighters that helped in Grenfell lined up outside Ladbroke Grove Station – and people on the march stopped to thank them. It was a clear testament to the fact that the media spin is not working in the community, who recognise who it is that’s really responsible for the tragedy they have faced.

Days after the fire, when residents of the area demonstrated and stormed the Council, there was a strong sense of anger and clearly directed at the council and the government. After being at the march, it’s clear that that anger is still there and it’s still aimed at the Council and Theresa May. The Tower is now covered in white sheets, but it will forever remain a symbol of Tory austerity, a melting pot of all the ways this government has attacked the working class.

The silent march was powerful and incredibly moving; it served as a way for the community to come out in force together, and as Jeremy Corbyn said, to mourn together and overcome together. The sheer number of people that turned up, and the strong messages on some of the placards and banners are reminders that the anger hasn’t gone away. The Tories can’t be let off the hook. And for that, we also need to be bold in challenging the government directly and we need to do so as the wider movement united with the Grenfell community.

It’s why the demonstration on Saturday assembling outside Downing Street at 12pm, is so important. Theresa May needs to be given the message, loud and clear, that Grenfell has not been forgotten and that as well as mourning, we’re angry, we want justice and we won’t just sit back until real justice has been done. The march is co-organised by the Fire Brigades Union, which again is extremely important politically to rebuke the attempts to put the blame on them.

Shabbir Lakha is an officer of Stop the War Coalition, a People’s Assembly activist and a member of Counterfire.

Lowkey ft. Kaia – Ghosts of Grenfell 2

Source: Counterpunch

In memory of those who perished and whose deaths are indistinguishable from the fact they were poor and working class, let Grenfell be the line over which Tory greed and mendacity does not pass.

Britain at the end of 2017 is a utopia for the few and a dystopia for far too many, and when this process is over nothing meaningful will alter in the plight of London’s poor and working class.

Source: Counterpunch

This article is reprinted from December 2017.

Six months after a fire ripped through Grenfell Tower residential tower block in London and incinerated 71 of its residents, most of the survivors remain homeless, living in temporary accommodation, many of them with young children. As Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn pointed in a recent broadcast on Grenfell, “our country has a history of working class people’s voices being ignored by those in power.”

The government’s Grenfell Tower Inquiry began in September. It is being chaired by retired high court judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, appointed to lead it by the government without any prior consultation with the survivors, victims’ loved ones, or the wider community. In one of the last cases he heard prior to his retirement in 2016, Moore-Bick was accused of giving a “green light” to local councils across the city when it came to the social cleansing of poor tenants and residents. The relevance of this history regarding Moore-Bick’s chairmanship of the Grenfell Inquiry could not be more pointed, involving as it does issues concerning substandard housing suffered by people of no property, such as the residents of Grenfell Tower, in one of the world’s most developed and unequal societies.

Another key element of the establishment machine that has kicked in in response to Grenfell arrived most recently in the form of a memorial service, conducted in the grand and ostentatious setting of St Paul’s Cathedral. There, survivors and victims’ family members and loved ones rubbed shoulders with members of the royal family, the government, and other representatives of the country’s ruling class. The mournful music, choir, and service they were treated to, the brief words of comfort from people who spend more on lunch in a day than they have to keep themselves and their children in food for an entire week, was establishment theatre at its best, during which insincerity dripped from every pore of an elite whose actual disdain and contempt for working class and poor people is responsible for housing them in the kind of substandard conditions that gave rise to the Grenfell inferno in the first place.

You just know that when this process is over nothing meaningful will alter in the plight of London’s poor and working class. Indeed how could it when Britain at the end of 2017 is a utopia for the few and a dystopia for far too many, a country in which cruelty has been elevated to the status of a virtue and compassion condemned as a vice, in which the carnage wrought by austerity and affluence sit side by side.

Austerity is an ideological weapon deployed in the interests of the rich against the poor in conditions of economic extremis, with the objective in the second decade of the 21^stcentury of breathing life into the corpse of neoliberalism, whose burial is long overdue. The dire consequences of seven years of unending austerity were laid bare in a damning report in November. According to the report’s findings, since it was introduced, austerity in the UK has killed 120,000 people.

Poverty is no natural phenomenon. It does not fall from the sky like the rain. It is the product of a grotesque economic reality configured to benefit the few at the expense of the majority. And erected in support of this grotesqueness is an apparatus of propaganda, manufactured and peddled by those with a vested interest in the status quo, conditioning and fashioning our acquiescence in the brutality meted out to our fellow citizens. We are talking the psychological and, in more and more instances, physical destruction of defenceless human beings — men, women, and children existing at the sharp end of the wrath of a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

Moreover, the grim reality of benefit sanctions, foodbanks, homelessness, and poverty wages, which is today the lived experience of millions up and down the UK, belies the attempt to beguile us with the fanfare surrounding the recent announcement of Prince Harry’s engagement to Hollywood actress Meghan Markle.

It was a fanfare undertaken with the transparent objective of forging a national consensus around the monarchy, a semi-feudal institution rooted in unearned privilege and obscene opulence. It saw the usual parade of politicians, government ministers, and mainstream media commentators – people who are never done railing against the ‘dear leader’ sanctification of North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un – engaging in ritual homilies to class privilege, perpetuating the worship of a family they describe as royal and encouraging the country to go gaga whenever one of them farts.

This is Britain in 2017, where the burnt out shell of Grenfell Tower sits just a few miles away from a refurbished Buckingham Palace, a country in which the rich, through their ownership of the mass media and their political flunkies in government and parliament, have unleashed a vicious class war that has succeeded in turning the clock back to the 19th century.

The roots of a crime that killed over 70 people lie in the virulent disdain and contempt, bordering on hatred, of working class and poor people.

Source: Counterpunch

The burnt out shell of Grenfell Tower stands as symptom and symbol of the class war that has been and is still raging all over Britain, a war that in 2017 has never been more intense and in which only one side is throwing punches and only one side is taking them. Thus it is impossible to consider the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to be anything other than an establishment pantomime capable of delivering only a simulacrum of justice in that its very complexion perpetuates the social injustice that led inexorably to the fire and resulting carnage.

The more cynical among us will not persuaded that the real purpose of the inquiry is anything other than to channel and filter the righteous rage and anger of a community that has been so grievously wronged onto the safe ground of obfuscation, shrouded in legalese and the kind of establishment-speak perfected over the far too many years in which the lives of working class and poor people have been regarded by the rich to be of scant importance.

As Alan Badiou reminds us, we are living in a world in which we have to “save the banks rather than confiscate them, hand out billions to the rich and give nothing to the poor, set nationals against workers of foreign origin whenever possible, and, in a word, keep tight controls on all forms of poverty in order to ensure the survival of the powerful.”

Leading the Grenfell Tower Inquiry is Cambridge-educated retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick. In one of the last cases he heard prior to his retirement Moore-Bick found in favour of Westminster Council in 2014 in a case brought by single mother of five, Titina Nzolameso. Ms Nzolameso had approached the council to be rehoused after she was made homeless in 2012. They offered her accommodation 50 miles from London and when she refused, Westminster Council ruled that she had made herself “intentionally homeless”, thus absolving them of their obligation to rehouse her under the 1996 Housing Act.

Sir Martin James Moore-Bick’s judgement, later overruled by the Supreme Court on appeal, drew the criticism that it was tantamount to a “green light” for councils in London to embark on the social cleansing of their poorer tenants and residents. The relevance of this judgement to the Grenfell Inquiry could not be more pointed, involving as it does issues concerning the substandard housing endured by Westminister Council’s poorest residents, people of no property in one of the world’s most developed and unequal societies in the world with a housing crisis that leaves no doubt of the contempt in which people on low incomes are held by a political class whose slavish attachment to the interests of the rich is beyond doubt.

