Grenfell Tower – A Monstrous Crime against the Working Class

What value does capitalism place on a worker’s life? For the sake of a measly saving of UKP 5,000 Grenfell Tower was „refurbished” with cladding material that did not even meet the minimum standards of fire safety, resulting in the needless and horrific deaths of scores of working class tenants. Meanwhile the owner of the property, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), sits on a surplus of UKP 270 million and last year handed out a rebate of UKP 100 in a clear electoral bribe to its wealthiest residents.

Words cannot adequately express our party’s outrage at the utter callousness and brutality of our class enemies. Callousness that extends from the evasive blather and buck-passing of the politicians who should be held responsible, to the commercial greed of the network of contractors responsible for the grotesque cost and corner-cutting in the so-called „regeneration project”-not least the cladding supplier, which deleted references to Grenfell from its promotional website at 4 am in the morning, while the fire was raging.

RBKC is the richest borough in the United Kingdom, home to countless millionaires who have racked up their huge fortunes from proletarian toil in every corner of the globe. But bordering Shepherd’s Bush and White City in the northwest of the borough, below the A40 Westway, it is also home to thousands of workers-both native British and recent immigrants-who live in cramped, poorly maintained and unsafe conditions. It is one of the poorest council wards in the country, and at the same time, an area with a rich tradition of working class struggle and culture that cuts across all ethnic and national boundaries. Inequality and class division is nowhere starker than it is here, at the heart of the UK capital.

There is nothing intrinsically unsafe about high-rise accommodation-after all, many of the world’s capitalist elite live in luxury skyscrapers. But when non fire-retardant materials are used, when there are inadequate fire exits, and when fires cannot be contained in a limited area, high-rise tenement blocks are quite literally death traps.

The tenants of Grenfell had been instructed to stay inside their flats while any fire was contained and extinguished. Instead, the non fire-retardant cladding meant the fire spread rapidly on the outside of the building. Some of those on the lower floors who disobeyed these instructions managed to escape. Those on the upper storeys had no chance.

Grenfell Tower’s direct landlord, the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) supposedly exists to represent the interests of the tenants. Today, its so-called mission statement, „Delivering excellent housing services through resident-led management” makes sick reading. The reality is that KCTMO is a fraudulent front for the borough’s slum landlordism.

In December 2016 the Grenfell Action Group, set up in 2010 to protect the interests of residents against mistreatment by RBKC and KCTMO wrote prophetically:

„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, the KCTMO, and bring an end to the dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation that they inflict upon their tenants and leaseholders. We believe that the KCTMO are an evil, unprincipled, mini-mafia who have no business to be charged with the responsibility of looking after the everyday management of large scale social housing estates and that their sordid collusion with the RBKC Council is a recipe for a future major disaster.„

Needless to say, Grenfell Action Group activists were bullied, branded as „troublemakers”, and some of the more vocal Grenfell residents even faced legal action. In particular, two young women, Mariem Elgwahry and Nadia Choucair, both of them feared dead in the Grenfell Tower tragedy, reportedly received solicitors’ letters ordering them to stop their campaign for improved safety.

The response of the authorities in the aftermath of the disaster was likewise pitifully slow and inadequate given that this blaze was the worst to hit London since the Second World War. It is difficult to imagine that this would have been the case if a similar disaster had occurred at the other end of the borough, in Sloane Square or on the King’s Road.

Nobody from central or local government took charge and the situation was made much worse by recent cuts to the London’s fire services-ten fire stations closed, and 27 fire engines removed and 552 jobs axed in 2014 alone. Consequently the emergency services worked under severe pressure, with many firefighters themselves suffering burns and injuries. „Put it this way, you’re meant to work on a fire for a maximum of four hours, we’ve been here for 12”, said one firefighter.

Volunteers stepped in where the authorities failed, providing what relief and help they could to survivors and the families of victims. They vented their anger against Prime Minister Theresa May and the leader of RBKC, who went out of their way to avoid residents.

It is also clear that the Government and RBKC have taken the opportunity to break an angry and potentially militant working class community. Modest proposals to requisition empty flats for temporary accommodation were rejected by the Government as an „attack on private property”. Rather than rehouse the survivors locally, RBKC chose to disperse them far and wide. It is likely that the authorities will, furthermore, use the land conveniently vacated as a result of the fire to build luxury flats rather than new social housing.

While little was done to contain the actual fire, the Government and its spin doctors swung into action to contain the burning anger. It was already clear to survivors and their supporters on the day after the fire that the death toll was enormous. But the Government, with the help of its lackeys in the media, did their utmost to play down the loss of life while spouting platitudes about „lessons to be learned”.

The Grenfell Tower tragedy is an indictment of the growing inequality of capitalist society and the poverty that exists even in the world’s wealthiest cities. The victims were murdered in clear sight of some of the richest people in the world. Their deaths are the responsibility of a system that is driven by an insatiable need to thieve off the proletariat by every means possible, not just at work but in their homes and in their social environment: for the accumulation of wealth at one end of the social spectrum through the accumulation of misery and degradation at the other.

The predictable response of those on the political left wing of capitalism has been, as ever, the demand for inquiries, more accountability, and more democracy. But these are all part of the swindle, as institutions like KCTMO, and previous „pubic inquiries”, demonstrate. They provide the ruling class with ideological cover until the next disaster-inevitably-occurs.

By contrast, genuine activism on the ground, within the working class, such as by the Grenfell Action Group, provide instruments for the immediate defence of tenants. Ultimate victory over the capitalist system and its horrors can however only be won when the party of the proletariat-the Communist Party-succeeds in unifying and leading all of the class’s struggles.