How soon is too soon to raise difficult, politically charged questions about a tragedy that has cost lives? It’s become an increasingly pertinent question in Britain, which has witnessed a series of devastating events — from three terrorist attacks within a three-month period to the catastrophic fire that engulfed a residential tower block in west London on Wednesday killing 17 people, with the death toll set to rise further.
In the past politicians have often stayed away from questions around whether policy decisions have contributed to tragedies for a certain amount of time, but in the heated political and highly ideologically charged country that Britain has become over the past year, that’s become less so.
In the days immediately after the Manchester attack, Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour party, spoke out against the government’s foreign policy and cuts to police forces, arguing that the tragedy raised questions about both: whether Britain’s interventionist approach in countries such as Syria, Libya and Iraq contributed to the risk to civilians from terror attacks back home, and whether cuts to police forces made it harder for them to gather counterterrorism intelligence sufficiently rigorously. His decision to do so was clearly not off-putting enough to the public, who handed the party its biggest increase in terms of share of the vote in post-war Britain.
Austerity link to tragedy?
The fire was still raging through Grenfell Tower on Wednesday morning when Mr. Corbyn drew a potential link between the government’s austerity programme and the tragedy.
“If you deny local authorities the funding they need, then there is a price paid by a lack of safety facilities across the country. I think there needs to be some very searching questions as quickly as possible in the aftermath of the fire,” he told LBC Radio, also pointing to the cuts that had taken place to fire services across the country, and reiterating his message that people could not be protected on the cheap.
This time he was not a lone voice in raising questions about whether policy had played a role: Ronnie King, the honorary administrative secretary of the House of Commons All Party Parliamentary Group Fire Safety and Rescue Group, had told the radio station earlier in the day of how his group and others had urged the government to act upon the findings of past inquests that had highlighted the need for reform of the fire regulations governing tower blocks, often a crucial part of affordable housing schemes in city centres. The recommendations were not acted upon.
Others on the scene noted the lack of council staff on hand as the tragedy unfolded, with community organisations stepping in to provide assistance. “There’s been so many cuts, there aren’t enough people to do with this,” a Kensington and Chelsea councillor told The Guardian.
At a time when there is a frenzied national debate over inequality and social justice, the tragedy will inevitably feed into this. The tower is owned by the local council in a borough considered the most unaffordable to rent in the entire city and which, like most of the rest of London, has extreme wealth sitting side by side with great deprivation.
Harrods is as much part of the borough as social housing estates such as the Lancaster West Estate, with largely working-class, multicultural communities.
The chilling blog of the Grenfell Action Group chronicles the many times over the years that residents had raised questions around neglect, often relating to fire safety regulations. “The Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Association,” it ominously warned last November.
The tragedy has unsurprisingly led to checks up and down tower blocks across the country, while Prime Minister Theresa May has pledged a full investigation. But keeping up the pressure will be essential — tensions around inequality and the ability to have one’s voice heard have long simmered below the surface in the capital city, exploding at points as they did in 2011 when thousands rioted, triggered by the death of Mark Duggan, a black man stopped by police in North London. They swiftly became about much more: the angry energy of the urban poor.
Fire safety standards
But while in the aftermath of such situations promises of goodwill and measures to tackle underlying problems are aplenty, in reality they’ve rarely been acted upon in a concerted way. In the case of Britain’s tower blocks, one architect, Sam Webb, told various media outlets on Wednesday of a report he’d worked on as early as the 1990s which warned the government that the majority of tower blocks he surveyed across the country had failed to meet basic fire safety standards.
The precise cause of the fire will only become known in the days and weeks to come as firefighters contend with the grim aftermath, but the anger palpable in the local community and beyond makes the need to ask difficult questions more pressing than ever. Politicians and the public must have the guts and persistence to ensure they’re answered and dealt with.
vidya.ram@thehindu.co.in