Almost four months on from the Grenfell Fire only two families of those that survived have been permanently rehoused, while 150 families are still living in temporary hotel accommodation across the city.

At the heart of this issue are the questions of class and inequality that have long blighted British society. Their most grievous symptoms in 2017 are foodbanks, benefit sanctions, the welfare cap, homelessness, the housing crisis, and as Grenfell attests to, substandard housing. Each of the aforementioned feeds into the Grenfell Fire and the treatment of the survivors with regard to the lack of action and progress in permanently rehousing them; this in a borough in which 1,857 properties are currently lying empty in the vicinity of the burnt out shell of Grenfell Tower.

Everybody living in a community that has been the focus of the national and international media this summer for all the wrong reasons knows that this disaster could have been avoided, should have been avoided, and was not avoided purely as a result of their invisibility in the eyes of the council of the richest borough in London. They are victims of a sick society, intoxicated with greed at one end of the social spectrum and abject cruelty at the other, bringing with it the attendant maladies of crime, drug abuse, mental illness, and human despair.

In this scenario retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick could only ever be part of the problem rather then the solution. He is emblematic of an elite for whom the demographic represented by Grenfell might as well be living on another planet. Indeed it is hard to argue with the suggestion that only when we are living in a society in which Moore-Bick and his ilk are being judged rather than judging will we know what real justice looks like.

You can follow John Wight on Twitter at @JohnWight1

“They are immortalized forever, the only ghosts are us.”

On 14 June 2017, the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of public housing flats in North Kensington, West London, caught fire causing 72 deaths and over 70 injuries. Hip Hop artist Lowkey lives opposite Grenfell tower. His song called Ghosts of Grenfell demands justice for those who died.

Lyrics

[Intro: Lowkey]
The night our eyes changed
Rooms where, love was made and un-made in a flash of the night
Rooms where, memories drowned in fumes of poison
Rooms where, futures were planned and the imagination of children built castles in the sky
Rooms where, both the extraordinary and the mundane were lived
Become forever tortured graves of ash
Oh you political class, so servile to corporate power

[Chorus: Mai Khalil & Lowkey]
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, for us?
Ghosts of Grenfell still calling for justice
Now hear ’em, now hear ’em scream
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, for us?
This corporate manslaughter will haunt you
Now hear ’em scream

[Verse 1: Lowkey]
Words can not express
Please allow me to begin though
1:30am heard the shouting from my window
People crying in the street
Watchin’ the burning of their kinfolk
Grenfell Tower, now historically a symbol
People reaching, from their windows
Screaming, for their lives
Pleading, with the cries
Tryna reason with the skies
Dale youth birthed champions
Comparison is clear though
That every single person in the building was a hero
So don’t judge our tired eyes in these trying times
‘Cause we be breathing in cyanide, the entire night
They say Yasin saw the fire and he ran inside
Who’d thought that would be the site where he and his family died
The street is like a graveyard, tombstones lurching over us
Those shouting out to their windows, now wish they never woke them up
Wouldn’t hope your worst enemy to go in this position
Now it’s flowers for the dead and printed posters for the missing, come home

[Chorus: Mai Khalil & Lowkey]
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, for us?
Ghosts of Grenfell still calling for justice
Now hear ’em, now hear ’em scream
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, for us?
This corporate manslaughter will haunt you
Now hear ’em scream

[Verse 2: Lowkey]
I see trauma in the faces of all those that witnessed this
Innocence in the faces of all those on the missing list
See hopes unfulfilled
Ambitions never achieved
No I’m not the only one that sees the dead in my dreams
Strive for the bravery of Yasin, artistic gift of Khadija
Every person, a unique blessing to never be repeated
Strive for the loyalty of siblings that stayed behind with their parents
Pray that every loved one lost can somehow make an appearance
We are, calling like the last conversations with their dearest
Until we face, what they face we will never know what fear is
We are, calling for survivors rehoused in the best place
Not to be left sleeping in the West Way for 10 days
We’re, calling for arrests made and debts paid
In true numbers known for the families that kept faith
We’re, calling for safety in homes of love
They are immortalised forever, the only ghosts are us
I wonder

[Chorus: Mai Khalil & Lowkey]
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, for us?
Ghosts of Grenfell still calling for justice
Now hear ’em, now hear ’em scream
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, or us?
Did they die, for us?
This corporate manslaughter will haunt you
Now hear ’em scream

[Bridge: Mai Khalil (Arabic)]
Olooli win arooh
Nas a’am tehtere’a fe sa’at sahoor
Ahess ennee be alam tanee
Ahess ennee be alam tanee
Olooli win arooh
Nas a’am tehtere’a fe sa’at sahoor
Ahess ennee be alam tanee
Ahess ennee be alam tanee

[Speech: Lowkey & Various Voices]
To whom it may concern, at the Queen’s royal borough of Kensington in Chelsea. Where is Yasin El-Wahabi? Where is his brother Mehdi? Where is his sister Nur Huda? Where is their mother and where is their father? Where is Nura Jamal and her husband Hashim? Where is their children, Yahya, Firdaus and Yaqoob? Where is Nadia Loureda? Where is Steve Power? Where is Dennis Murphy? Where is Marco Gottardi? Where is Gloria Trevisian? Where is Amal and her daughter Amaya? Where is Mohammed Neda? Where is Ali Yawar Jafari? Where is Khadija Saye? Where is Mary Mendy? Where is Mariem Elgwahry? Where is her mother Suhar?

Tell us, where is Rania Ibrahim and her two daughters? Where is Jessica Urbano Remierez? Where is Deborah Lamprell? Where is Mohammed Alhajali? Where is Nadia? Where is her husband Bassem? Where are her daughters, Mirna, Fatima, Zaina and their grandmother? Where is Zainab Dean and her son Jeremiah? Where is Ligaya Moore? Where is Sheila Smith? Where is Mohammednour Tuccu? Where is Tony Disson? Where is Maria Burton? Where is Fathaya Alsanousi? Where is her son Abu Feras and her daughter Esra Ibrahim? Where is Lucas James? Where is Farah Hamdan? Where is Omar Belkadi? Where is their daughter Leena? Where is Hamid Kani? Where is Esham Rahman? Where is Raymond Bernard? Where is Isaac Paulos? Where is Marjorie Vital? Where’s her son Ernie? Where is Komru Miah? Where is his wife Razia? Where are their children Abdul Hanif, Abdul Hamid, Hosna? Where are Sakineh and Fatima Afraseiabi? Where is Berkti Haftom and her son Biruk?

Tells us, where is Stefan Anthony Mills? Where is Abdul Salam? Where is Khadija Khalloufi? Where is Karen Bernard? Where are these people? Where are these people? Where is Gary Maunders? Where is Rohima Ali? Where is her six year old daughter Maryam, her five year old daughter Hafizah and her three year old son Mohammed? God bless you all! Where are all these people?

[Outro]
Where are all these people?
The blood is on your hands
There will be ashes on your graves
Like a Phoenix we will rise
The blood is on your hands
There will be ashes on your graves
Like a Phoenix we will rise

Source: The Guardian

Even before the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster has begun, it looks like a stitch-up, its initial terms of reference set so narrowly that government policy remains outside the frame. An inquiry that honours the dead would investigate the wider causes of this crime. It would examine a governing ideology that sees torching public protections as a sacred duty.

Let me give you an example. On the morning of 14 June, as the tower blazed, an organisation called the Red Tape Initiative convened for its prearranged discussion about building regulations. One of the organisation’s tasks was to consider whether rules determining the fire resistance of cladding materials should be removed for the sake of construction industry profits.

