RAGE GROWS OVER TOWER BLAZE
Protesters storm council HQ as they demand justice PM pledges £5m to help victims of high-rise disaster
ANGER over the Grenfell Tower disaster erupted yesterday as residents took to the streets in protest.
Demonstrators stormed a town hall building demanding justice for the victims of the tragedy. Theresa May met families and volunteers at a nearby church and promised a £5million emergency fund for survivors. But scuffles broke out and police had to hold back
the crowd outside St Clement’s Church in west London as the Prime Minister drove away.
Later the crowd, many holding placards and chanting “May Must Go”, “Justice for Grenfell” and “Blood on Your Hands”, marched through Kensington towards Westminster.
A group of around 1,400 were met by a police cordon as they strode up Horseguards Parade, coming to a halt outside the entrance to Downing Street.
Residents say their repeated warnings over lack of safety at the 24-storey block have been ignored for years. And the protesters last night vowed to “shut down London” until they “get justice for Grenfell”.
Hundreds gathered outside the Department for Communities and Local Government before marching past Parliament through Trafalgar Square towards the BBC offices.
Moyra Smith, who organised the protest and lives 500 yards from the tower block, said: “Our community is enraged. It’s another example of the inequality in our borough where the rich live in safety and luxury.
“People living in the north of the borough don’t have sprinklers or batteries in their smoke alarms.
“We will keep going until we get justice. Certain people have blood on their hands and they need to be arrested for corporate manslaughter.”
With the official death toll of 30 set to rise significantly, tensions on the streets around the block in North Kensington had earlier reached boiling point.
Singer Lily Allen joined hundreds of protesters who marched on Kensington and Chelsea town hall with a list of demands.
Scuffles started after a group of up to 60 broke off and surged towards the building’s entrance as organisers appealed for calm.
The demonstrators called for victims to be immediately rehoused within the borough and for an “immediate release of funds to cover costs of welfare and all losses suffered by the victims”.
Mrs May’s announcement of the emergency fund did little to ease the tension.
Protester Caroline Hill, 39, said: “This incident has made people want to stand up for their community. The victims’ families deserve to know the truth and have justice.” Another woman, wiping away tears of frustration, said: “Everyone has lost everything and no one is doing nothing. This is our town.”
A man who would not give his name criticised the Prime Minister’s appearance, telling police: “It’s not your fault, she shouldn’t have come. What did she expect was going to happen?
“What did she bring, what useful things did she bring? The tower block is more strong and stable than that woman’s government.” Bodies were brought out of the tower yesterday as rescue workers begin to scour the wrecked building to recover the dead.
More than 70 residents – including young children and entire families – are still unaccounted for.
Dramatic footage showed firefighters scaling the Grenfell Tower roof as the painstaking search for bodies began on the top three floors of the building where nobody is
thought to have escaped the inferno.
Police have warned some victims may never be identified as a criminal investigation into the blaze got under way.
Fire chiefs say they do not expect to find more survivors.
Tensions in the area have been mounting since disaster struck in the early hours on Wednesday.
Residents say they have been fobbed off and dismissed as “troublemakers” after repeatedly pleading for fire safety to be improved.
They also raised concerns over a recent refurbishment of the block which experts say may have led to the fire spreading at an astonishing speed.
Cabinet minister Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the Commons, was berated in the street yesterday by residents.
One man screamed: “Enough is enough. I have got friends in that tower. I have every right to be angry. Because of people saving money, people are dying.”
Before yesterday’s trouble local councillor Eartha Pond, 33, warned that violence could erupt on the streets if the authorities do not take control of the situation.
Catastrophic
She said local people were angry in the wake of the catastrophic blaze and there would be “unrest in the streets” if council chiefs did not step in.
Ms Pond, a teacher and Tottenham Ladies footballer, rushed to help as soon as the inferno erupted. She said: “There should be a lot more co-ordinated response. Someone needs to take control.
“Everything has been community led, no one in authority has taken charge. There are all these donations, which is amazing, but the council aren’t distributing it and we desperately need somewhere to store it.
“That’s what’s so frustrating. The council need to take responsibility.”
Ms Pond warned riots could break out if action was not taken.
She added: “People don’t know what’s happening. Families don’t know who’s in hospital or who’s missing.
“There needs to be more information, like a big projector with names of who’s been found so people know what’s going on.
“It can’t go on like this, with posters up everywhere.
“Some of these people might have been found, but families are still in the dark.”
More posters appeared yesterday on streets around the tower block as frantic families launched desperate appeals for information about missing loved ones.
EVEN as the fire at Grenfell Tower raged it was being asked who was to be held responsible. The rush to politicise the event and the anger of those caught up in the event is understandable but dangerous. We must wait for official reports on whether the cladding which had been stuck on the concrete exterior of the 1970 building did indeed create a flue for the flames.
Meanwhile Sir David Amess, a senior Tory MP who chairs Parliament’s allparty group on Fire Safety Rescue spoke about these MPs’ reaction to the Lakanal House fire in south-east London in 2009 which killed six people and injured 20. In 2013 the group recommended a review of building regulations and said 4,000 tower blocks required “retrofitting” with sprinkler systems. Sir David says that successive ministers failed to act on these recommendations and how much he regrets that it has taken a tragedy of this scale to bring the issue to the forefront of the political agenda.
Meanwhile the Queen and Prince William have visited the Westway Sports Centre in North Kensington to meet some of those who have been made homeless by the file.
It is no time at all since Her Majesty was visiting the young survivors of the Manchester bombing in their hospital beds. Our country has taken a beating in the past few weeks.