Today in Focus: The story of Grenfell United

In the early hours of 14 June 2017, a fire broke out at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, west London. It killed 72 people, including 18 children. In the chaos that followed, survivors and the bereaved felt abandoned by local authorities and the government, and began to organise into a community group, which became known as Grenfell United.

Today, on the second anniversary of the fire, Natasha Elcock, Ed Daffarn and Karim Mussilhy discuss the work the group has been doing and their attempts to tackle what they see as one of the most devastating aspects of the fire: government inaction. The Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Rob Booth, has been covering the story of Grenfell since the blaze. He talks to Anushka Asthana about why more progress has not been made.

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CityLab: Grenfell’s Problem Wasn’t Just Lax Regulation

Instead of simply increasing regulation and inspections, governments must remove the opportunity for exploitative profit by insisting on rent controls, providing subsidies for necessary repair work, and re-upping their role—both in ownership and management—of housing, before we are dealing with dire situations. 

In addition, my research shows that if municipalities do not invest in housing, even the best of intentions can perpetuate housing inequality. I learned this after three years of researching housing inspections in Chicago. Consistent with other studies, I saw inspectors’ ire at negligent landlords. One inspector told me that after his 20 years of inspecting deplorable living conditions, he prays for some landlords to go to “landlord hell.” [...]

But my research also illuminates the unintended consequences of these well-intended actions: rent hikes. My statistical analysis of over 280,000 building code citations and five years of rental data verifies that every citation and violation that is then fixed is associated with a 5.4 percent rent increase, a number that is consistent when normed across properties of the same age, size, value, and neighborhood.

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CityLab: Britain Plans a Memorial for Grenfell, a Tragedy That's Far From Over

The announcement of the plan—which could also see the nearby Latimer Road Tube station renamed to Grenfell—strikes the right note so far, making it clear that residents of the West London housing project will get the deciding say on any kind of memorial that happens on the tower’s site. [...]

This is, after all, a tragedy that could easily have been avoided with proper safety standards. The blaze was sparked by a small domestic fire that could have been contained under normal circumstances. A cheap aluminum composite cladding—banned on tall buildings in Germany and the U.S., but permitted in Britain—caused the fire to spread with alarming speed. Unbearably, residents were well aware of the flaws and actively petitioned to have them changed. [...]

There’s an overwhelming sense from locals that they aren’t being sufficiently represented or listened to at the public inquiry. Take all that together and it’s no wonder why the Grenfell Tower disaster remains unhealed. Even before the fire, the neighborhood’s situation was paradoxical: London’s poorest ward, located within the city’s wealthiest borough, housing many people who believed that local officials saw them only as an inconvenience. That belief was only confirmed by the distant, unaccountable handling of the aftermath.

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RSA: Who's Destroying The American Dream

This event was recorded live at The RSA on Tuesday 31st October 2017

It’s now conventional wisdom to focus on the excesses of the ultra-rich top 1% who are hoarding income and wealth while incomes for the rest are stagnant. But the more important, and widening, gap in American society, argues Richard Reeves, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is between the upper middle class and everyone else.

Reeves defines the upper middle class as those whose incomes are in the top 20 percent of American society. Income isn’t the only way to measure a society, but in a market economy it is crucial because access to money generally determines who gets the best quality education, housing and health care.

As Reeves shows, the growing separation between the upper middle class and everyone else can be seen in family structure, neighbourhoods, attitudes, and lifestyle. Those at the top of the income ladder are becoming more effective at passing on their status to their children, reducing overall social mobility. The result is a fracturing of American society along class lines, not just an economic divide.

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BBC4 Analysis: Authenticity

These days when we talk about politicians we are more likely to discuss whether they are authentic than whether they are great orators or statesmen or women. Few of us take the time to listen to a speech or read a manifesto and when we judge politicians we more often focus on whether they seem sincere, warm or passionately committed to a cause rather than weighing up their policy programmes. We're turned off by spin and cynical about many politicians' motivations and we seek reassurance that they can really be trusted.

Professor Rosie Campbell asks how we can make judgements about a politician's authenticity. Are politicians more trustworthy if they stick to their principles without compromise? Or is authenticity about revealing our true character, warts and all? And what is better for democracy? Authentic leaders who are straight talking and stick rigidly to their ideals or leaders who are willing to negotiate behind the scenes?

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CityLab: Grenfell Was No Ordinary Accident

Grenfell was built in 1974, an austere concrete tower of 120 flats spread over 24 floors, its design in keeping with the Brutalist style of the day. Unprepossessing as it and many similar towers across Britain may have been, early residents were proud to live in these modern dwellings. Strong community bonds formed throughout their halls and stairwells. [...]

As the moneyed enclave of Notting Hill, where the stucco-fronted terraces have long been a magnet for the great and the good, began to march west, the area surrounding the Lancaster West Estate, in which Grenfell Tower is situated, became a front line in the inexorable gentrification of central London. A three-bedroom townhouse in Portobello Square, not 200 meters from Grenfell, costs £2.1 million (around $2.7 million). [...]

In January 2016, Jeremy Corbyn, then an embattled Leader of the Opposition, tabled an amendment in the U.K Parliament that would have required landlords to ensure that their homes were “fit for human habitation.” The Conservative majority, 72 landlords among them, voted it down. A few months later, the £8.6 million refurbishment of Grenfell, overseen by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO), was completed. The sprinkler systems that could have helped to prevent the disaster to come were deemed superfluous. But money was found to improve the building’s aesthetics. The now infamous cladding, white and grey polyethylene panels which were already banned in the Germany and America, were chosen instead of the fire-resistant alternative, for a total saving of under £300,000. [...]