Please bear with me while I explain what this initiative is and who runs it, as it’s a perfect cameo of British politics. It’s a government-backed body, established “to grasp the opportunities” that Brexit offers to cut “red tape” – a disparaging term for public protections. It’s chaired by the Conservative MP Sir Oliver Letwin, who has claimed that “the call to minimise risk is a call for a cowardly society”. It is a forum in which exceedingly wealthy people help decide which protections should be stripped away from lesser beings.

Among the members of its advisory panel are Charles Moore, who was editor of the Daily Telegraph and the chair of an organisation called Policy Exchange. He was also best man at Letwin’s wedding. Sitting beside him is Archie Norman, the former chief executive of Asda and the founder of Policy Exchange. He was once Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells – and was succeeded in that seat by Greg Clark, the minister who now provides government support for the Red Tape Initiative.

Until he became environment secretary, Michael Gove was also a member of the Red Tape Initiative panel. Oh, and he was appointed by Norman as the first chairman of Policy Exchange. (He was replaced by Moore.) Policy Exchange also supplied two of Letwin’s staff in the Conservative policy unit that he used to run. Policy Exchange is a neoliberal lobby group funded by dark money, that seeks to tear down regulations.

The Red Tape Initiative’s management board consists of Letwin, Baroness Rock and Lord Marland. Baroness Rock is a childhood friend of the former Tory chancellor George Osborne, and is married to the wealthy financier Caspar Rock. Marland is a multimillionaire businessman who owns a house and four flats in London, “various properties in Salisbury”, three apartments in France and two apartments in Switzerland.

In other words, the Red Tape Initiative is a representative cross-section of the British public. In no sense is it a self-serving clique of old chums, insulated from hazard by their extreme wealth, whose role is to decide whether other people (colloquially known as “cowards”) should be exposed to risk.

Letwin’s initiative appointed a panel to investigate housing regulations. It includes representatives of trade unions and NGOs, though they are outnumbered by executives and lobbyists from the industry. And there – surprise, surprise – is a man, called Richard Blakeway, from Policy Exchange.

The panel’s task on 14 June was to consider a report that the Red Tape Initiative had commissioned whose purpose was to identify building rules that could be cut. Among those it listed as “burdensome” was the EU Construction Products Regulation, which seeks to protect people from fire, and restricts the kind of cladding that can be used.

What was the source of the report’s assertion that this regulation was unnecessary? One of the sources was a column in the Sunday Telegraph by Christopher Booker. He has a fair claim to being more wrong more often than any other British journalist – quite an achievement, given the field. While Grenfell Tower was smouldering, the panel members decided that on this occasion they would not recommend the removal of the regulation.

But the Red Tape Initiative, gruesome spectre that it is, continues its work. It is one of many such schemes set up in recent decades, by Conservatives and New Labour. Recent examples are David Cameron’s Star Chamber (yes, that really was the name he gave it), in which ministers were interrogated by a panel of corporate executives; and the Cutting Red Tape programme, which boasts that “businesses with good records have had fire safety inspections reduced from six hours to 45 minutes”.

One of the results of this bonfire of regulation is the government’s repeal in 2012 of the fire prevention measures in the London Building Act. Had they remained in place, the Grenfell fire is unlikely to have risen up the tower. This assault on public protections is just one element of the compound disaster that neoliberalism –promoted by opaquely funded groups such as Policy Exchange –has imposed on Britain since 1979. Its central purpose is not just to empower corporations and the very rich, but actively to disempower everyone else, through austerity, outsourcing and privatisation.

An inquiry that failed to investigate such possible causes would be a farce. It would do nothing to prevent any similar catastrophes from recurring. It would do nothing to stop the rich from destroying other people’s protections, as the Red Tape Initiative threatens to do.

But this is what we have been offered so far by a government that can choose charges, judge and jury. There’s an urgent need for an independent commission whose purpose is to decide when inquiries should be called, what their terms should be, and who should chair them. Governments should have no influence over any of these decisions.

On 14 June a facade caught fire, in more senses than one. A blinkered inquiry threatens to clad the origins of this great crime, shielding their embarrassing ugliness from public view. We cannot, and must not, accept it.

Source: The Guardian

The survivors are angry at what they say is a failure of the government and Kensington and Chelsea council to deal appropriately with the tragedy and are concerned that the inquiry will follow in a similar vein.

The letter, which contains 12 demands in all, has been drawn up based on feedback from a meeting of about 150 survivors of the fire and BMELawyers4Grenfell, a team of black and minority ethnic lawyers who are supporting them.

BMELawyers4Grenfell said that if the terms of reference of the inquiry did not change, it would consider a judicial review against the government for failing to consult sufficiently with those affected by the fire.

The 12 demands include:

• A properly diverse expert panel to sit alongside the inquiry judge to advise on a variety of issues, including housing need, fire and safety construction.
• A response team to be available to survivors 24 hours a day.
• The removal of Sir Martin Moore-Bick as head of the inquiry.
• The centralisation of all donations into one charity and a full record of money collected.
• Confirmation in writing from the home secretary within 28 days that undocumented survivors are given full UK citizenship.
• A guarantee that the interim findings will be made public within four months.

The survivors are concerned about comments from Moore-Bick, the former court of appeal judge who is heading the inquiry, that it will be restricted to issues relating to how the fire started and spread rather than examining wider issues about Grenfell Tower, the council, central government and the management and funding of social housing.

Peter Herbert, the chair of the Society of Black Lawyers, said: “The inquiry must be capable of guaranteeing answers that honour the memory of all those who have lost their lives and those that remain.”

He said the government must “appoint a judge that residents are comfortable with”. Justice4Grenfell, another group supporting survivors and bereaved relatives, has called for Moore-Bick to step down.

Conspiracy theorists? No: the Grenfell survivors are right to distrust the state

By Eve Livingston

And, amidst it all, growing accusations of a cover-up around a death toll that has crept up cautiously and incrementally jar against accounts of flats filled with guests breaking Ramadan fasts, and the frantic mental arithmetic employed to tot up the tower’s likely occupants at 1am on a Wednesday morning.

The reasons for this, and the Metropolitan police’s most recent announcement that the final death toll will probably not be known this year, are many and undoubtedly legitimate. But these things have evoked justifiable anger from residents, as noted by the Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, who tweeted last week that “trust is at rock bottom in the community. Failure to provide updates of the true number that died is feeding suspicion of a cover-up.”

As quickly as they had embraced survivors as passive receptacles for sympathetic platitudes, some corners of the political class took on an increasingly sneering tone as heartbreak turned to anger, and confusion to suspicion. Contempt for an angry working class returned, wrapped up in incredulity that people whose neighbours had burned to death in their homes might harbour some distrust for the state that was meant to protect them.

The idea of a “conspiracy theory” is a disparaging one, evoking images of wild-eyed outcasts rambling incoherently while polite society avoids eye contact. Nasa faked the moon landings, they might say, or Elvis Presley is still alive and wandering brazenly around Graceland; JFK’s murder is unsolved; UFOs crashed in New Mexico; Bush did 9/11.

These are conspiracy theories, and they are, for the most part, as ridiculous as the title connotes. But what they are not is in any way similar to widespread distrust from Grenfell residents – or Hillsborough campaigners, Orgreave activists or any other marginalised group battling resolutely for justice in spite of a system stacked heavily against them.

Grenfell Tower residents, it quickly emerged, had long been fighting for their own safety and warning of an imminent catastrophe if their calls were not acted upon. On 24 June, they not only saw their predictions come true in the most visceral of forms, but those that survived fought on as responses from the council and government proved chaotic and inadequate. Handwritten names stood in for official lists of the missing, and WhatsApp groups for formal communication channels between surviving residents spread across London in temporary accommodation.

