By Marcel Rajecky
THE LONG-AWAITED public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire has shown that this was a wholly preventable disaster, caused by the collective greed of private manufacturers and government bodies.
Grenfell Tower, in which the fire killed 72 people in 2017, was a working class residence in the richest borough in the country.
Years before the fire, residents complained about the safety of the building. The local Tory council neglected to carry out basic fire tests, fire extinguishers were out of date and the fire lighting system was dysfunctional.
In sum, Grenfell’s tenants found and published 40 serious instances concerning fire safety. The housing association responded by threatening the leaders of the tenants’ group with legal action for ‘defamation and harassment’.
The ultimate cause of the disaster, however, was the use of flammable cladding panels, which allowed the fire to spread to large parts of the building within minutes. Fire resistant cladding panels could have been installed for £2 per square metre less than the ones that were fatally used.
The survivors did not need a six-year enquiry to know who caused the deaths of their friends and families. On the day of the fire, the residents published a statement blaming the housing authority. Theresa May, then Prime Minister, was met with boos and heckles when she visited the site. Protestors stormed Kensington Town Hall.
The government, however, looked for anyone to blame except for the local authority, most shamefully attacking the fire responders.
This week’s report, nonetheless, has vindicated the residents’ view of who is to blame.
It concluded that three companies involved in the production of the flammable cladding “deliberately concealed” (lied) to regulators about the results of their product’s fire testing.
It condemned the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for “indifference” and for failing to fulfil their duties to their residents.
Most importantly, the report condemned successive governments for ignoring warnings about the risk of fires from cladding, and for removing and not enforcing fire safety requirements.
There is more than enough evidence in the report to implicate individuals in private industry and government in manslaughter, or as it has often been described in relation to Grenfell, “social murder”.
But the police do not expect to be ready to launch criminal proceedings against anyone involved in the fire for at least three years, ten years after the fire itself.
How can a legal system be so slow to punish those who are responsible for the deaths of so many people?
Because their fundamental crime is that which is at the heart of the capitalist economy: the pursuit of profit over, above and against human welfare and even human life.
The years-long inquiry, the inaction over stripping off unsafe cladding, and the failure to bring the guilty to justice reveals the total contempt towards working class people on the part of business and government.
It was only the commitment of local residents, friends, family and housing campaigners that ensured we have got this far. The government and the courts will not deliver justice for the victims unless they are forced to. We demand:
