4 - Grenfell and the Place of Housing in Modern Life

Summary

Grenfell

On the morning of 14 June 2017, I woke to find an email from the Evening Standard in my inbox, asking if I would write a piece on the Grenfell Tower fire. The email was timed 7.40 am and they wanted an article by 9.30 am on ‘the housing apartheid in London, how London's poor end up living in death trap towers’. My instinct was to decline the commission, not least because the limited time ensured I would be unlikely to do a good job. The reference to ‘death trap towers’ also raised alarm bells, given the planned demolition of so many of London's housing estates, which was at the centre of heavily contested debates around housing at the time. Against my better judgement I wrote the piece, basing it around a horrifyingly prescient and now defining blog post entitled ‘Playing with Fire’ by a local campaign group, the Grenfell Action Group. The blog stated that: ‘It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord’ (Grenfell Action Group, 2016). My article focused on repeated failures of management and accountability on the part of the Arms Length Management Organisation in charge of the 10,000 homes in Kensington & Chelsea, which had ignored Grenfell residents’ complaints about safety standards again and again (Minton, 2017). Their concerns were later confirmed by the expert report submitted to the Grenfell Inquiry by fire safety engineer Professor Barbara Lane, which found the cladding, doors, ventilation system, fire lifts and the building's ‘dry fire main system’ were all non-compliant with recommended fire performance criteria. ‘The number of non-compliances signify a culture of non-compliance at Grenfell Tower’, the report said (Lane, 2018).

I was angered but not entirely surprised when the Evening Standard emailed to say that they wouldn't use the piece as it ‘wasn't the right fit’, although later in the day the Guardian ran it instead (Minton, 2017b).

It seemed clear to me that the Evening Standard wished to publish a piece about the conditions faced by poor people forced to live in ghetto conditions.