The prime minister visited but met no residents. Councillors refused calls for a public meeting with survivors. As recently as Thursday, Kensington and Chelsea council announced that its first meeting since the fire would take place behind closed doors before abruptly adjourning it altogether upon being forced to admit the media.

Against this backdrop of mass confusion, trauma and a complete breakdown in communication, it seems incredible that Grenfell survivors should have any other instinct but cynicism. Suspicion doesn’t emerge in a vacuum as a way to pass time between protests, but from uncertainty and mistrust, the inevitable result of lives spent being dismissed, and people let down and excluded by the institutions purportedly meant to support them.

It’s easy to sneer at when your interests are protected by the state, and any allegations of wrongdoing by its agencies seem ludicrous and offensive – but for those injured by its failings, an alternative is rarely visible.

Grenfell survivors are not the first to realise that giving voice to distrust of the state will see you consigned to the realm of fantasy and farce, however justified your concerns might be. The Hillsborough protestors, who saw charges brought against state officials last week, fought tirelessly for 28 years in the face of public smears and cover-ups. And those who allege police brutality at the 1984 Orgreave miners’ picket are still doing so. Suspicion from activist groups of state monitoring and investigation is regularly mocked in the mainstream, despite the revelation of long-term and widespread infiltration of protest groups by undercover police officers. Not all conspiracy theories are created equal – and not all are even conspiracy theories.

Under the widespread inequality and state-endorsed disenfranchisement that contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire, it’s clear that suspicion on the part of the powerless is understandable, even where it’s ultimately unfounded. What residents need now is transparency, communication and the reassurance that their voices do matter. Mocking the marginalised for distrust in the institutions that marginalised them will only reinforce their sense of isolation and paranoia.

Source: Jacobin

He let go, and she dropped twenty-five feet to neighbors who were waiting to catch her. Then Mr Ornitiri jumped, shattering his heel upon landing.

Another neighbor, Fred Reardon, grabbed Adeola and the other children and carried them to safety. Fred’s daughter-in-law, Rose Reardon, comforted the children in her home nearby.

The fire trapped another couple in their second-floor flat. Gerald Lionel climbed out of the window and hung from the sill. Once he steadied himself on the frame below, his pregnant wife Martina used his body as a ladder to climb down.Gerald’s brother was on the top floor. Firefighters managed to rescue him, but he suffered severe burns. Sixty-year-old Anne Ferris was also saved, but not without serious injuries. The firefighters, however, couldn’t reach a young woman named Josephine Albert. She died, most likely from smoke inhalation.In the late 1950s and early 1960s you could read stories like this every week. Mary Williams was eighty when she died from burns sustained while struggling to warm her home. Burns from an electric heater killed Louisa Cann at ninety-three. The Kirke family lost their two baby girls when a mattress caught fire in their single room in Notting Hill. These fires have a long history, and last week’s horrors at Grenfell Tower revived it.

Today’s North Kensington residents insist that the fire that consumed their building was no accident, and they are absolutely right. Piki Seku explained it to BBC News:

There’s two options. They could either regenerate the blocks, or they could knock them down. And after that, I’m not so sure that was totally an accident . . . The whole situation that’s going on in this area, the way that they don’t want us here, and they put those rich man’s blocks over there . . . the lifts in this block, and all the blocks around, they only cost 60 grand to fix and they still never replaced them throughout the time I’ve lived here.

The Grenfell Action Group cataloged the neglect that directly led to this tragedy: defunct fire extinguishers, no whole-building alarm system, no sprinkler system, faulty wiring, broken elevators, and, of course, the aluminum and plastic cladding that, by all accounts, went up like a book of matches. Producing this documentation itself counts as a political act, one reflected in the anger we are seeing on the streets right now.

An accident happens unexpectedly, but none of the above suggests a lack of foresight. Nor does the decades-old history of violence toward black and working-class families in Britain — a history in which house fires are an insidious feature. We can’t call these accidents when continual gross negligence keeps producing the same results. At that point, an accident becomes an instrument of systemic violence.

The London of the 1950s and early 1960s echoes the London of today; the affluent London that apparently triumphed over wartime austerity mirrors the London that came back from the 2008 crash. In both stories, a predatory property boom benefited the few while leaving the many behind.

In 1961, the London County Council (LCC, the forerunner of today’s Greater London Authority) noted an alarming rise in the number of house fires across the city. The LCC compared several so-called high-risk neighborhoods, including Brixton, Norwood, and Islington. North Kensington topped the list with almost double the average number of fires per resident each year.Kensington also had the largest discrepancy between different areas in a single borough: almost five times as many fires occurred in the north as in the south. Nearby Paddington had the highest overall risk index, with relatively frequent house fires throughout the borough.

The paths that fires cut through cities are not indiscriminate. London’s mythology tells us that, during its most famous traumatic moments — from the Great Fire to the Blitz — residents united against a universal threat. But house fires follow a specific pattern. The following history draws on research in the London Metropolitan Archives in an attempt to trace that pattern.Oil stoves caused many of the fires that the LCC documented, like the one that killed Josephine Albert in 1959. Many low-income homes relied on these heaters, and their risks stood in sharp contrast to the comforts of central heating, which many households were enjoying for the first time in modern public housing.

Meanwhile, private companies, as well as the nationalized gas and electricity boards, were developing new technologies for home heating. Nevertheless, oil stoves remained the preferred heating method for households locked in poverty thanks to the dynamics of the real-estate industry and institutional racism.Oil stoves often malfunctioned or fell over, but the paraffin they used didn’t cost much. Families could purchase second-hand heaters cheaply. No doubt they formed part of the survival kit that people assembled in order to make a life for themselves. Back then, people had to choose between staying warm and burning alive. Today, many choose between heating and eating a decent meal.

Despite technological advancements, manufacturers were still producing new oil heaters with defective parts. It took an Act of Parliament — the Oil Burners Standards Act of 1960, later incorporated into the Consumer Protection Act of 1962 — to tighten up safety regulations for these products, which companies deliberately marketed to poorer households.

This phenomenon might remind us of the four million faulty tumble dryers that Whirlpool had to withdraw after one of them caused a blaze at another block of flats last year. It might also remind of us of the Sun’s double-page spread implying that the owner of a faulty refrigerator started the fire at Grenfell. In all cases, the media associated a dangerous product with an irresponsible consumer — and not the negligent manufacturer.

This rather elaborate example of victim-blaming also has racial undertones. (The Daily Mail described the fridge owner as an Ethiopian taxi driver.) Similar racist ideas informed the authorities’ understanding of oil heaters in the 1950s.

Then, commentators and politicians saw oil heaters as not only a consumer problem, but also a migrant problem. They explained how people who had recently come to London from the Caribbean were still adjusting to the English climate as well as to English manners, implying that lack of familiarity with the cold weather made immigrants indulge in dangerous forms of heating while their gregarious and carefree nature made them reckless and untidy.

However, the major cause of this epidemic of fires was not faulty appliances but poor-quality housing. Blazes tended to occur in multiple-occupancy, privately rented buildings — often the grand Victorian and Edwardian houses that were repeatedly subdivided, made over in the new style of death-trap postmodernism. The fires tore through the homes of people without access to council estates’ new central heating systems and those who couldn’t afford high-quality goods.

Over the course of its fire-safety inspection program, the LCC discovered widespread compromises to tenants’ safety. Building owners blocked fire escapes to adjoining roofs when they turned hallways into bedrooms. Stairwells became chimneys when upper-level fire doors were removed. Ladders disappeared. Broken light fixtures left corridors dark for weeks on end. The limited number of electrical outlets couldn’t cope with the extra load, and landlords often had the wiring installed cheaply anyway. Overcrowding meant that fire spread quickly through cluttered rooms, and the number of people inside added to the chaos during an emergency.