You could hear its promulgation in David Cameron expressing a desire to “kill off health and safety culture for good” in 2012, and in the Brexiteers promising “a bonfire of regulations.” You could hear it in the hypocrisy of those who cheered the heroism of the London firefighters battling their way up the smoking tower even though they had condemned their right to protest for fairer fire service pensions three years before. And now you can see it looming over North London, a soot-strewn edifice in the sky.

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Politico: UK’s empty Brexit threats

In the heady days of a comfortable (if not generous) House of Commons Tory majority and an opposition in disarray, Hammond said that if the EU gave the U.K. a bad Brexit deal, “we could be forced to change our economic model and we will have to change our model to regain competitiveness.” It evoked images of a Singapore-style low regulation, low-tax economy on Europe’s doorstep. [...]

The tough talking has been replaced with a far more emollient tone. “I often hear it said that the U.K. is considering participating in unfair competition in regulation and tax,” he told Le Monde, innocently. “That is neither our plan nor our vision for the future.” [...]

And the Grenfell Tower disaster, in which more than 80 people died in a social housing tower block fire (the final death toll may not be known for months), has changed the political mood further. Any appetite for the tearing up of red tape dissipated in the wake of the disaster, which appears to have been caused by a catastrophic regulatory failure.

The opposition has also landed some punches on Hammond’s Singapore vision. Labour’s position on the EU single market and customs union may be even more confused than that of the government, but Corbyn’s oft repeated claim that the Tory Brexit deal threatens to create a “bargain basement economy” gained traction in the election campaign and spooked his opponents.

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The Guardian: Over 60% of voters view Theresa May as PM negatively – poll

Corbyn’s reinvigorated party is now on 45%, six points ahead of the Tories (on 39%), which if replicated in a general election would put Corbyn in a strong position to enter Downing Street as prime minister if one was called in the near future. [...]

On 9 April, May’s approval rating stood at an impressive +21% (where the percentage of those who disapprove of her leadership is subtracted from the number who approve) while that for Corbyn had sunk to -35%.

In an extraordinary turnaround, May’s rating is now at -20% (with 31% approving her leadership and 51% disapproving) while Corbyn’s has risen to +4% with more approving of his stewardship of Labour (42%) than disapproving (38%). [...]

May and Corbyn are now neck and neck when voters are asked who they believe would make the best prime minister, with 35% saying May and 34% Corbyn.

On Brexit, 41% now disapprove of the way May is handling the negotiations on leaving the EU, against 32% who approve. Some 47% of those who backed leaving the EU approve of her handling of Brexit against 27% who disapprove, while 56% of remainers disapprove and only 21% approve.

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Katoikos: Analogies between the Ayotzinapa disappearances and the Grenfell Tower fire

In September 2014, the Mexican town of Ayotzinapa became world-famous overnight, when a group of 43 poor, radical and indigenous students from the local teaching college went missing after being attacked by police in Iguala, a town also located in the narco-dominated state of Guerrero. Facts about the students’ fate were scarce, but it was soon abundantly clear that the Government’s story that they had been kidnapped by drug gangs didn’t hang together and that ministers and military figures were protecting whoever was responsible. Demonstrations demanding truth and justice swept the country, and the number 43 quickly came to symbolise all that was corrupt about how the country was run. [...]

All were keen to stress the basic factual distinctions between the two situations. One major difference highlighted by Rod, an economist who has lived in Mexico City for over 30 years, is that in the case of Grenfell there has been no fairy story, no apparent cover-up by the authorities. Although it’s certainly the case that the Daily Mail and Express both tried to scapegoat first an Ethiopian immigrant and then EU environmental regulations for the fire, those explanations were not at the heart of the State’s explanation. Rod points out that while Theresa May took some responsibility for the deaths and, after some prevarication, did visit the site, Enrique Peña-Nieto, the current president of Mexico, avoided doing so altogether. [...]

For Pablo, both events were characterised by a lack of official interest in protecting the most vulnerable, and the public outrage in both cases partly resulted from decades of inequality. Lisa echoes this, highlighting the fact that both disasters happened to people who have no power and who routinely suffer discrimination. She draws a further analogy with the 1989 human crush at Hillsborough football stadium in Sheffield, in the wake of which the families of the victims were routinely smeared and depicted in the tabloid press as subhuman, in part on the basis of a police disinformation campaign.

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BBC4 A Point of View: After Grenfell

Will Self gives a very personal view of high-rise buildings in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster.

"As a commentator on the built environment", Will writes, "I've been too wry, too cynical and too disengaged over the past twenty years".

"Grenfell Tower", he says, "was the bonfire of any remaining civic vanity in London ".

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Financial Times: Why Theresa May is here to stay

Politico: Grenfell Tower disaster, a symbol of broken Britain

For an extra £5,000 during recent refurbishments, it was claimed on the front page of the Times, the 24-story Grenfell Tower in west London could have been clad in fireproof panels. Instead, the contractors went for the cheaper option — a decision which may have contributed to the deaths of at least 30 people in Wednesday’s deadly blaze and probably many more.

Five minutes walk away from the block of council flats, a five bedroom semi-detached family home is for sale. Asking price: £15 million. [...]

The move may go some way to shoring up the political damage, but May’s initially flat-footed response to the tragedy reminded critics of her performance in the election campaign. One senior Conservative campaign official watched with dismay as May imploded in the public glare in the run-up to the election. If the fire, and her response, had taken place before polling day, “she would have lost…and Corbyn would have deserved it,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A backlash against May within her party — already furious over the botched campaign — now appears positively dangerous for her short-term, let alone long-term, future. [...]

Tobias Ellwood, the defense minister, told the BBC’s Question Time that “security concerns” had prevented the prime minister from visiting survivors. Hours later the queen arrived to meet the survivors, making a mockery of the excuse.

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