Robert Henderson
The fallout from the Grenfell Tower (GT) fire is turning it from a very serious and traumatic physical disaster into a political vehicle for the Hard Left who have been openly encouraged by the leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn who has called for empty properties owned by the rich in the area to be commandeered and used to house those rendered homeless by the fire , while the shadow Chancellor John McDonnell designated the deaths murder by political decisions and called for a “Day of Rage” on the streets. The street level response to make this into an anti-Government matter really took off when the revolutionary left became involved. Mustafa al-Mansua a Jeremy Corbyn-supporting political activist was identified as being the organiser of the protests in Kensington Town Hall.
The newspapers, blogs and especially the broadcast media are now alive with claims of gross neglect and even murder by those in authority. The strange thing is those making the noise are not those most intimately connected with the disaster. Media interviews with people who either lived in the block or those who knew people who lived in the block who were either dead or missing have not been paeans of rage against the rich or the government. Most interviewees have been rather quiet, subdued and shocked but not bursting with anger against the authorities.
The response of the Government
The response of the Government has been jerky. To begin with the Government largely left the emergency services to get on with the job. The PM Theresa May turned up eventually but did not meet any of those living in the GT, confining her visit to meeting members of the emergency services. Jeremy Corbyn did meet people who lived in the block. The contrast between May and Corbyn’s was used as the tinder to light the Hard Left’s bonfire of rage.
After days of dithering the Government released £5 million to defray the immediate costs of providing support for the surviving residents of the block. A public inquiry was rapidly announced and a retired Appeal Court judge appointed to head it. Eventually, people from outside of the Council were appointed by the Government to run the Kensington and Chelsea housing department.
The judge appointed to head the public inquiry Sir Martin Moore-Bick has been the subject of an immediate campaign to remove him from the position. A black Labour MP and one-time minister David Lammy led the way by citing Sir Martin’s disqualifications for the role as being the fact that he is a “white, upper-middle class man”. The key word here is white. Try to imagine a black man being appointed to such a role and a campaign immediately starting up to thwart his appointment because he is black. Difficult isn’t it?
Most contentiously promises were made by Theresa May in the Commons that the immigration status of the GT residents would not be checked:
“I would like to reassure people that we will not use this tragic incident as a reason to carry out immigration checks on those involved or on those providing information to identify victims or those assisting with the criminal investigation.
“We will make sure that all victims, irrespective of their immigration status, will be able to access the services they need including healthcare and accommodation.”
The Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan gave the same assurance :
“No action must be taken against anybody in Grenfell Tower who comes forward.
“There may be some people who are sub-letting, breaching their tenancy agreement.
“There may be people who have got friends and family visiting, who they are worried about if they report them because they haven’t got immigration status.
“All of those people should feel confident that if they come forward and speak to the authorities, that no action will be taken.
Making such a blanket promise is reckless because it could be used as a precedent for not deporting many illegal immigrants on the ground that they had suffered some trauma whether as an individual or as one of a number in some disaster like the GT fire. Applying the rule to the GT residents could also lead to difficult situations where a GT resident turned out to be not only an illegal immigrant but someone guilty of criminal acts either here or abroad. Are we really to believe that British officials will turn a blind eye to such people?
There is a third problem associated with the immigrant status promise. The Government may already have an idea of the number of illegal immigrants involved. It may be embarrassingly large. If so it would be in the interest of the Government and the politically correct left-liberal politicians generally not to have to admit that so lax are checks on the legal status of immigrants that many illegal immigrants were not only able to come to this country but somehow jump the huge queue social housing . But even if there was only a small number of such people in the GT it would still raise embarrassing and serious questions about the UK’s immigration control and the checks that Councils make on applicants for social housing. The problem vanishes if the immigration status of GT survivors is removed from the table.
The Government appears to be having second thoughts about illegals. Today (6th July) it is reported that those here illegally can stay for up to a year if they help the Public Inquiry and come forward before the end of August. The Government has also announced a relaxation of benefit rules such as not paying the “Bedroom Tax” if the flat they move to is larger than the one they have lost.
The support given to survivors
Apart from the £5 million from the taxpayer mentioned above many millions more have been raised by people making private donations to various funds for the survivors. From these sources those who lost a family member or members will be awarded £20,000 for each family member lost.
This raises two problems. The first is the efficiency and competence and indeed honesty with which the money is distributed. Already one person Anh Nhu Nguyen has been charged with obtaining money by falsely claiming to have lost his wife and son in the fire. It is alleged that he got nearly £10,000 from the fund set up to disburse the £5million from the taxpayer before the alleged fraud was discovered. Nguyen is also charged with getting food and various goods from different charities by making the same allegedly false claims. If this is true, and it is only an allegation at present, then it casts grave doubts on the competence of those giving out money or goods, whether they be public servants or private bodies such as charities. There is also the possibility of corruption by those controlling the money either through straightforward embezzlement or through collusion with claimants. The Government should make it clear now that a strict audit of the disposal of the money from the taxpayer and from private donations will be made.
The second problem is the question of creating a precedent. The private donations are one thing but does the £5 million given by the taxpayer mean that anyone losing their home through fire from now on will be treated similarly? Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen. The reality is that the Government response to the GT fire has been wholly exceptional. 303 people died in fires in England in 2015-16. It would be very interesting to know what Government assistance was given to the survivors and family members not involved in these fires or indeed to anyone who lost a home and/or family members in other accidents.
The treatment of the GT survivors has been exceptional also in the assurances given by the Council of finding new accommodation within or near the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Most dramatically , 68 newly built permanent homes have been purchased in Kensington Row, an upmarket development in the borough, for a reported cost of £10 million. These will be offered to the GT residents by the end of July. (Some of those who had paid £1 million plus to live in the non-social housing part of the development greeted the news with dismay). Again the question has to be asked would people suffering the loss of a home on an individual basis be treated like this?
The mainstream media response
The UK media response has been rather odd. Both the GT itself and the immediate area in which it is set have many people drawn from racial and ethnic minorities. Since the fire many of the GT residents interviewed are, judged by their accents or by biographical information they have provided, first generation immigrants. Shocking as the fire was I suspect that there will be quite a few native Britons who have sought and failed to get social housing who will be wondering how it is that first generation immigrants have been able to get such accommodation when tens of thousands of native Britons have failed to do so despite being on Council housing lists for many years. Understandably the allocation of very scarce social housing to immigrants causes a great deal of resentment amongst the native white workingclass and increasingly amongst the native white middle class who struggle to pay ever more extortionate private rents.
All of this leaves the UK mainstream media with a dilemma: on the one hand they want to trot out the usual politically correct cant about the joy of diversity, how enriching it is, how the sun would fail to rise were it not for the huge number of immigrant workers in the UK and so forth. On the other hand the UK media is rather twitchy about publicising the reality of exactly how much social housing goes to ethnic and racial minorities and generally it is reluctant to show parts of London (or parts of other cities such as Leicester) where the number of white faces is startlingly small.(Astonishingly in these supposedly non-discriminating times there are a considerable number of housing associations in the UK which restrict tenancies to particular racial and ethnic groups – needless to say white British or white English housing associations have the same degree of existence as unicorns). This is because the mainstream UK media know that the reality of what is happening to the UK is both dismaying the native population and is at odds with the multicuturalist politically correct happy clappy internationalist story the media – especially the broadcast media – regularly sell.
The result of the competing desires and concerns of the media in this particular set of circumstances was a nervous and muted commentary on the heterogeneous nature of the GT and its environs at the beginning gradually expanding to more adventurous praise of the joy of diversity as time passed and mediafolk thought it was safe to bring out the old political correct mantras because the ghastly nature of the event had naturally engendered sympathy for the victims.
The serious issue to be addressed
Stripped of all the political posturing and ineptitude there is a very serious issue to be addressed. Something has gone very wrong. Individual tenants and the tenants association for the GT had raised concerns about fire safety before the fire. Not only was no action taken but the block was recently renovated which resulted in the cladding of the exterior of the building with material which was flammable. Apart from burning the cladding may have both intensified the fire because it provided insulation and it could also have funnelled the flames upwards.