These midcentury disasters have clear parallels with Grenfell Tower. Aside from the cladding that spread flames up the sides of the tower, a range of internal failures meant that the principle of containment simply didn’t work.

As in the past, it seems that overcrowding quite likely exacerbated problem. Up to six hundred people are thought to have lived in the building’s one hundred and twenty flats, meaning that many of the apartments were probably legally overcrowded.

If nothing else, this should make London mayor Sadiq Khan think twice about suggesting, in an otherwise strong article, that “it may well be the defining outcome of this tragedy that the worst mistakes of the 1960s and 1970s are systematically torn down.” While high-rise buildings do pose challenges in terms of fire safety, there is nothing inherently less dangerous about a typical Victorian house — typical in the sense that these buildings historically contained the converted dwellings of millions of working-class people. With the rise of “Generation Rent,” they are once again filling that function.

How we occupy and adapt existing buildings matters as much as, if not more than, their architectural style. Any building — tower block or terrace, mansion, or cottage — becomes dangerous when it’s overcrowded.

Before the fire, Grenfell Tower, originally built in 1974 as council housing, contained a mixture of owner-occupied and privately rented flats alongside the remaining social housing units. The North Kensington Law Centre stated that, due to unofficial sublets, we may never identify some of the residents. Those unnamed victims will have been disappeared by a property system that says, “If your name isn’t on the contract, you don’t exist.”

This invisibility is the true cost of overcrowding. In the United Kingdom today, over half a million people live in overcrowded housing, roughly the same number as in 1951 (though how we define overcrowding has indeed changed). The 1950s and 1960s inherited some of these issues from the early twentieth century, and wartime shortages and bomb damage made the housing crisis even more urgent. No such excuse exists today.

Back then, seven million homes were described as either “unfit for human habitation” or lacking basic amenities like hot water and an indoor toilet. Today’s Tory government includes seventy-two landlord MPs who happily voted down a Labour amendment that would require building owners to make their properties safe and healthy environments for residents. Modern housing standards may have improved, but politicians’ behavior has, if anything, regressed.

In both the midcentury and today, similar forces act within the real-estate industry and government housing policy. These forces are most intense in certain parts of London, where they have brought the crisis to a head, turning poor housing into deadly housing.

In the 1950s and 1960s, North Kensington was one of these places — ground zero for property speculators and among the riskiest neighborhoods in terms of fire safety.

The northwestern corner of Kensington, where postwar housing estates and old Victorian bye-law streets twist into a complex pattern between the flyovers and railway tracks, can seem a world apart from the townhouses located just a five-minute walk away. Walk southeast for another mile, toward the embassies and mansions of Palace Green, and you may feel you’ve crossed into another dimension.

As many know, North Kensington was home base for the infamous slum landlord Peter Rachman. It’s worth remembering Rachman because his career displayed many of the traits of a property system whose reckless drive for profit we recognize today. We can trace much of the real-estate industry’s ugly side back, through Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal revolution and the decimation of council housing, to his practices.Rachman started buying up properties in North Kensington and surrounding areas in the mid-1950s. He acquired cheap tail-end leases. At the time, the ninety-nine-year contracts issued by the big old estates — such as the Charecrofts Estate (owned by the Campden Trust), the Duke of Westminster’s St George’s Estate, or the Church Commissioners’ Paddington Estate — were expiring, and existing leaseholders wanted to dispose of properties they thought of as liabilities rather than assets.

Rachman, who has come to symbolize the very worst of the landlord class, participated in a larger dynamic in which capital was pulled out of low-quality residential property and reinvested elsewhere — mostly in commercial property in central London. This dynamic fueled the 1950s office-block boom, which has arguably blighted the urban fabric of British cities more than slum clearance or high-rise construction.

The radical geographer Neil Smith has described how this disinvestment-reinvestment dynamic drives gentrification. Taking money out of neighborhoods runs down properties, lowering their value; a “rent gap” opens up between their actual value and the potential value speculators expect to get. Property traders look for areas they think they can “flip” over in this way, turning undesirable neighorhoods into desirable ones.

David Harvey has described something similar in his theory of class monopoly rent. Cities, like ecosystems, contain huge amounts of untapped value, locked up in their slowly accumulating social and physical infrastructure. At first, no one person or company may own much of this value. Instead, it belongs to the commons: it is the value of community, the value of public amenities, and the value of centuries of adjustments to the built environment. To capture this value, speculators need to carve out a zone that has unique and exclusive attributes, where they can exercise a monopoly.

They accomplish this by disinvesting and reinvesting — running down some areas, building up others; forcing some people out, pulling others in. They aim to create comparative value between neighborhoods. An exclusive part of town becomes exclusive when it compares favorably to the run-down area nearby.

Capital moving between these areas generates the windfall profits that speculators hunt for. It’s not just that investing in working-class housing is less profitable than investing in luxury housing. Rather, disinvesting from working-class housing is an essential part of a profitable investment strategy.

What did Rachman do with the properties he bought in North Kensington? He subdivided them into shoddy flats and bedsits, secured new mortgages on each one through a range of subsidiary companies, brought in the most vulnerable tenants he could find, charged them extortionate rents, and used those rents to pay off the new mortgages, which in turn provided him with the capital for his next venture.

During his short career, Rachman made a fortune, and, by the end, he had moved from dealing in the cheapest North Kensington properties to plans of embarking on a huge development scheme in the United States. His was a classic, if twisted, case of strategic disinvestment-reinvestment. And North Kensington was his laboratory.

Rachman, of course, was participating in a much larger phenomenon, which the Tory government of his day aided and abetted. For example, the 1957 Rent Act partially removed rent controls, making it easier for landlords to force out tenants. In the early 1950s, the Tories had in fact greatly accelerated social housing output, but, by mid-decade, they were slowing down public construction while edging society away from the delicate postwar consensus. They championed homeownership as the dream of all right-minded people and heavily subsidized mortgage lending.

The parallels with today’s situation — where the government “Help to Buy” program has actually increased inequality — are striking. In the twenty years after World War II, the deteriorating private rental sector was being sucked into the maelstrom of property speculation. Today, the deteriorating stock of public housing is experiencing a similar fate.

Against a welfare state founded partly on the idea of redistributing social and physical risks — the risks of unemployment, of injury, of poor health — we have a property system that actively produces risk for specific sets of people. This system manufactures, sustains, and transfers risk onto working-class people. Then it burns down their homes, willing to sacrifice lives in the pursuit of profit.

North Kensington’s community has thrived despite the property system’s violence. Its residents have fought back against constant harassment. It is deeply ironic that the current push to redevelop the area comes after sixty years of community building by activists and radical cultural organizers who created the legendary basement clubs, opened up the squares and gardens, and established the Notting Hill Carnival. They made the area desirable, and now, not for the first time, speculators are coming for their share.

What happens next remains to be seen. Will Grenfell Tower become another Hurricane Katrina — a disaster that ultimately creates more opportunities for privatization, profiteering, and community destruction? Will it become another case study for the shock doctrine?

Or will we turn the tables on the property system, help communities heal and rebuild, and turn around the whole rotten Tory housing agenda?

Source: The Guardian

You may have heard the story of Rania Ibrahim, who broadcast her agonising dilemma on Facebook Live: leave her flat, on the 23rd floor, with her children or stay there and wait for help as she had been advised under the “stay put” policy.

Through the camera, we see things the way she must have seen them, such as the door opening to thick smoke. As she speaks – in Arabic and English – you can hear a neighbour saying, “Close the door! Don’t let the smoke into your flat.” Rania describes her fears breathlessly, reciting lines from the shahada – one of the pillars of Islam, a prayer said in times of distress. At one point she opens the door again to let other people into her flat before calling, “Hello? Hello?” into the darkness. There is no answer.

