You killed us
What Grenfell survivors yelled at councillors who refuse to resign over tower block blaze
COUNCIL leaders branded ‘ murderers’ by survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire have refused to resign over the tragedy.
Residents at the tower block accused Kensington and Chelsea councillors of ignoring their repeated warnings over fire safety failures ahead of last month’s blaze which killed at least 80 people.
Newly elected council leader Elizabeth Campbell faced immediate calls for her resignation at a tense meeting on Wednesday night.
More than 1,500 people signed a petition calling for the resignation of the entire elected leadership of the Conservativecontrolled council and Mrs Campbell was booed and jeered as she made her maiden speech as council leader, in which she pledged to win back trust.
Asked later if she planned to resign, she replied: ‘No, not yet.’
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn yesterday said the fire had sent ‘a terrible message’ to the world about Britain’s levels of social inequality, and called for an inquiry into social housing provision and safety.
Labour has been accused of using the tragedy to score political points after Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said the Grenfell victims were ‘murdered by political decisions’ and Tottenham MP David Lammy repeated claims of a police cover-up over the true scale of the death toll.
Public anger was directed at the West London council after the speed and intensity of the fire on June 14 was blamed on cladding installed at the tower block during a multi-millionpound refurbishment project.
Fire-resistant zinc cladding approved in initial planning stages was replaced with a cheaper aluminium alternative as the council sought to reduce costs. Mrs Campbell’s newly elected deputy, Kim TaylorSmith, said the council’s scrutiny process over the Grenfell refurbishment would form part of the police investigation and the public inquiry.
Survivor Sajad Jamalvatan, 22, told the council meeting on Wednesday night: ‘You killed us, you helped the fire.’ Another Grenfell resident, Mahad Egal, said: ‘You have murdered us. There is manslaughter here... You have committed a crime against all of us here.’
Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Craig Mackey said the ‘extraordinary size’ of the tragedy at the 24- storey tower made it necessary to call upon experts, including some who worked at the World Trade Center site in New York following the September 11 terror attacks in 2001. He told the London Assembly’s police and crime committee: ‘This is one of the most complex recovery operations we’ve seen. The people we’re taking advice from – which gives you an idea of the complexity – are some of the people who worked on 9/11.’
Meanwhile, safety tests on other high-rise buildings in Britain have found that aluminium composite cladding similar to that used at Grenfell has been fitted on about 200 high-rise residential blocks.
Communities Secretary Sajid Javid told the Commons that up to 208 such tower blocks had been identified and that 189 had been safety-tested. All of them failed the Government’s standard for ‘limited combustibility’, and some have already had their cladding removed.
He added that housing associations had failed to submit samples for seven more tower blocks and warned that was ‘simply unacceptable’, five weeks after the Grenfell fire.