But there is something missing from the Grenfell Tower story. If the type of cladding used was seriously inflammable it would be reasonable to expect many fires involving such cladding because it has been widely used not just on residential housing but also places of work, hospitals, sporting venues and other places of entertainment. Yet the type of fire seen in the GT – a very rapid movement over most of the block – seems to have been unique in the UK, certainly in its intensity and tragic results.. This suggests there is something novel about the GT case which acted as an accelerant, that is, something which drove and intensified the fire. I would suggest the novelty was the communal gas supply system which was put in recently which had reservoirs of gas on each floor. . Eye witnesses to the fire described how as the fire reached a new floor explosions were heard. This presumably was gas exploding. If so that gas may well have been the accelerant energising the fire upwards. None of this is to suggest the potential dangers of cladding should be ignored. However, it is important to understand exactly how the fire got out of control so rapidly and to make a rational assessment of the dangers of fire other blocks with cladding present.
Could more have been done to save people during the fire? One thing which might have saved at least some of those who died was not done. It was very simple: get all the tenants to flood their flats by blocking their sinks and plugholes and turning their taps on at full blast. That would to a degree have obviated the fact that the upper stories could not be reached by fire brigade hoses. The fire brigade were in contact with many by phone and could have used a loudhailer system to alert everyone else who was in the building.
Did Right-to-Buy influence fire safety in the Grenfell Tower?
There is a complication I have not heard raised since the fire, namely, the effect of the policy of Right-To-Buy on Council properties with multiple habitation. Right-To-Buy is a Government scheme which originated under the Thatcher Government in the 1980s. It is a confidence trick whereby public assets (houses and flats) are sold to individuals who have been a tenant in a Council or housing association property for some years at a hefty discount from the market price . Hence, the Government has sold that which belongs to everyone .
The effect of Right-To-Buy on a tower block such as GT means that responsibility for the block will no longer be straightforward. Take a concrete example. Suppose a flat which is privately owned is above one which is Council owned and the top flat floods the flat below. The Council will say the owner of the flat which caused the flooding is liable to make good the damage to the Council flat . Easier said than done often enough because many flats bought under Right-To-Buy are sold on to private landlords who are looking for rental property. Such landlords are frequently very difficult to either track down or if they can be contacted, less than willing to make good the damage. Consequently, the tenant can be left in limbo while the freeholder and leaseholder fight it out.
The complications caused by Right-To-Buy may have been behind the extraordinary fact (according to the Council) that Grenfell residents said they did not want sprinklers fitted because of the upheaval this would cause. This could have been the leaseholders of flats whether occupying or renting out a flat did not want the sprinkler systems fitted because (1) their leasehold agreements would normally require the leaseholder to make a contribution towards their cost and/or (2) where the flats are rented out at commercial rates the installation of sprinklers might make renting them out difficult while the installation was proceeding.
But even if the tenants/leaseholders said they did not want sprinklers or any other fire safety precautions the Council as the freeholder should and could have overridden their wishes.
The failure of the authorities to produce a comprehensive list of those who died
The failure of the authorities to produce a list of those who died in the block is unsurprising because potentially there are eight classes of people who could have been living there :
- Council tenants and those living with them.
- Private tenants and those living with them in flats purchased under Right-to-Buy which are still owned by the Right-to-Buy purchaser.
- Private tenants and those living with them in flats owned by people who bought a flat originally purchased under Right-to-Buy from either the Right-to-Buy purchaser or from someone who purchased the flat after it had already been purchased from the Right-to-Buy purchaser. For example, the Right-to-Buy purchaser sells it on the free market to someone who then in turn sells it to someone else on the free market.
- Leaseholders and those living with them who purchased under Right-to-Buy and live in the flats they purchased.
- Leaseholders and those living with them who live in flats which they either purchased from someone who obtained the flat under Right-to-Buy or from leaseholders who purchased the flat after it was sold on following the Right-to-Buy purchase.