Rania’s video is a deeply personal act of witnessing. Her voice, and the voices of others, remind us that the most important story here is not simply one of political or institutional failures. It is a story of multiple human tragedies, the effects of which will resonate in surviving families and in this community for generations.

Her story is an important lesson, and one I wish no one had to learn: it is the lesson of what happens when councils and housing providers are seemingly in a race to the bottom to cut costs and expertise, and when the state appears not to listen.

It is no surprise that the Grenfell community is angry, though community leaders have appealed for calm. On Wednesday they learned that the​ true death toll would not be known until at least the end of the year. The families of some of those still missing face months in limbo. Since the beginning, local estimates of fatalities have far surpassed police figures. Suspicion, anger and distrust are adding to a widespread sense of devastation. People do not want or need social unrest, and politicians and commentators need to be careful in their choice of language, because this community has suffered enough.

It will be hard for the authorities to build up trust in the inquiry unless they listen to victims and survivors and place them at the centre of the response. The government’s decision to appoint a retired judge with expertise in shipping and contract law and a history of controversial decisions in relation to social housing, suggests it is still not listening.

Walk the streets around the tower and you will hear snippets of conversation, residents telling and retelling trauma. Stories such as Rania’s are all anyone has heard in the last two weeks, along with tale upon tale of last phone calls, how people escaped, and what they saw.

Beinazir Lasharie, a local councillor, has spoken about how she had to grab her children and run from an adjoining block. “This community is devastated,” said Susan Rudnik, who set up art therapy sessions on the Henry Dickens estate in the immediate aftermath, when no staff from Kensington council or the tenant management organisation (TMO) that manages its properties were on the ground. When I spoke to her, she said the TMO, where I used to work, was threatening to withdraw use of this space.

“Our culture is one that speaks rather than listens,” writes the sociologist Les Back. If you have followed the story of Grenfell Tower, you will know that local residents warned the council of serious concerns about cladding and fire safety, and you will have heard the leader of Kensington and Chelsea council justify the local authority’s handling of the disaster.

Yet two weeks on, there is anger at the way residents and survivors are being supported by the TMO and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Last weekend, I heard stories of 30 families evicted from temporary accommodation. They say they weren’t called or helped and that some of them received letters under their doors telling them to vacate the hotel.

If this demonstrates anything, it is a continued failure to listen. Residents have told me they sense no change in attitude from the TMO or the council. Yes, they need urgent support, a criminal investigation and proper accountability, but they also need to be listened to. Without listening, there is little to no confidence that an inquiry will truly reflect what happened, or that it will address the many questions they have.

That there have been systemic as well as local failures here seems beyond doubt. The social contract has been broken, and people’s lives have changed for ever. The government has announced a national inquiry into cladding flammability after 100% of sample tested failed. There are fears from some fire safety experts about exactly what these tests comprise. Is the government spreading fear and panic in order to make it look as though it is doing something? Are the tests effective?

Over the past two decades, observers, and commentators have witnessed changes to the wider political and administrative framework, not only in social housing but in the NHS and in schools and across other public sector services. Deregulation, austerity, PFI, reduced budgets for local councils: those of us who have worked in public services in the past decade have seen the impact on the ground. Positions such as clerk of works are now widely defunct in local authorities, in order to save costs. An inquiry should look closely at this context, and at residents’ experience of it.

Attention must be paid to both local and government failures, to the voices of survivors, their families and the wider community. Given the breakdown of trust at local, borough and government level, it is only right that the survivors of this unprecedented fire sit at the heart of the inquiry and have a meaningful say in both content and scope.

The fire at Grenfell should change everything. It cuts to the heart of to whom, how and when the state listens. We must stand with the community until the authorities – both local and national – demonstrate that they are really listening to those who live in social housing. And we must never forget those who have lost their lives in a preventable disaster.

After just two weeks, already the focus has started to shift, but as the inquests begin and the death toll seems to rise endlessly, we must make sure we place victims and survivors at the heart of the process. This is and is not a story about cladding: it is a story about one group of people losing their lives because of decisions made by another.

That’s why it is so important that we listen to the voices of the survivors now. Rania’s voice, and the voices of her community, must be heard and answered. For them, the personal is political. We must echo their call to be at the centre of the public inquiry, and ensure their voices are heard. In Back’s words: “The task of careful listening and critical scrutiny is perhaps more important than ever before.”

Source: Radical Housing Network

“The appointment of Sir Martin Moore-Pick as the judge in the Grenfell inquiry is deeply distressing. Sir Moore-Pick has a track record of facilitating the social cleansing of London, approving Westminster Council’s decision to house a single mother with five children in Milton Keynes, 50 miles away from their family and networks, a decision later overturned by the Supreme Court. The government are clearly preparing a stitch-up, trying to put a judge at the heart of the establishment in charge of the inquiry, who supports the inhumane housing policies which have led to Grenfell.”

“The new chair of the “independent panel” advising on safety measures is Sir Ken Knight, a man who previously opposed fitting sprinklers in tower blocks and recommended £200m in cuts to the fire service. How can we have faith in this panel to deliver the protection we need? These two appointments are yet further evidence that the establishment is not committed to providing justice for Grenfell residents, and are unwilling to put in place measures which will prevent a tragedy of this enormity from happening again.”

Pilgrim Tucker , who worked with Grenfell Action Group at Grenfell Tower and is continuing to support residents, added:
“Residents from Lancaster West estate asked Theresa May to involve them in the decision making on the Grenfell Inquiry. In appointing Sir Martin Moore-Pick, she has ignored them, and appointed a completely inappropriate judge. We have no faith that this inquiry will produce justice.”

On Sajid Javid’s letter, on 28/06, that all residents made homeless by the Grenfell catastrophe will be permanently rehoused in social housing at social rent, the Radical Housing Network said:

“After over two weeks of uncertainty, and flip-flopping, it is good that the authorities have committed to housing all those made homeless by the fire, regardless of tenure, in permanent social housing at social rent. This is the absolute minimum that should be provided for people who have lost so much.
“However, after appearing to promise homes in borough, the government have backtracked. People housed in neighbouring boroughs could end up living many miles away from their jobs, families and communities. We know Kensington and Chelsea council could afford local homes if they wanted to. They should dip into some of their £274 million surplus, and provide social rented homes in the borough.”

Radical Housing Network is a network of housing campaigns from across London. Grenfell Action Group is a member of the Radical Housing Network

Source: Medium

The Tories are a wounded beast and this election set back can be mortal to them, if we apply the right the pressure.

Harry Leslie Smith is a 94 year old survivor of the 1930s Great Depression, a 2nd World War RAF veteran and a tireless activist for social justice. He is the author of 5 books.

Once, long ago, I traveled across the North Atlantic in a steam ship in the cold month of November. It was a frightful crossing of dark over cast skies and giant swells that pitched the vessel up and down as if it were a tiny skiff. Walls of harsh green water crashed against the windows in dining hall while below in my windowless cramped 3rd class cabin I felt like unsecured cargo on a tramp steamer in the throes of a hurricane as I kept being tossed from my bunk.

To me in 2017, Britain feels very much like that vessel steaming with uncertainty against hostile seas. Everything in our country because of austerity and now Brexit has come unstuck. We are a nation unhappily and unfairly divided by wealth and privilege. The cost of living has crept up and personal debt soars. No one knows where this all going to end. It’s truly a most disturbing time to be alive if you are not part of the 1%.

