We died in there because we don’t count...
DEATHTRAP TOWER: FURY OF SURVIVORS WHO RAISED ALARM
The young man, clearly agitated, his eyes red from tears or the acrid smoke, pointed up at the blazing tower above us. “We’re dying in there because we don’t count,” he shouted hoarsely.
On Wednesday morning, low burning anger flickered around the police cordon as people stood staring at what used to be their homes. By yesterday, among the heartbreaking messages and condolences on the memorial wall was written: “Justice for Grenfell – Jail those Responsible.”
Nearby, someone had summed up a growing feeling in a few wellchosen words, saying: “I remember watching the film Titanic and thinking ‘wow, I can’t believe that they put poor people at the bottom of the ship without life jackets and life boats to save them’. This feels like the housing equivalent.”
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has long been a byword for inequality. The average salary in the borough in which Grenfell Tower stands is £123,000, the highest in the UK.
But the median – the midpoint of all salaries there – is £32,700.
No other local authority in the country has such a large gap between these two figures.
Now, among a multitude of questions, people want to know why rich people’s tower blocks in Kensington have sprinkler systems yet their flats did not.
They want to know how much the cladding that went up like a box of matches was for insulation, and how much it was to save wealthy nearby residents the sight of an ugly building.
Now, the people in the multimillion-pound houses cannot avoid the eyesore of a blackened monument to cuts and carelessness.
The borough that gave birth to Rachmanism – after Peter Rachman, the notorious slum landlord of the 1950s who became synonymous with exploitation – may now become synonymous with housing its people in a deathtrap.
The council and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation it put in charge of its housing may face claims of failing to protect the people they were entrusted to care for. With valuing lives too cheaply.
Seventeen people are confirmed dead and entire families are still missing. Scores of people are in hospital.
Some who escaped with their lives were residents who had warned of dangers multiple times but were ignored.
Why? Because they were poor? Because they didn’t count? Because, despite living in one of the most expensive districts on the planet, they didn’t deserve a building that was safe to live in? What can anyone tell them now? Only that they are “politicising” their own tragedy. In truth, the Grenfell Tower battle was politicised long before fire began spreading on Wednesday morning. It was politicised the moment the KCTMO stopped listening to its tenants and ignored eight fire warnings in the three years. It was politicised when the Grenfell Action Group posted on its blog in November: “We firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord.” It was politicised when Theresa May’s new chief of staff Gavin Barwell failed during his time as
Housing Minister to publish the report on updating building fire regulations that followed the horrific blaze at Lakanal House tower block in South East London in 2009.
And it was politicised when Tory MPs – 39% of whom are private landlords – voted down legislation proposed by Labour to protect tenants.
Chillingly, these MPs actually voted against the idea that homes should be “fit for human habitation”, treating ordinary people like animals.
With cuts to firefighters, hospitals, mental health services, legal aid, every service that will be needed by tenants in the months to come, there is no doubt the Grenfell disaster is austerity’s horrific legacy, several times over. In the early hours of Wednesday, the man who wrote that horrifically prescient blog post, Edward Daffarn, came within seconds of death in his 16th floor flat.
After all this man’s fears and warnings, no fire alarm went off, he said. He added: “I just heard my neighbours’ smoke alarm about 1am and thought they were making some toast.”
Campaigner Pilgrim Tucker went to multiple meetings of the Grenfell Action Group. “It was obvious the standard of the regeneration was extremely shoddy,” she says.
“It was profit before people. Residents were complaining about hot pipes sticking out of walls, boilers blocking doorways, power surges not looked into, emergency lighting failures.
“Residents had to refuse the contractors access to their flats to get listened to... These are the ordinary people of Kensington.
“They aren’t the Camerons. Because of the legal aid cuts they couldn’t get lawyers.”
Of the children living in the council ward where the tower is, 36% are estimated to be in low-income families.
The figure for the whole borough is 23%, and in the UK it is 20%.
Britain’s housing crisis is too often mistaken for a shortage of homes. It is also about the scandal of partprivatisation, a culture of corporate greed, cuts and quick fixes, and the removal of tenants’ rights. It is about years of devastating cuts to council budgets, and how regeneration is being used to socially cleanse affluent parts of the capital.
Ordinary people in these areas have had to start organising in their own defence – a factor in Kensington’s astonishing election result last week when Labour won the seat.
The inferno might yet be Britain’s Hurricane Katrina – the moment when a country decides working class lives matter. That all lives matter.
But let’s be clear, that’s a moment far, far too late for Grenfell’s families now.
We believe only a catastrophic event will expose the incompetence of our landlord GRENFELL ACTION GROUP BLOG POSTED IN NOVEMBER