10 - Social murder

Summary

In this concluding chapter, we return once more to North Kensington, London. It should have become clear by now that many of the historical, political and theoretical threads of this book lead to the fire at Grenfell Tower, in the Lancaster West Estate. In the Introduction, we claimed that squalor is inextricably bound to mortality and an ever-increasing proximity to death. The Grenfell Tower fire, we suggest, is the form that twenty-first-century squalor takes – and might take again. Those who consider themselves far removed from the stereotypical figure of squalor – criminal, impoverished, living off benefits and in broken social housing – might now need to reassess their proximities.

FIGHTING FIRE

With an unprecedented swing in the 2017 snap election, Labour candidate Emma Dent Coad took London’s Kensington constituency. Dent Coad’s incredibly close victory was cheered on by participants of several local movements campaigning for public space under the Westway, for the retention of local amenities, and for housing justice in general. Amongst the crowd gathered outside the Town Hall was Ed Daffarn of the Grenfell Action Group who was busy encouraging electoral observers to investigate the local council. With Dent Coad’s victory the press began to pay attention to this working-class community in the heart of London, which, despite waves of gentrification, remained embedded in the wards of North Kensington.

Days later, Ed Daffarn barely survived Britain’s deadliest residential fire since the Blitz. The scale of the crime has now become clear to all, with the Grenfell Tower Inquiry revealing a widespread knowledge of the risks of the cladding system and insulation. Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan were well aware of the combustibility of their products, but they still marketed them as safe.

As we have noted, the government as well as privatized regulatory bodies knew that the products sold by corporate crooks and killers presented a significant threat to life. They allowed the ambiguous classification of Class 0 to hold for products they knew to be combustible, because they did not want to “distort the market” by specifying what was safe or unsafe. Deceiving themselves wilfully, they did not even plan for the eventuality of serious cladding fire, despite evidence from a number of domestic and international incidents.