These past few weeks have been tempest of politics and a time of profound grief because Britain has been assailed by murderous terrorist attacks as well as the preventable tragedy that occurred at Grenfell Tower Block, in London

However, in the hazy light of the recent heat wave I saw the promise of hope return to our shores after an absence of 7 long years. This feeling of optimism for our future shimmered before me like an oasis for tired travelers on a caravan through the desolate sands of Arabia. You see something unexpected occurred on June 8th. That was the day when Britain went to the polls and the political pundits were proved wrong.

It was the day when many of us said enough is enough. It was the day when voter turnout increased and progressive forces rallied behind the banner of a Labour party transformed by Jeremy Corbyn into the party I remembered from 1945. It was the day that austerity and hard Brexit were put on notice by Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party.

This is no small matter because for once in the longest of time, the young were energised by politics, because they understood that their future is in jeopardy under a Tory government. It’s why they came out to vote in this election in numbers not seen for generations. The young came out like a phalanx for progress on June 8th and because they voted Labour the parties vote share increased to numbers not seen since Clem Attlee’s historical victory in 1945. Because the young and the disenfranchised came out to vote Theresa May’s government for the few was hobbled by the many. Now she holds on to power by her finger nails and must go cap in hand to the DUP if she wants to cling to power.

Imagine that before desolution the Tories had a 12 seat majority, a 20 point lead and every newspaper was ready to crown Theresa May the 21st century’s Margaret Thatcher. Eight weeks later, she is as weak and pathetic as Anthony Eden after the 1956 Suez Crisis. It just shows you what a fragile and inept politician Theresa May really is once you remove the varnish applied to her by the likes of the Daily Mail. She’s as strong and stable as a meringue. She’s like a paper Mache dragon that can intimate a child until a gust of wind blows it over.

However, we must not make the mistake of thinking we have won the war because that will take many more battles and much more commitment for you and me. Like Churchill said after routing Rommel in the desert in 1942. This is not the end but it is the end of the beginning.

But the price we have paid for austerity has been staggering and for some they have paid for it with their lives.

In due course we will find out the ultimate cause of the Grenfell Tower blaze, My fear is like Hillsborough it will come decades later when justice can’t be properly served. What we do know so far is almost a hundred people are dead because an ideologically driven austerity has caused the state to raise the draw bridge and lock the doors to civilisation for many of us.

Seeing Grenfell Tower forlorn and hollow of life, angers me beyond control. I’ve seen buildings like charred husks before, where fire has consumed innocent life with ravenous cruelty. But that was during time of war when the Blitz on London set many sections of our capital ablaze by enemy bombs falling from enemy aircraft.

The conflagration at Grenfell tower’s wasn’t caused by the clash of armies but because there seems to be a war being fought against the right for ordinary people to live a safe and healthy life. That’s just not right, it’s not the Britain we deserve, it’s not the Britain my generation wanted to build in 1945 when it lay in ruins from war and centuries of oppression by the entitled.

But change has come, I think had these tragedy occurred when the Tories had a working majority in parliament, it would have been even more difficult for survivors to seek remedy to their plight.

However, now the Tories are a wounded beast, bloodied, confused and frightened. This election set back can be mortal to them, if we apply the right the pressure.

Now that the Tories are weakened by a hung parliament and all their pettiness, ineptness hangs out like the shirt front of a wastrel, you have the power to hold their feet to the fire through peaceful protest, by joining a progressive political party, by engaging on social media and by making sure you’re ready to be counted in the next general election. Believe you me, Theresa May’s government won’t last until Christmas. But if you want to see the end of austerity and the brakes put on a hard Brexit, you must be sure to elect a Labour government with a majority, next time around. It’s the only thing that will truly give you a proper future and not the one I endured as a boy.

It’s age I suppose but I am always rummaging through my past remembering bits and pieces of it and assembling it like a jigsaw puzzle of despair. Recently, I remember my dad amusing me with the dickey bird rhyme after he’d been let go from his job in the pits because he injured himself at work. “There goes Peter, there goes Paul.” The night before we’d done a midnight flit and ended up in some fleabag of a doss house. But there was dad trying to keep our humanity by amusing his children while my mum sank into despair knowing there wasn’t even bred and drippings for our tea.

Even when he was unemployed and in ragged thread bare trousers, I always looked up to my dad until he was consumed by the Great Depression and disappeared from my life at the age of 8.

He was a small man like me but he had a strong back and strong muscles from years working as a hewer deep below the earth’s surface. Dad had a finely trimmed mustache that hid his missing teeth. He loved to play the piano and when he had the time read history encyclopedias. I must have been five when he ruptured himself in the pits and was put on top to move scrap until he ruptured himself again. Dad was sent home and if weren’t for his union we’d have been done in within the first week of his unemployment. But when he worked the pay was so appalling low that it was basically slave labour to fell the purses of the mine owners and the City.

When people disparage the unemployed and those on benefits they always talk about the dignity of Labour but they ignore the fact that there is no dignity in starvation wages because it’s just exploitation. Since the age of 7 I’ve been earning my crust of bread and I was lucky my health held out. But if I’d become sick or injured before the Welfare State, I’d have been like my dad, a vagrant of sorts. The only thing that makes life fair is the welfare state and that the rich should pay their measure of taxes. Those that argue against these principles are arguing against civilisation.

Source: Red Pepper

All the hedge fund operators, the financiers and lawyers will arrive at their high rise offices on Monday with total assurity that they are safe, working in buildings that are scrupulous in their adherence to the latest health and safety design and technology. In stark contrast, no such assurance can now be given for those who live in high-rise blocks, housing a huge section of the population.

We know cuts in local authority budgets have ensured corners are cut in all areas and that responsibility in this case was sloughed off to a managing company. We know that all the budgets are scrutinised for the least costly options – that presented with alternatives that may require increases in expenditure, it is always the lowest options that are chosen.

In the case of Grenfell Tower, the decisions on the refurbishment will rightly be scrutinised. What were the reasons for the cladding itself? Was this merely ‘tarting up’, as one of those watching in horror early on Tuesday morning told Five Live? Was it to ensure greater energy efficiency, or just to ensure that aesthetically the block was more pleasing to look at from the private towers being erected in the plum areas with high land values, Chelsea and South Kensington?

The Financial Times reported that new flats were carved out of existing spaces in the refurbishment, and as we know building regulations have largely been abandoned and spatial requirements have been severely eroded. The density of people in the flats has increased.

Unimaginable in the swanky blocks

There were no sprinklers fitted. No central fire warnings. People relied on one staircase to provide the only fire exit. This is unimaginable in one of the swanky blocks in that forest of towers that now litter the landscape around the City, Battersea and Chelsea.

But the response of Kensington council and the government was disgusting. The fears are evident. Fears that no one will be found responsible. Certainly the way the Tories have procrastinated on previous reports as part of their ideology of cutting back on all questions of regulation and safety. Even in the FT, the editorial on Saturday 17 June said: ‘Finally this should serve as a warning to anyone in government who still believes in deregulation, measured on an absurd “one in three out” numerical basis, as an ideological goal.’

There are real fears too that families will be dispersed and the community broken up. If they wish to be rehoused in the area it is essential this is provided for, as it is where they have friends and families. It is obvious that for children who go to nurseries and schools in the area, it will be there that they will be able to gradually pick up their lives amongst their friends and their teachers. Schools must play a major role in permitting them to reestablish some form of normality and this will require extra funding and resources from increased social support to counsellors. This will be needed not just for those who lived in the tower but for all those who live in the area and who will be suffering from the most severe shocks and traumas.

Tories responsible

We know that the Tories will rightly be battered for their ‘handling’ of the events, as it is they who are both locally and as a government directly responsible for the terrible state of the fire regulations and standards in public buildings.

There are many spin offs from the cuts in the fire services. One which will have affected community services is that before the cuts, fire crews would do ‘drop in’ assessments of the premises of buildings that were used by community groups. A woman who has a responsibility for a series of community groups in North Islington said that these visits were very useful. They would not be punitive but would be face-to-face discussions between fire crews and staff about what was required and how they may be able to implement any changes, all being aware that for many community organisations there was so little money.

Such discussions were supportive. However since the swingeing cuts to the fire services all such drop-in visits finished and fire assessments have to be done by private contractors – at a cost.

Coming only four days after the results of the elections were announced, the aftermath will bring focus on the Tories’ policies only more sharply. Under their policy of austerity there has been the sacrifice of public services of all types whilst their support for the wealthy is clear. Private housing, private education or private health is welcomed yet there is a lack of any concern or determination to provide for the many the decent housing, schools or hospitals required. All such services are provided without any democratically elected control.

Raise standards immediately

In response to this horrendous fire, Theresa May offers a measly £5 million hand out. A totally inadequate sum when faced with the impact of this fire not only on the residents but also anyone living in the area or in a tower block anywhere in Britain.

What about these who are living in similar towers? Is central government going to legislate for immediate housing regulations that will ensure all public housing is refurbished to the highest possible standards? Will they be prepared to fund instant works? Will they legislate for the highest standards of building regulations?

Last year the May government removed the requirement to build sprinklers into new school buildings, which had been law since 2007. Will this be reinstated?

From all that we know of the Tories determination to remove any regulatory systems, our lives are not safe in their hands. They have to go. We must build the anti-austerity demonstration on 1 July.

Full details…

Source: RT

I went to Grenfell Tower four days after the fire to get a first-hand account and then to write about all the things we have all read about on social media and touched on – sometimes – in the corporate media. The dodgy cladding and dodgier politicians who should have been arrested by now. The absence of fire alarms and fire escapes. But then I saw the pictures of the missing, put along the streets by the community and decided to write them down.

A note on the community centre wall stated that as of 18 June Resident in hospital or hostels 108, confirmed dead 68 still missing 324.

Commander Stuart Candy of the Metropolitan Police said in a Sky interview that dozens of people are still believed to be inside Grenfell Tower. On a hot afternoon and with a large crowd there I did my best but there were walls I could not reach, names I could not read, flowers which obscured my failing eyes. I copied from the wall the names of the missing people, now presumed dead.

When I looked up at the building I saw a tomb. I hope that the tomb full of these people will become a tomb for the system responsible for their deaths. I apologise to the living and the dead for any misspelt names.

I returned a week later on 24 June, the same day that Shadow Home Secretary, Dianne Abbott, stated in The Independent that the deaths were most likely be in the hundreds. This time I counted 126 names of the missing, most with photos. There were 127 in all, only one marked as ‘Found’.

Tottenham MP David Lammy has tweeted: “Survivors cannot believe that the death toll has not risen. Speaking to people on the ground, there is huge suspicion of a cover-up.” Speaking on BBC Newsnight on 26 June 2017, he said:

“The 79 figure which has now stood for a week does not accord with those who live down there and say that there’s a gap, that they know there’s a gap. In one flat alone people say there were up to 40 people, a gathering because they gathered in the flat. It was Ramadan …. There are lots you can use. DWP lists for those on benefits. There’s a local school. Through the local authority you can assess how many kids showed up for school or not showed up for school. You can use mobile phones. You can speak to mobile phone companies. They will assist. I saw this during the riots. Who’s been on their phone at 12 o’clock before the fire started. There are ways in which you can assemble lists of people and numbers … When you have tragedies of this kind that could have been prevented. We know from Hillsborough and other affairs in our national life, that governments, local authorities, big corporations, companies, the contractors – they cover their backs and that’s why I raised issues around the documentation. Have the police seized documents yet in this one? We know nothing about whether that’s happened … It doesn’t really matter what I think. It matters what people on the ground think .. what people say is that if you put the numbers out early you will have civil unrest.”

My two visits to check on the missing confirms this. Nearly two weeks after the fire it is left to people like me to inform on who are possibly missing, possibly dead, possibly neither. Grenfell residents’ groups are trying to compile lists of victims and survivors.  This is either gross incompetence on the part of the ‘authorities’, gross negligence or worse. David Lammy says, “It is difficult to describe the pain people are going through.”

I received a message after I first published a photo of a missing family, which said: “The family in the photo are the Choucair family who i knew very well…Nadia and her immediate family i grew up with. My family and i always remained close and in touch ever since. We were all like one family. Her mother, Sirra Choucair, was living one door away from Nadia but she is not mentioned here. I’m devastated. They are still reported as missing.” (See video interview with Nadia Choucair’s brother Nabil)

Please read these names slowly to give them a bit of their lives back. Let them touch your heart and then let them touch your anger.

Naming the missing

Fatimah Afraseiabi
Sakineh Afraseiabi
Amma Adulkerim
Sakinah Aghlani
Amaya Ahmadin
Amal Samia Ahmadin
Hammenur Ahmadin
Fadumo Ahmed
Amal
Ahmedin
Mohammed Alhajali
Fatuya Alsanonse
Alexandra Attala
Fatima Aloselabi
Fathaye Alsanousi
Abu Feros Alsanousi
Esva Alsanousi
Amal and Mohammed + daughter Amaya
Fouazia al-Wahabi
Abdul Azziz
Omar Baljadi
Bassan
Zainab Bean
Jermiah Bean
Hosnah Begum
Razia Begum
Rhima Begum-Ali
Maryom Begum-Ali
Hadizah Begum-Ali
Mohammed Begum-Ali
Omar Belkadi
Raymond ‘Moses’ Bernard
Vincent Chiesina
Naia Choucar
Bassem Choucar
Mierna Choucar
Fatima Choucar
Zeinab Choucar
Jeremiah Dean
Zeinab Dean
Anthony Disson
Make dua’ao
Mariem Elgwahry
Hesham El Raaman
Fatuma El Raaman
Sina El Raaman
Abdul Aziz El-Wahabi
Faouzia El-Wahabi
Mehdi El-Wahabi
Nurhuda El-Wahabi
Yasin El-Wahabi
Sakinha Fasimbi
Rania Fathima
Abu Feras
Mario Goltardi
Fernando Guarinos
Izzah Guarinos
Jannah Guarinos
Briket Haftom
Buroke Haftom
Farah Hamdam
Leena Hamdam
Rania Fathiu Hamia
Abdul Hamion
Abdul Hanif
Agnes Hayno
Nur Hudan
Mehdi Hudan
Abufars Ibrahim
Esa Ibrahim
Ramia Ibrahim & two daughters
Ali Jafar
Ali Yawar Jafari
Lucas James
Firdows Jemal
Hashim Jemal
Nuara Jemal
Yahya Jemal
Yaqub Jemal
Hamid Kani
Khadija Khallouth
Hashan Kidir
Debbie Lamprell
Mary Mandy
Marhuda
Yassin Mehdi
Kuthri Mia
Ligaya Moore
Denis Murphy
Nadia
Mohammed ‘Saber’ Neda
Isaac Paulus
Steven Power
Hesham Rahman ’Mother’ Rama & children
Fethia Hassan & Hania Hassan
Abdul Sahran
Yahya Sahran
Khadija Saye
Isaac Shawo
Sheila Smith
Suhan
Suva
Hosina Began Tanime
Gloria Trevisan
Amaya Tuccu
Mo Tuccu
Jessica Urbano
Ernie Vital
Marjorie Vital
Jay Walled
Crazy’ Yasim. Photos and names with only first name: Arsad
Fatima
Fatina
Firdows
Hammenut
Hashim
Mevia
Nierna
Nura
Yahya
Yaqub
Zainab
Zainde.
RIP