The Grenfell Fire
The neoliberal machine has human consequences that go beyond spreadsheets and economic data. Beyond, even, inwork poverty and a life defined by paying ever higher rents to wealthy landlords and fees to company shareholders. As bad as those are they pale beside its clearest historic expression in a generation: the derelict husk of Grenfell Tower – a 24- storey residential block in West London where, in June 2017, seventy-two people lost their lives.
Just days after a general election where Theresa May lost her parliamentary majority, a fire broke which would ravage the building in a manner not seen in Britain for decades. The primary explanation for its rapid, shocking spread across the building – finished in 1974 and intentionally designed to minimise the possibility of such an event – was the installation of flammable cladding several years earlier, combined with poor safety standards and no functioning sprinklers – all issues highlighted by the residents’ Grenfell Action Group before the fire.
The cladding itself, primarily composed of polyethylene, is as flammable as petroleum. Advances in material science means we should be building homes that are safer, and more eficient, than ever before. Instead a cut-price approach to housing the poor prevails, prioritising external aesthetics for wealthier residents. In the case of Grenfell that meant corners were cut and lives were lost.
This is not a minor political point and shows the very real consequences of ‘self-regulation’. It was under the Thatcher government that fire safety standards in homes were deregulated, while enforceable requirements were abandoned for ‘guidelines’ which the building industry could choose to implement or ignore. Months before Grenfell some Tory
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