- Those who have obtained control of a flat illegally. For example, someone obtains a legal tenancy then “sells” the tenancy to someone who assumes the identity of the “seller” and takes control of the property and pays the rent. Alternatively the flat might simply be given to a friend or family member without telling the Council. The Council will assume that the person living under a bogus name is the original legal tenant
- This who are living illegally in a sublet part of a flat. These are sublettings which have not been authorised by the Council.
- Visitors in the GT on the night of the fire.
Of those eight categories the only readily identifiable people will be the Council tenants and the leaseholders who live in the flats. These details would have to be known to the Council because rents have to be collected and leaseholders need legal documents showing they are the leaseholder and giving the conditions of the lease. But that would only provide one person per flat whose name would be known to the Council.
The Council will also have details of leaseholders who were renting out properties. However, leaseholders who rent out are often difficult to track down because their contact details are not up to date or they use a company to manage their properties.
Even with Council flats the position is not necessarily simple (see 6 and 7) . Flats may have been taken over by people other than the legal tenant or part of a flat may have been sublet illegally. The Government has announced that there will be an amnesty for illegal sublettings but whether those who have illegally sublet know about the amnesty or trust the promise is another matter.
There is a further fly in the ointment. There may be people from the block who are illegal immigrants and consequently are reluctant to come forward to identify themselves. Nonetheless, it is not unreasonable to think that if there are those here illegally they will still be reluctant to come forward. As mentioned above Theresa May and Sadiq Khan’s have given assurances that no check will be made on the immigration status of any resident of the GT. However, it is probable that those who are illegally here will like the illegal subletters either not have heard the assurances or do not believe them.
Notwithstanding these difficulties the Council has many sources of information which should allow them to build up a fair picture of how many people were killed in the fire and who was living there. It is probable that a majority of the flats were legally occupied Council or leasehold properties. Even if only 50% of the surviving residents have made themselves known to the Council they would be able to give not only information about those living with them but at least basic details of their near neighbours. In fact the situation is much better than that with the Council saying that they have spoken to someone from 106 of the 129 flats in the block. This should allow a well founded estimate of the people who lived in the block and their identities.
In addition the Council will have Council tax records, the electoral register, social work records . Internet searches on databases such as the Electoral Register or even simply putting a tenant or leaseholders name and address into Google are worth a go.
If it proves possible to circumvent the privacy provisions of the Data Protection Act, what could be very effective would be the setting up of a website with all the known names of tenants, leaseholders and any other people already identified as resident in the tower block with an invitation to the public to send in any details of others they think lived in or were simply visiting the building on the night of the fire.
To date the death count is 80, but “Police investigating the Grenfell Tower fire have recovered 87 sets of human remains but cannot confirm they are from 87 individuals.”
What is a plausible number of residents for the GT? Reports say around 600. If that is correct it looks as though quite a few have simply gone AWOL.
The overall impression the aftermath of the fire has left
The first thing to note is the unpreparedness of the Council. They were completely out of their depth. The Council’s ineptitude was made more potent by the leaping on the bandwagon of victimhood and blame by all shades of the left from hard left activists to leading members of the Labour Party. The Government , already in a profoundly shaken and demoralised state after the disastrous election result in June, with a Prime Minister lacking precious little credibility and the mainstream media making great play with the idea of the callous haves not caring about the have nots, reacted with something close to panic and kept giving away more and more ground.
But there was another force at work. Many, probably the large majority of the residents of GT were either first generation immigrants or from ethnic minorities born in Britain. This brought political correctness into play. Imagine if the tower block had been overwhelmingly inhabited by white Britons. Would the response have been so fervid? Would the hard left have been out in such force? Would a black MP like David Lammy have been accusing the authorities of covering up the true death toll? Would millions of public money have been shelled out or 68expensive flats to rehouse those who had lost their homes? Or would the authorities and the politically active have been much less interested? I will leave those questions to the reader to answer.
Living In A Madhouse 