Let’s Talk: Grenfell Tower
The 14th June (Sunday just gone) marked the three year anniversary of the fire at Grenfell Tower in London, where at least 72 people lost their lives. The tragedy at Grenfell represents the effects of structural violence that is rooted in inequalities that favour the rich at the expense of the poor.
Grenfell is located in one of the poorest parts of the borough of Kensington, which is right next to Chelsea – one of the richest councils in England. This means that the relative deprivation here is very high. People living in and around Grenfell had a lack of resources to sustain daily life, whilst right next door, Chelsea was just concerned with making Kensington less of an eye-sore.
In 2013, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea had plans to refurbish the area around Grenfell – this included new cladding for Grenfell Tower to make it more aesthetically pleasing. The organisation in charge of Grenfell was the Kensington and Chelsea Tenants Management Organisation (KCTMO). In 2010, the Grenfell Action Group was formed out of concerns of the refurbishment happening. There was a lot of push and pull tensions surrounding all of the decisions being made about this area, as there was little to no communication between tenants and landlords, council members and community members and the voices of the people at Grenfell were largely going ignored. In 2016, the Grenfell Action Group explicitly warned KCTMO that their lack of concern and regard for the health and safety of the people living in Grenfell would “come back to haunt them”.
And they were sadly right.
On the 14th June 2017, the building went up in flames.
What went wrong?
The original plans for refurbishment of Grenfell were set for £9.7million budget by the council. Leadbitter was the council’s top contractors for the job, however, they were on course to spend about £11.3million, which included non-combustible cladding for the building. This was too much, so the council put the contract out to tender again, with Rydon winning the contract for £8.7million. For a bit of perspective – the new contract meant they saved £1.3million on cladding, which meant that the solid aluminium cladding that prevents the spread of flames, was not used. Instead, Grenfell cladding was made from combustible synthetic insulation, which failed the full-scale British Standard 8414 fire test.
If we were to put a price on life, Grenfell tenants went from being worth about £10thousand each (in terms of providing safe cladding for the building) to £5thousand.
It wasn’t just the cladding that was poorly and irresponsibly handled – the building had a severe lack of fire safety instructions, it had frequent power surges, a single staircase for fire escape or emergency and there were exposed gas pipes in flats as a result of the refurbishment.
What was the impact of the fire?
At least 72 people died as a result of this fire because one of the richest councils in England wanted to save some money. Ironically, the borough faced £7million in costs responding to the fire within the first two months. Hydrogen cyanide was emitted from burning insulator boards, as well as Asbestos being present in the building, but the smoke from the fire was already so toxic that these factors didn’t add much severity to the fumes. Trauma was also a massive impact on the community and emergency services – about 20 survivors attempted suicide in the following three months. Survivors are still living in temporary accommodation three years after the fire. There is a seemingly never-ending list of the cultural, economic, political, psychological, physical harms that have been caused by the Grenfell fire so I won’t list them all – but you don’t have to look far to find them.
How does this link to Black Lives Matter?
Many of the people living at Grenfell Tower were of Black or Asian ethnicity. Grenfell is also located in one of the poorest parts of Kensington borough and you don’t have to dig too deep to find reports and studies that link marginalised and minority communities with inequalities in the UK, such as poverty, over-crowded housing and having lower-paid jobs.
Structural violence in the UK is rooted in inequality. The fire at Grenfell Tower can be characterised as the result of institutional violence – irresponsible collectively produced decisions made by organisations in pursuit of profit, even at the cost of human life, which produce violent outcomes. The hardest hit by these decisions will be the most vulnerable groups in society.
Grenfell is an example of how the social, political and economic conditions of the UK are not designed to favour the wealthy. So many people who lived in this area were neglected and ignored by people in positions of power – why? The link between wealth accumulation and racial differentiation can’t be ignored in this analysis. The fire at Grenfell can be thought of as part of the wider issue in UK society of institutional racial violence. The government has created policies and processes that systematically foster and strengthen inequality, which has severely limited the life opportunities and life expectancy of many communities.
What can I do to help?
You can donate to Grenfell charities, support their cause through websites, attend the silent walks.
At the moment, there’s a lot of opinions about monuments. Especially by members of Parliament who are concerned with protecting them. I watched an video with Riz Ahmed who talked about how there’s a lot of attention on monuments and about how worried they are about vandalism and protecting these figures but what monument they should be focused on right now is the Grenfell Tower. It is a reminder that we need justice for those who lost their lives, but is also represents the injustices that are thriving in today’s society that allowed that disaster to happen.
Here are some links to where you can support (this is in no way exhaustive, just somewhere to start):
https://www.grenfellunited.org.uk/
https://www.facebook.com/GrenfellSilentWalk/
These are the sources I used for this post alongside my university notes/lectures:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038026118777424
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