INFERNO: THE ANGER ERUPTS
May shielded by police guard after meeting victims Protesters storm town hall and march on No10
Grenfell Tower tragedy protesters took to the streets yesterday to vent their fury. Hundreds stormed Kensington Town Hall and others marched on downing street chanting ‘May must go’. The Prime Minister had to run a gauntlet of activists screaming ‘mur- derer’ as she fled a meeting with fire survivors. Theresa May escaped through a side door while police held back protesters banging on her car windows shouting ‘Get out’. The extraordinary incident came as:
The official death toll from wednesday’s inferno rose to 30 but it is again feared that the number of victims might rise to more than 100;
It emerged builders saved just £6,250 by fitting flammable cladding to the tower instead of fireproof panels;
The Queen and Prince william visited
survivors, the prince saying it was one of the most terrible things he had seen;
Communities Secretary Sajid Javid pledged to ‘do whatever is necessary’ to protect families living in tower blocks;
Boris Johnson accused the Labour Party of ‘outrageous politicking’ for blaming the disaster on cuts to the fire service.
Mrs May had visited St Clement and St James Church in Kensington – near the scene of the tragedy – to announce a £5million fund for emergency supplies, food, clothes and other costs.
She was facing a backlash for failing to visit survivors and residents after the tragedy, initially meeting only members of the emergency services.
The images contrasted sharply with those of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was seen hugging people. No 10 sources said Mrs May privately wept at the scenes of devastation. She has announced a full judge-led public inquiry into the tragedy.
In an attempt to deflect the criticism, she yesterday visited survivors at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and later went to the church. But word of the latter visit, which was not publicised, quickly spread and scores of protesters gathered outside.
While police officers linked arms to hold back the crowds, the Prime Minister escaped through a side door before being driven off.
Protesters screamed ‘murderer’ and ‘coward’ and booed her, while some banged on her car window as her motorcade left. They were held back by metal barriers and around 40 police officers, who formed a protective line from the church door to her car.
Marvin Fraser, who lives in the area, said: ‘She could have shown some care, not be so cold. We waited 45 minutes. There were two men slamming on the car, there was a lot of anger. She had nothing to say. She showed a very cold heart by not speaking to anyone. She only came today because her advisers told her to. It was a PR stunt.’
Another resident said Mrs May had ‘scuttled, frightened’ out of a side entrance.
The Prime Minister later gave an interview to the BBC in which she was asked whether she had misread the public’s mood over the disaster by not meeting residents.
She sidestepped the question, replying: ‘What I have done since this incident took place is, first of all, yesterday ensure that the public services had the support they need in order to be able to do the job they were doing in the immediate aftermath.’
Pressed again on whether she failed to understand the anger felt by the public, she said: ‘ This was a terrible tragedy. People have lost their lives and others have lost everything, all their possessions, their home and everything. What we are doing is putting in place the support that will help them.’
Earlier in the day, Commons leader Andrea Leadsom was heckled by Grenfell residents, who asked: ‘Where’s Theresa?’ and accused the PM of failing to show ‘humanity’.
One angry local shouted: ‘Because of saving money, people are dying’. Miss Leadsom was eventually led away by aides.
The Queen and William yesterday met volunteers, residents and community representatives while visiting Westway Sports Centre, near the charred remains of the tower block in North Kensington.
Officials expect that the death toll from the Grenfell tragedy will exceed that of the 1989 Hillsborough football disaster, in which 96 football fans died.
AFTER the horrific blaze at Grenfell Tower, this should have been a week for the nation to unite in grief for the dead, the bereaved and the relatives of the missing.
It should have been a week for politicians to join in demanding how such a catastrophe could happen in a first-world country, and seek immediate ways of averting another.
But no. Barely had the body count begun – and it seems, tragically, that it will run into scores – than hard-Left supporters of Jeremy Corbyn were spinning a narrative about the fire, blaming divisions of wealth, profiteering and (inevitably) ‘Tory cuts’.
Meanwhile, the Labour leader himself sought to advance his class-war agenda by insisting that the state should seize the properties of Kensington’s absentee rich to house those made homeless by the fire.
As if this weren’t bad enough, the Left played an unseemly game of competitive compassion (‘if Theresa May cared as much as Mr Corbyn, she would have talked to victims, not just emergency services’).
Enough! Out of respect for the victims and concern for others at risk, it is imperative to take the politics out of this tragedy and for our leaders, calmly yet urgently, to learn its lessons.
One thing is abundantly clear: budget cuts by the Tory council had nothing to do with it. Indeed, the tragic irony is that if Kensington and Chelsea had spent not a penny on refurbishment, the blaze could almost certainly have been contained.
As it was, the authority spent £8.6million on ‘improvements’ – money that appears to have been spent with appalling incompetence, hugely increasing the risk of an inferno. The way residents’ warnings were ignored should haunt all concerned.
For just £200,000, life- saving sprinklers could have been installed. Instead, priority seems to have been given to meeting EU targets for energy conservation, with the contractors using inferior exterior cladding of a type banned in other countries and known to emit lethal cyanide.
Equally groundless are the Left’s attempts to blame cuts in London’s fire service. In fact, 40 appliances tackled the blaze – with the first of 300 heroic crew arriving within six minutes, in a city with the fastest response times in the country.
As for the Left’s efforts to smear Mrs May, yes, a more image- conscious politician might have ignored police advice and mingled with the victims, parading her compassion before the TV cameras. But given her shaken appearance, her prompt decision to set up a public inquiry and a £5million emergency relief fund, it is simply malicious to suggest she doesn’t care.
Which brings us to Mr Corbyn’s sinister call to requisition houses whose owners are overseas – even though ample accommodation was offered elsewhere.
Leave aside that property seizures would prompt a mass flight of the rich from London, causing untold harm to the economy. No, this was a naked, rabblerousing attempt to stir up class envy – a classic tactic of the hard-Left.
More blatant still are the efforts by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to provoke a union-led popular uprising. His aim is to topple this shaky government with a summer of strikes and million-strong demonstrations, culminating in power for Mr Corbyn in a ‘Red October’. The threat of violence, already bubbling to the surface in London yesterday, is implicit.
But then what could we expect of a selfdescribed Marxist, who has backed terrorists and makes no secret of his belief in taking power by undemocratic means? Truly, these are chilling times for Britain.
Yes, there are devastating questions for officials, contractors, councillors and ministers to answer about Grenfell Tower. But to exploit this tragedy in order to foment division is not only an affront to British democracy but a betrayal of the victims themselves.