[photo credit: Rick Findler/PA]
For any following the #GrenfellTower tragedy, it’s been heartbreaking. As the stories of the witnesses, survivors and residents are aired live on our screens, the anger and despair yet also the incredible fortitude, humanity and kinship has been life affirming.
But it doesn't assuage the sense of anger. The need for answers.
Westway and the immediate area around Grenfell Tower, is very diverse, with disproportionately high numbers of poor Muslim families, many with higher average family sizes (4+ children) and housed socially. There numerous mosques and Islamic centres, one of the largest serving the area is Al Manaar which I have visited many times.
For once, and on so rare an occasions we agree, whilst the building was still burning, Piers Morgan lead the charge (some say too soon, I do not) in the morning on Good Morning Britain to find out what happened, why, and who was accountable. So often in the wake of a crisis, whilst corporations, political interests and individuals scramble for stories, crisis management advice and ducking for cover, these are golden minutes within which questions must be asked and real answers are to be found.
The director of the company that "refurbished" Grenfell Tower for the visual enrichment of the galactically wealthy and landed gentry of Kensington and Notting Hill, was cross-examined by Morgan. We have since heard from a senior figure from the Grenfell Tower residents board, residents and survivors. The tower still burns.
1. There was a £9m refurbishment
2. They didn’t do the fire alarms
3. They didn’t fix the only fire escape
4. There was no sprinkler system - not even retro-fitted.
5. They clad the outside with flammable material
6. Residents raised multiple complaints of fire safety over many years, eventually claiming that only a tragedy and deaths would cause the management company to listen
7. Then Tory government housing minister, since Theresa May’s Chief Of Staff, Gavin Barwell, refused to implement the recommendations from the 2013 report following the Camberwell fire which would have lead to sprinklers and improved fire safety
8. The management corporation refused to implement the fire safety recommendations from the Grenfell Tower residents
9. There was a "stay put" policy in place which trapped residents in a towering inferno
10. One witness live on Victoria Derbyshire made three serious uncorroborated claims which any journalist of note should be following up:
- she has phone footage showing police on the scene physically stopping the public rescuing residents
- that phone footage has been given to mainstream media, it is currently unaired
- she has timestamps showing the fire services took two hours to arrive
- she spoke to a firefighter who says there are 50 bodies of children in the building
11. Multiple witnesses say that if it wasn’t for many Muslims flocking from Ramadan night prayers, running into the burning building and barging past the police to rescue residents, many more people would have died
12. There has been no coordinated emergency government response - the general public have taken the lead, largely uncoordinated, lead by faith and no faith communities alike
13. Jeremy Corbyn tried to pass an amendment to a housing bill to make tenant homes "fit for habitation". The Tory government voted it down.
14. In the aftermath, Theresa May visits the scene but refuses to do so publicly or meet the angry survivors and residents, unlike her counterpart Jeremy Corbyn who walked the streets and promised the truth will be found out.
In the richest constituency in the country, the poor have been left to demand fire safety certificates for the last four years. The wealthy have an eyesore tidied up. The corporations have refused to make any real safety improvements. And whole families have now been wiped out. Parents were left choosing which child to save. Babies were thrown from windows. People were on the telephone to loved ones, falling silent by smoke inhalation, the recipient on the other end of the line hearing just fire and crackles. Burning. Death.
At this early stage, the clamour is about unnecessary and avoidable deaths. About austerity. More than this, it will soon be about the choices that were made. Over materials. Over plausibly avoidable improvements like sprinkler systems. This is about culpability — not legal regulations but moral and ethical duties.
What is beyond doubt is the bravery of the fire and emergency services who put their lives in harms way, so regularly for serving the public. They are us.
In the UK too often the needs of the rich outweigh the needs of the poor. The final insult?
"according to Parliament’s register of interests, 72 of the MPs who voted against the amendment were themselves landlords who derive an income from a property." (londoneconomic.com)
Nothing short of a full public inquiry will do. And woe betide the government and MPs running for cover, there can be no stone left unturned.
First published 15 June 2017: Medium