The Grenfell Tower inferno shames London

It takes a lot to make me feel ashamed of London, my beloved home city. But yesterday’s tower-block inferno did it. The raging fire at Grenfell Tower in North Kensington, the disturbing speed with which this home to hundreds was reduced to a smouldering shell of a building, heaps shame on this city. It is positively Dickensian, a hellish scene out of place in 2017, like a violent echo from an older era when safety, especially the safety of the poor, was of little moment. London needs to look in the mirror. This cannot just be chalked up to ‘tragedy’.

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that it was the low social status of the inhabitants of the tower that left them vulnerable to this horror. That’s a serious charge, I know, but how else do we explain that residents who complained about fire hazards were ignored? The Grenfell Action Group residents’ association complained to the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) — which manages Grenfell — about ‘terrifying power surges’ caused by ‘faulty wiring’.