The United Kingdom has seen its fair share of societal turmoil this last year. There was David Cameron’s shock Brexit vote, his resignation, Theresa May’s rapid coronation, London and Manchester rocked by senseless, heinous acts of violence, then the Conservatives’ precipitous fall from grace, humbled by a man they saw as a hopeless relic from a bygone age.
It is also likely that few had ever heard of Grenfell Tower. Now, and forever more, this unremarkable, prosaic-looking block of flats in west London will be synonymous with the conflagration that consumed it, much in the same way the World Trade Centre became the very incarnation of 9/11’s horrific events.
The fire that broke out in the small hours of last Wednesday morning spread quickly and uncontrollably to every floor of the 24-storey building from the fourth up. Fire alarms appear to have alerted few residents to the horror around them. The first many knew of the blaze was the smell of smoke, and by then it was too late.
By most accounts emergency services reacted well, were on the scene with admirable speed and acted with the astonishing bravery we have come to expect from such valiant professionals. Laden with heavy equipment, focused on the singular mission of saving lives, without fear of sacrifice, firefighters climbed the stairs towards the flames.
Some residents on the upper floors, unable to escape through the black, acrid smoke could not be rescued either. While the loss of a single life is intolerable, the final death toll is likely to be agonizingly heart breaking. The task for those who enter the fire-blackened, charred tower’s skeleton to account for the human toll can only be imagined as the preserve of Dante’s hell.
It is right and just that the focus of attention should be on those who have perished, been injured in this tragedy, as well as those who are in mourning or who await news or have been rendered homeless, even penniless.
Nonetheless, we must ask how this catastrophe could come about in the second decade of the twenty-first century, in modern Britain, a prosperous G7 nation, in London, one of humanity’s great cities, the very beating economic heart of the UK, and once the seat of an empire that held sway over a quarter of this planet. How is it then that a recently renovated apartment block housing hundreds of people could become a raging inferno in a matter of minutes –-- and could provide subpar means of escape to those inside?
There are broader issues to consider too: the first is Britain's (and, by extension, the industrialized world’s) approach to social housing, which for too long has been low on governmental priority lists as budget deficits grow larger and financial resources shrink. Not only has the global stock of social housing steadily become depleted, but its management appears in some instances to leave residents unsure about who is actually responsible for the very homes they live in. Local councils might actually own the property, but its management will usually be in the hands of a company. They in turn often outsource specific maintenance tasks. This creates an accountability gap: who is ultimately responsible?
A review of building regulations concerning fire safety was promised by the British Government last year but never took place. Pressure for such a review itself followed a fire in 2009 at a tower block in Camberwell, south London, which claimed six lives. People living in older, high-rise, often council-owned buildings have every right to wonder why the Government did not act when it had the chance. In housing policy the needs of construction companies and developers so often seem to be prioritized over those of people who want nothing more than a decent home to live in. By its very nature modern society encourages home ownership (even at crippling mortgage rates) over those who can but barely afford rent.
London most obviously symbolises the inequality between the country's haves and have-nots. The social housing of Grenfell Tower, on the edge of the sprawling Lancaster West Estate, looks down on homes worth many millions of pounds just a few streets with storied names away.
This last election, the parliamentary constituency in which rich and poor rub shoulders but barely see one another became a symbol of Conservative hubris, as Kensington – that bastion of Toryism turned to Labour. In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster, politics will be immediately put aside. But when the dust settles, and grim losses are tallied, it is important to realize that this tragedy is not only a nightmare for all who are directly affected but is also an emblem of a dysfunctional, inequitable society.
It is a dangerous moment for any government when the public suspects that it is incapable of preventing a great disaster like Grenfell Tower. Angry, confused and hurt citizens see the state as failing in its basic duty to keep them safe. Politicians in power, in such circumstances, are embarrassingly keen to show that there is a firm hand on the tiller, calmly coping with a crisis for which they are not to blame. Above all else, they need to dissuade people from imagining that a calamity is a iconic symptom that something is rotten in the state of Britain.
The Government is clearly frightened that the burned bodies in Grenfell Towers will be seen as martyrs who died because of austerity, deregulation and outsourcing.
While most of the miseries in contemporary life are suffered in silence by deprived people unable to defend themselves, everything about the Grenfell disaster conveys a sense of total failure in which the whole political system is implicated.
Natural and man-made disasters have frequently been the death knell of governments that were already tottering: the Tangshan earthquake in China in 1976, helped determine who would rule the country after Mao Zedong; the Rex Cinema fire in Abadan in Iran in 1978 was blamed on the Shah and helped end his reign by focusing dissent...the list goes on.
Perhaps the closest parallel to the burning of the Grenfell Tower may be the devastating 2005 New Orleans flood when Hurricane Katrina spawned a 9m-high surge of water which crashed into the city on 29 August 2005 and led to the death of 1,464 people. While the disaster had been repeatedly predicted by experts, nothing effective was done so the levees and flood walls were too low or too weak and rapidly disintegrated under the impact of the rising water. The victims were mostly poor African Americans without the monetary and political influence to get adequate flood defences.
As New Orleans was being submerged, President George W Bush was on a holiday at his Crawford, Texas, ranch where he remained for several days. He finally flew back to Washington on 31 August, his plane making a detour over the wounded city. It was a photo of him looking distant as he viewed the wreckage of New Orleans that irreparably damaged his reputation forever and doomed his Republican party to defeat in the 2008 presidential contest.
That Theresa May should make much the same mistake as Bush by not meeting survivors in Kensington is baffling, perhaps symptomatic of a leader still reeling from losing what once seemed a sure-fire electoral gamble. Even the photo editors have turned against her and mostly chose to contrast her chilly appearance with a human Jeremy Corbyn comforting victims. She appears to be somebody who has a challenge with handling pressure, even at a time when Donald Trump received praise for how he conducted himself in the wake of the shooting of GOP congressmen at a baseball game. In times of trial, a national leader must be ready to assume the role of Comforter-in-Chief.
Corbyn, on the contrary, seems to thrive on crisis and adversity. Just like on election night, he looked like a Prime Minister. If May and her government do not (or cannot) find it within themselves to pull things together, he will be.