Lessons from the London fire tragedy

How soon is too soon to raise difficult, politically-charged questions about a tragedy? It’s become an increasingly pertinent question in Britain, which has witnessed a series of devastating events — from three terrorist attacks within three months to the catastrophic fire that engulfed a residential tower block in west London, killing at least 12 people on Wednesday, with the death toll set to rise further.

In the past, politicians have often stayed away from questions around whether policy decisions have contributed to tragedies, but in the heated political and highly ideologically charged country that Britain has become over the past year, that’s become less so. In the days immediately after the Manchester attack, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, spoke out against the government’s foreign policy and cuts to police forces, arguing that the tragedy raised questions about both: whether Britain’s interventionist approach in countries such as Syria, Libya and Iraq contributed to the risk to civilians from terror attacks back home, and whether cuts to police forces made it harder for them to gather counter terrorism intelligence sufficiently rigorously.

While he faced an outcry from some within the government and the media supporting them, his decision to do so was clearly not off-putting enough to the public more widely, who handed the party its biggest increase in terms of share of the vote in post-war Britain.

The fire was still raging through Grenfell tower on Wednesday morning when Corbyn drew a potential link between the government’s austerity programme and the tragedy. “If you deny local authorities the funding they need, then there is a price paid by a lack of safety facilities. There needs to be some very searching questions as quickly as possible in the aftermath of the fire,” he told LBC Radio on Wednesday, also pointing to the cuts that had taken place to fire services across the country, reiterating his message that the government’s austerity drive had gone too far.

This time he was not a lone voice: Ronnie King, the honorary administrative secretary of the House of Commons All Party Parliamentary Group Fire Safety and Rescue Group, had spoken about how his group and others had urged the Government to act upon the findings of past inquests (including one from 2009 which had killed 6 people) that had highlighted the need for reform of fire regulations governing tower blocks. The recommendations were not acted upon.

Others noted the lack of council staff on hand, as the tragedy unfolded, with community organisations stepping in with assistance. “There’s been so many cuts, there aren’t enough people to do with this,” a Kensington and Chelsea councillor told The Guardian .

At a time when there is a frenzied national debate over inequality and social justice, the tragedy will inevitably feed into this. The tower is owned by the local council in a borough, considered the most unaffordable to rent in the entire city, and which like most of the rest of London, has extreme wealth sitting side by side great deprivation.

Harrods is as much part of the borough as social housing estates such as the Lancaster West Estate, with largely working class, multicultural communities. The chilling blog of the Grenfell Action Group chronicles the many times over the years when residents had raised questions around neglect, often relating to fire safety regulations. “...only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Association, and bring to an end the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenant and leaseholders,” it warned last November.

The tragedy has unsurprisingly led to checks up and down tower blocks across the country, while Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged a full investigation and for lessons to be learnt if they were needed. But keeping up the pressure will be essential; tensions around inequality and the ability to have one’s voice heard have long simmered below the surface in the capital city, exploding at points as it did in 2011 when thousands rioted across the capital, triggered by the death of a black man stopped by police in North London. They swiftly became about much more: the angry energy of the urban poor.

But while in the aftermath of such situations promises of good will and measures to tackle underlying problems are aplenty, in reality they’ve rarely been acted upon in a concerted way (that was certainly the case with the riots, where proposals around actions in schools that were made in the riots aftermath were not acted upon).

In the case of Britain’s tower blocks, one architect, Sam Webb told various media outlets of a report he’d worked on as early as the 1990s which warned the Government that the majority of tower blocks he surveyed across the country had failed to meet basic fire safety standards.

The precise cause of the fire will only become known in the days and weeks to come, as firefighters contend with the grim aftermath, but the anger palpable in the local community and beyond, makes the need to ask difficult questions more pressing than ever. Politicians and the public must have the guts and persistence to ensure they’re answered and dealt with.

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