The long-awaited inquiry into the Grenfell Tower tragedy was finally published on Tuesday 3 September, and its findings were damning.
By Amanda Thorley, Socialist Alternative London
The inquiry found that the disaster was the result of “decades of failure” by central government to stop the spread of dangerous, highly flammable cladding, and that this was combined with the “systematic dishonesty” of private companies such as Arconic and Kingspan, who “engaged in deliberate and sustained strategies to mislead the market.” The report was also highly critical of the tenant management organisation (TMO), appointed by the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC), who repeatedly ignored and dismissed tenants who tried to raise concerns about fire safety.
The Grenfell tragedy starkly exposes the brutal realities of the British capitalist system. The post-WWII expansion of council housing was once a huge step forward for the working class. But successive governments, both red and blue, began unravelling this, beginning in the 1980s with Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’ legislation. Following this, privatisation and cost-cutting measures gradually pervaded more and more through the social housing sector, stripping tenants of what little control they had over their own housing.
The problem was drastically accelerated by Cameron’s coalition government. This was a government obsessed with slashing regulations in a “bonfire of red tape”, which the inquiry concluded had “dominated his department’s thinking to the extent that matters affecting fire safety and risk to life were ignored, delayed or disregarded”.
The government was all too happy to be lobbied by those in the cladding industry, and awarded them cut-price public contracts as a result. This exposes the ugly truth at the heart of the capitalist system, that the pursuit of profit is the most important factor which comes above all else – even human life. When potential loss of life was weighed up against potential profits to be made, councils and private developers have routinely chosen the latter.
Verdict is seven years too late
But this long-awaited inquiry does not tell us anything new, and many of its conclusions are startlingly obvious. It was already obvious to many at the outset that each of the 72 lives tragically lost were completely avoidable and unnecessary, and came as a result of their concerns being disregarded by those meant to be responsible for their safety. Shockingly, the report also appears to say nothing about the overwhelming majority of tenants being families from migrant backgrounds, which undoubtedly played a major role in their concerns being disregarded. The clear element of racism in the events leading up to the fire appear to have been whitewashed.
The inquiry’s conclusions must therefore be of cold comfort to the Grenfell survivors and family members. One victim correctly described the inquiry as a “joke”. Maria Jafari, who lost her father in the tragedy, said that the report was “nothing more than a big bag of paper. Seven years have passed, and we still have no justice and we have to fight again. I don’t know how many more years it’s going to take”. Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the fire, said that the inquiry was “forced on us. This inquiry hasn’t taught me anything. In fact, it has delayed the justice my family deserves.”
Time and time again, official state inquiries serve as a convenient way for the corrupt capitalist establishment to avoid accountability. They are designed to allow more time to be wasted, and to remove any sense of urgency.
Victims have repeatedly expressed their wish for those most culpable for the tragedy to face criminal charges and potentially prison sentences for their crimes. Whilst a Met Police investigation is now ongoing, it has emerged that criminal trials would be unlikely before 2027 – a full decade after the disaster!
Piling wait upon agonising wait is nothing but an insult to the survivors and families of Grenfell, and we should be wary in placing trust in the police to deliver justice, given how they have previously demonstrated their blind allegiance to the establishment, such as in the Partygate scandal.
Despite the repeated phrase in inquiries about “lessons learned”, it is unfortunately apparent how little has changed since Grenfell. Thousands still live in fear of a fire due to the same dangerous cladding remaining on their buildings, and progress with removing this has been infuriatingly slow. Government figures show that work is yet to start on half the 4,630 buildings standing over 11 metres which are identified as having unsafe cladding, with “remediation” work having been completed on less than a third of buildings. More recent tower fires in Barking in 2019 and in Dagenham this year show that we are perilously close to the events of Grenfell repeating themselves.
Never again!
Despite the change of government, it is clear that it is not just the callous Conservatives who are the problem. Backed by big business and millionaires, Labour have remained silent about tackling the root of the problem, which is the profit motive in both social and private housing. Rather than relying on top-down, state inquiries or the police for justice, a mass campaign of communities, the families of those affected alongside trade unions and tenants organisations is needed to fight for true justice, and to ensure another Grenfell never happens again.
We need to demand that the government cancel all further planned cuts. We need to fight for mass investment into council house building, paid for by taxing the super-rich. We need to expropriate ‘long-term empty’ properties from big landlords for social housing and build millions of high-quality, green council houses to provide affordable housing for all.
A socialist programme for housing, which seizes the wealth of the housing profiteers and brings the building companies into democratic public ownership is crucial. Not just to ensure that another Grenfell never happens again, but also to provide all working class people with a voice, as well as a dignified and safe place to live.
