There have been reams written about the Grenfell report into the tragic fire that claimed 70 lives, but aside from the obvious, two things struck me.
The first (and this has been reported) is that the tragedy was in part caused by a reduction in regulations, or “red tape” as some call it. For decades people have been moaning about “Elf and Safety,” as if a nanny state was protecting us from dangers that did not exist or which we could resolve by “common sense” (actually less common than its name might suggest).
I am dubious about all this, having spent hours reading old “Chronicles” and seeing the stupid ways in which people could perish at work a century ago. One bloke in about 1912 was handling corn sacks on the first floor of a mill. He was hit by a sack, fell out of the doorway and plummeted to his death. The coroner recorded accidental death.
A simple guard rail would have saved that man’s life but, aside from the lack of safety measures, there was a lack of awareness that things could or should change. The death was not “an accident” but a lack of thought that a swinging hundredweight sack posed a risk to staff working one storey up.
From all accounts, Mrs Thatcher started the rot, slashing the “red tape” and privatising the services that were supposed to check building regulations had been followed. Once you introduce privatisation, you introduce competition and shareholders, and competition means a drive to be cheaper while maximising returns to shareholders, which may mean pressure to cut corners.
In the early 2010s David Cameron announced (post-Grenfell using rather unfortunate terms) “a bonfire of red tape” and Brexit put the abolition of red tape into overdrive. The Government had a rule of one regulation in, two (and later three) out, a rather numerical view of health and safety.
GK Chesterton (with whom I’m sure you are all familiar) developed the idea of the Chesterton Fence, a barrier that meant reforms should not be made until the reasoning for their existence was known – and one in, two out surely takes no notice of this.
Said the Grenfell report: “The system of regulating the construction and refurbishment of high-rise residential buildings … was seriously defective in a number of respects.”
Sometimes red tape can be annoying. I went on an Open University geology field trip to a beach in the North East and we had to wear the same high-vis jackets and hard hats we’d worn earlier on a quarry visit, but we could see the point, and enjoyed the friendly banter with the Geordies sunbathing on the beach as we admired stromatolites.
Rules are there to protect people, and were probably drafted by someone knowledgeable after an unlikely accident; fossil hunters are killed or injured by falling rocks on public beaches on a regular basis. It is rash to randomly remove them because people who stand to make money say otherwise.
A wider issue was the fact that the Grenfell landlords (Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation) showed “a persistent indifference to fire safety, particularly the safety of vulnerable people”.
The report said the residents felt the tenant organisation “belittled and marginalised them, regarded them as a nuisance, or worse, and failed to take their concerns seriously”.
This rather reminded me of a different report, on the infamous grooming gangs.
For some years Tommy Robinson and his ilk have complained that accusations of grooming were ignored because the perpetrators were from a certain religious or ethnic background (and completely erroneously claimed that grooming is part of such culture).
While there is truth in that first claim, much of the problem was that the police did not take complaints seriously, because the complainants lived on the fringes of society. That the final report of the inquiry of the Office of the Children’s Commissioner into child sexual exploitation in gangs was entitled “If only someone had listened” says it all.
“During site visits we continued to hear references to children ‘putting themselves at risk’, rather than the perpetrators being the risk to children,” said that report.
The fact is that some of those in power treat those with less power as having less worth, and it is as true for victims of abuse as tower block residents.
Donald Trump is currently telling lies about Haitians eating family pets in Springfield, Ohio. This is as offensive as it is untrue, and the fact that it is both putting Haitians in danger and hindering the work of locals in Springfield – who have real issues to deal with, such as large numbers of Haitian children attending schools with English as their second language and their parents causing delays at medical centres by requiring translators when they go for treatment – is of no concern to Mr Trump. Power has a habit of not caring for the powerless.
Talking of figures in positions of power, a reader has asked for thoughts on Conservative Robert “Generic” Jenrick, who some say is the favourite to be the leader of the Opposition to the Government.
Difficult. How anyone could think badly of the man who told staff at a reception centre designed for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to paint over comforting images of Baloo from “The Jungle Book” and Mickey Mouse in order to provide a less welcoming atmosphere for frightened youngsters is a mystery.
“Private Eye” calls him Honest Bob, possibly on account of some of the planning applications he has dealt with as minister: an Israeli businessman involved in a multi-billion-pound project who donated £10,000 to the Tories or the £1bn housing development of 1,500 homes proposed by Richard Desmond, a Conservative Party donor, which Mr Jenrick approved in time to allow Mr Desmond to avoid paying a council-imposed infrastructure levy of between £30m and £50m, to be used for funding local schools and health clinics.
Indeed, the members of Grenfell United refused an invitation to have a meeting with Mr Jenrick and wrote: “Your perceived focus on the interests of property developers over the needs of an impoverished local community has soured our opinion of you.”
Maybe the Tories need him as leader as part of their “journey” to electability, in the same way leeches can be used to cure infections.
