Grenfell: 5 Years On

Today’s Guest post is by Mira Hammad. Mira is an an activist and barrister who has represented families in the Grenfell inquiry.

Grenfell holds a particular resonance for Muslims: we will never forget suhoor on 14 June 2017 and the dawning realisation of the nightmare unfolding in that tower block. The tragedy struck at the heart of our community but also uncovered the collective solidarity within it. Our community was marginalised and abandoned, yet, somehow, we possessed the strength and love to come together and stand up for justice.

The 5 years that have passed have also held up a mirror to our government and society. Grenfell was not an accident. It was a tragedy that emerged out of a system predicated on the disregard of human beings: our lives, our dignity, our community.

Grenfell is not about cladding. Grenfell is not about building regulations. Grenfell is not about building contractors. Grenfell is not about product manufacturers and testing. Grenfell is not about council decision making. Grenfell is not about firefighting. Grenfell is not about a particular government.

Grenfell is about the culture that pervaded all of these parts of our society: a culture that places value on economic gain over the lives of ordinary people.

This is the culture that allowed corporations to perpetrate a “fraud on the market”, selling products that they knew could cause a “raging inferno” with a psychopathic disregard for human life. It led to the deregulatory zeal that allowed civil servants to turn a blind eye to repeated warnings of the dangers of these products. It led to building contractors who were more concerned about being “quids in” than the safety of their building. It allowed one of the richest councils in London to disregard basic fire safety and treat residents with barely disguised contempt.

This culture remains in place today, as is starkly demonstrated by the government’s approach to personal evacuation plans.

“But if you really look you can see it, if you really listen You can hear it. You’ve got to look beneath the cladding. There’s cladding everywhere. Political cladding, Economic cladding, intellectual cladding — things that look good But have no centre, have no heart, only moral padding.” (Ben Okri, Grenfell Tower, June 2017)

The Council housed people who were disabled or in other ways unable to self-evacuate on high floors with no plan for their escape in the event of a fire. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry heard heart wrenching evidence about disabled people who died trapped in their flats, and family members who made the nightmarish decision to stay with them. The Council justified their failure to provide such plans by reference to government guidance. Brian Martin, a senior civil servant, who allegedly responded to concerns about fire safety by saying “show me the bodies”, was asked by Richard Millett QC whether it was British government policy that “people die in their flats because they’re bed-bound, because it’s too expensive to have a system to get them out.” He replied “That was what was considered at the time to be the prevailing reasonable approach to the problem.”

As a result of the evidence that emerged, the Inquiry’s Phase 1 report recommended that owners and managers of high-rise buildings be required to develop emergency evacuate plans for those whose ability to self-evacuate is compromised. The Government has decided not to implement this recommendation as it would not be “proportionate” to impose this requirement on building owners and managers. Yet again, economics has come before human beings.

We came together as a community after Grenfell, but what we have learned in the five years since is that our fight is far from over. As Muslims, we have a duty not only to push for justice and accountability for Grenfell, but for a society that puts human beings before capital.

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Photo credit: Natalie Oxford