Get used to being heckled, inquiry judge is warned
THE retired judge leading the Grenfell Tower inquiry was yesterday told he should ‘get used to being shouted at’.
Sir Martin Moore-Bick was heckled at a residents’ meeting and was forced to admit that many locals had no ‘respect’ for his ability to investigate the blaze.
He was also forced to refute the idea he had been appointed to do a ‘hatchet job’.
Sir Martin, 70, faced down the angry crowd as he tried to tell residents he would examine the matter to the ‘very best of his ability’.
Yesterday, Labour councillor Robert Atkinson, whose ward includes Grenfell Tower, made the extraordinary demand that the judge learn to ‘take the heckling’.
‘Perhaps both sides need to understand the needs of the other side better’, he told BBC News.
‘The judge has got to learn to take heckling from upset people ... and the residents have got to understand there are constraints on the timing on what the judiciary can do. Let’s judge the judge by what he does in the next few weeks.’
A video of Thursday’s meeting shows the tieless former Appeal Court judge being heckled as he says: ‘I can’t do more than assure you that I know what it is to be impartial. I give you my word I will look into this matter to the very best of my ability ... If I can’t satisfy you because you have some preconception about me ... that’s up to you.’
Addressing a spectator, he added: ‘You don’t respect me because you say the Government has appointed me to do a hatchet job.’
The Grenfell Tower fire alarm system was silent and not designed to alert residents, it was revealed yesterday. Signals were sent to a firm whose job is to determine the severity before informing the fire service. Conventional alarms were not used due to the block’s ‘stay put’ policy.