The 72 victims of Grenfell Tower Fire were murdered, victims of the violence of neglect. Here is the proof.
A year ago, a fire started on the fourth floor of Grenfell
Tower, due to a faulty appliance. The
fire spread quickly up the side of the building because the tower had been
refurbished in 2016. Flammable cladding
had been added to the exterior building as part of an £8 million refit which
appears to have primarily made the tower more cosmetically pleasing. The money was not spent on improving fire
safety within the building, it would appear, a cause for concern for residents’
groups for years. The initial cladding that was to be used is not illegal in
the UK but its use is restricted in other countries. To save costs a cheaper version was
eventually attached to the building, a more flammable version.
Once the fire caught, residents were advised to stay in
their flats. In 99% of all cases this is
the best advice, because flats are designed to be “fire resistant boxes”
surrounded by the fire-resistant block itself.
Tragically, due to the cladding, this was the wrong advice. The flammable centre of the cladding, plus
the gaps between the cladding and the wall acting effectively as a flue drawing
up air behind the cladding, causing the fire to shoot rapidly up the sides of
the building with a speed many described as totally unexpected and
unprecedented.
During the fire 72 people died, including a number of young
people and children. The flats were
mostly occupied by the poorer members of Kensington Borough, one of the
wealthiest places in the world.
Immediately after the fire, Theresa May was slow to respond and
reluctant to go to the scene of the disaster because the anger against her and
the government as palpable. This did
nothing but confirm a general feeling among the survivors that the government
didn’t care about them because they were not rich or powerful.
The rehousing of the 250 plus residents made homeless by the
fire was a fiasco. Although the borough
is full of unoccupied property, the council struggled to find the resources to
rehouse residents, some of which we sent out of the city, some hundreds of
miles away. Even now, a year later, many residents have not been permanently
rehoused. Meanwhile over a hundred other
tower block are clad in the same cladding as Grenfell. Nothing as yet has been done to deal with
this issue. The costs are
astronomical. If you took out a mortgage
on one of these flats, you are now in severe negative equity. Lives of ordinary people have effectively
been ruined around the country. Some
have also expressed the psychological impact of living in buildings where they
know they and their children are not safe.
After the
fire the anger of the residents was palpable.
They stormed the offices of the local council. Speaking to the media they explained their
battle to have their concerns heard by the developers and council about fire
safety. They had a clear sense that
their lives were seen as worth less than the financial benefits of development
and the financial burdens of improving safety.
Around the country many spoke out about the belief that the victims of
Grenfell were victims not of fire, but of neglect, exclusion and poverty. Speaking of the greed and dismissive nature of
the planners and council members alike, it was not uncommon to hear the
accusation “murderers!” Understandable in the circumstances; emotions were
running high.
But if the residents of Grenfell were victims, victims of
neglect and disregard for the value of their lives and those of their family,
can this neglect be seen as a form of violence directed against them? Isn’t it going too far to suggest the 72 dead
were murdered by cost-cutting and profiteering?
I don’t think so.
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| Michel Foucault |
In 1976 the French philosopher Michel Foucault gave a celebrated lecture where he outlined a new theory of state power. Instead of a state ruling though threats to life, he argued, modern states ruled by making promises about life. If ancient sovereign power made death or let live, modern biopower, as he called it, made life or let die.
At the same time as presenting a new theory of power,
Foucault also effectively invented a new idea of violence. If a state’s role is to protect the lives of
its citizens, and to enhance and prolong them, then any state that fails in
this duty, is committing an act of violence, the violence of exclusion and
neglect, the violence of letting die. He
went as far as to call the neglect of life on the part of the state a form of
murder.
His reasoning was devastatingly simple. If the modern state
extends its power over its citizens by the promise of valuing their lives,
through protection against violence, longevity due to health care and risk
assessment-based legislation, if it regulates and surveills its citizens with
the argument that it is for their protection, then it has entered into a social
contract with them, with you. The state
basically argues I will take from rights, and cash, and privacy, and power, in
return for the promise of protection of your life, and enhancement of your
living. This is certainly the promise of
social housing in the capital.
If then the state’s job is to make life, to make your life
safe and worth living right up until your dying breath, then when it lets you
die, here through short-term profit and the disregard of the voices of the
poor, then it has, by definition, killed you.
Not through direct action, as used to be the case centuries ago when
despots and torturers ruled the land, but through indirect inaction. Letting someone die, when you have a moral
and legal responsibility to keep them alive, is already a form of manslaughter.
So it is far from outlandish to suggest
that Grenfell was murder?
A year after Grenfell, while many commentators speak of the
neglect of the victims and the survivors, few would agree with many of the
survivors that the 72 dead murdered, perhaps viewing this as overly emotive,
too extreme. Yet on Foucault’s terms the
violence of exclusion and neglect on the part of a state whose power is based
on the promise of protection and enhancement of the life of its citizens
resulted in precisely that: the murder of neglect.
But if this is so, what purpose is served by calling
Grenfell murder, rather than an unfortunate accident? Naturally one outcome is prosecution, but no
one is going to be prosecuted for murder, or even manslaughter it would
seem.
Why does it matter that we call it murder rather than
manslaughter? Because murder implies
intent. Did the developers and council
intend to kill the residents? No but
that is not how the logic of what Foucault calls biopower works. The intent of a biopolitical state is the
intent to make live, so the active disregard of that intent is, logically, the
intent of no intention to protect. This
then is murder.
Calling it murder also makes the political point more
powerfully. The wealthy of London town,
and the cronyism that serves and supports them, is aggressively at the expense
of the ability of poor people to be able to live normal, safe lives. They are
increasingly forced into substandard rented accommodation that, due to lack of
real regulation, is often dangerous. Or
made to live in tower blocks which then have to be beautified by cladding to
enhance the views of the mansion that overlook them. Leading to the lethal, cheaper cladding
option, to maximise profit.
The money that should have been spent on vouchsafing the
lives of the residents od Grenfell, was instead spent adding value to the
property and to the area. Money that
could be used to make live, was instead squandered and the result was 72 people
we left to die, were let die. This is
the murder of neglect.
Grenfell needs to be a turning point in how the poor are
housed in this country. But evidence shows that already lessons learnt are
being ignored, those who are culpable are being protected, ex-residents are not
being looked after and meanwhile over a hundred tinder boxes containing tens of
thousands of ordinary souls, are just waiting for the next spark to set them
off. So yes, accusations of murder were
initially emotions boiling over, but on sober reflection, with just a little
bit of help from one of the world’s most respected thinkers, one year later, it
would appear they had a point. The
murder of neglect is an invisible crime, most of the time. But Grenfell brought out into the open, and
each of those tower blocks around the land dressed with equity-enhancing but
life-threatening cladding, is just one more crime-scene waiting to happen.
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