Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Neglect has been going on for years ...council treated us like third-class citizens. We’re sick of being let down, we want justice
London. Aymen had fainted on the seventh floor. “By miracle, there was a fireman on that floor,” Bellal says.
His children have gone back to a school in mourning, having lost fellow pupils and friends like Firdaws Hashim.
“Firdaws’ family were one of the best you could meet,” Bellal says. “Her dad had just got his black cab badge, they were so happy, on the up.”
For five weeks after the fire Bellal and his whole family were in a small double hotel room. He says they were only given a family room after other residents and volunteers threatened to boycott a meeting with the council.
THE terrible Grenfell Tower fire tragedy is still raw in our minds.
I have spent time with the survivors. They are of course still grieving. But they also feel frustrated and angry about how they have been treated by the Government and the local council – and justifiably so. I share their anger.
The support they received in the immediate aftermath of the fire was woefully inadequate. They feel They just want a home where they can feel safe. Bellal says the council thinks the £5,000 given to Grenfell families should be enough to solve their problems. “Can you replace the lock of each of my children’s hair that we kept?” he asks.
“The first gold ring I bought my wife when I was 17? However much money you give me, you’ll never replace all that.”
Bellal looks up exhausted from his coffee. “We had years of problems with Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation,” he says. “Just one example, our fire door was broken when the fire happened. My wife was having to barricade the door.” Despite not wanting to single out his own family from the community, excluded from how the public inquiry is being conducted. And they want answers and justice.
I am fighting to ensure that they get this justice – and quickly. If negligence or any wrongdoing is found, the full force of the law must be brought to Bellal has bravely agreed to address the Mirror’s Real Britain fringe event at the Labour conference in Brighton.
Recently, he spoke to Sir Martin Moore-bick, the judge in charge of the already widely criticised inquiry.
“I said, ‘you’re the clever one, we’re the dumb ones who aren’t educated. But even we can see that this narrow restricted inquiry isn’t going to give us the answers’.”
Alongside Bellal in Brighton will be a young woman called Swarzy Macaly, a 24-year-old volunteer from East London.
Within hours of the fire she was helping lead a team of 200 people at
Latymer Community bear on those responsible. We cannot have another situation like Hillsborough, where people have to wait decades for justice.
We need it now. I never want to have to attend another funeral where everyone knows their loved one could have been saved if things had been done differently. Or if errors had not been made by those in power.
If anything, it must fundamentally Church, and a clip of her standing on a chair taking control of the chaos of public donations went viral.
“I’m small,” Swarzy, an English teacher and radio DJ, shrugs.
“I jumped on a chair to try to provide leadership since I hadn’t met anyone from the council or the authorities on the ground. It was a beautiful thing to see the community unite as one.”
Bellal and Swarzy got to know each other through the making of a documentary, On the Ground at Grenfell.
Nendie Pinto-duschinsky was
already making the film with local
change the way we – as a society – treat social housing. We cannot go back to business as usual. I grew up on a council estate in London similar to where Grenfell Tower is located.
So, one hundred days on from the fire, I am more determined than ever to ensure justice is done, but also to implement the changes we need to create a fairer, more equal society.
One that works for everyone.