Conclusion: Brexit, Viewed from Grenfell Tower
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Conclusion: Brexit, viewed from Grenfell Tower On 14th June 2017, a fire took hold of Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey high-rise in the Lancaster West Estate in North Kensington, London. At times approximating the temperature of an incinerator, the building smouldered for days afterwards. The tower was comprised of 129 flats, most of which were social housing managed by the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO). The official death toll of 71 residents remains hotly disputed by many witnesses and community members. But even this number still makes the event Britain’s deadliest structural fire since the beginning of the 20th century. So appallingly inept and callous was the local government response to the fire and its aftermath that within five days the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), one of the richest local councils in the country, had been side-lined at the highest level of government in favour of a “gold command”, which then coordinated the response. The intensity and spread of the fire, seemingly starting in one 4th floor flat, is widely attributed to the flammability of the cladding that was attached to the exterior of the building as part of an insulation upgrade between 2015 and 2016. An original contractor had been dropped by the Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) in favour of a cheaper competitor. Building experts warned in 2014 that the material scheduled for Grenfell Tower had to be used in tandem with non-combustible cladding (Prescod and Renwick 2017). Nonetheless, a cladding that featured superior fire resistance was ruled out due to cost, and a sub-standard type fitted instead. Ultimately, RBKC’s building control team certified that work complied with “relevant provisions” (Prescod and Renwick 2017). Many community members, leaders and activists have criticised the proposed terms of the public inquiry into Grenfell Tower, which focuses on the immediate causes of the fire, the responsibilities of the local authority, and the local and national response. They argue that the wider context of gentrification must frame any investigation. Taking this prompt, I want to connect Grenfell to the racialization of the undeserving poor that I have presented in this book. It will be remembered that as far back as the second half of the nineteenth century, middle-class philanthropists and policy makers had become obsessed with the dysgenic effects of urban slums and poor housing. Fast-forward to the post-war national compact, and housing had become the prime element through which the provision of social assistance was politicized and racialized, with Black commonwealth citizens considered incompetent to look after public stock. By the end of the Thatcher era, the council estate had become synonymous with the white underclass and in more general terms with the undeserving poor. Tony Blair subsequently chose to launch his war against “social exclusion” from the Aylesbury estate in South London. While Philip Blond’s high-minded Red Tory philosophy identified in estates the civic collapse of indigenous working-class culture. In the aftermath of the 2011 uprisings and riots, David Cameron intonated that estates bred cultures that glorified in violence. Originally, social housing was intended to be occupied by a cross-section of society. But Thatcher’s introduction of a right for residents to buy social housing in 1979 induced a trend whereby the poorest who could not afford to buy have remained in occupation whilst at the same time expenditure on social housing has consistently declined. This trend has only intensified in the years of austerity that have accompanied the global financial crisis. Between 2009 and 2015, capital commitment by government towards building homes has decreased from 0.7% (GBP 11.4 billion) to 0.2% (GBP5.3 billion) of GDP (“How Public Money Is Spent on Housing” n.d.). Nevertheless, local councils still retain a duty to find accommodation for vulnerable residents. Housing benefit paid to private landlords for this purpose has risen dramatically despite costs to local councils being approximately 23% greater. Not only the physical stock but the very principles of managing social housing have transformed. When New Labour introduced the decent homes standard, leading the way to the refurbishment of most social housing between 2000 and 2010, they introduced a conditionality. In order to fund their upgrade, residents would need to agree to the management function being transferred from the direct control of their local authority to a housing association or registered social landlord who could then access private funding (Hanley 2017). More recently, the Localism Act of 2011 has enabled local government to set its own guidelines as to how to manage waiting lists. Some of the new innovations at local level have included workfare elements, such as making volunteering a criterion for registry (Koksal 2014). Meanwhile, the government has pushed to fix tenancies between two and five years, making provisions far more mutable and much less certain (Stephens et al. 2016). Additionally, government has recently introduced a new “affordable rent” category that offers housing associations lower grants but permits them to raise rents to up to 80% of market levels. These changes have empowered/compelled social housing management organizations to make resident selection more contingent on deserving/underserving distinctions at the same time as shortening tenancies and increasing rents. I would argue, then, that social housing sector can be considered exemplary of the wider shifts in welfare provision authored by New Labour and Conservatives and described in chapter six. Grenfell Tower’s management organization must be assessed as part of this broader context marked by increased contingency and moral adjudication of public provisions alongside their steady marketisation. KCTMO was formed in 1996 with the transfer of the borough’s entire social housing stock - approximately 9700 homes at the time. Although KCTMO is non-profit, as an arms-length management organization it has absorbed millions of pounds a year in management fees and interest charges, leaving approximately just one pound in three collected from rent for maintenance and repairs (Ebrahimi 2017). What is more, in an extremely unequal borough such as Kensington and Chelsea, KCTMO helps to functionally separate provision for the poor (social housing) from resources for the affluent. Indeed, Grenfell residents report that KCTMO usually treated them with contempt, even going so far as to issue cease and desist orders against the most persistent critics of its management practices (Prescod and Renwick 2017). Of especial importance is the Grenfell Action Group, which for many years called attention to the problems that ultimately led to the catastrophic fire (grenfellactiongroup 2017). In all these ways, KCTMO provides an extreme example of the way in which public accountability between tenant/citizen, local authority and national government has been significantly compromised by the long-term decline of and more recent management transformations in social housing. This fatal mal-management of Grenfell Tower must be contextualised within longer-term processes of gentrification and social cleansing. This is no conspiracy theory. A freedom of information request revealed that in 2010 RBKC put together a redevelopment plan that proposed bulldozing the entire Lancaster West estate on which Grenfell sits (Prescod and Renwick 2017). More recently, the council leased North Kensington library to a private school, and has planned to demolish the building which houses the Kensington and Chelsea College of Further Education in order to build a private housing development (Gentleman 2017). All these issues – managerial, governmental, economic etc – have led to a deterioration in accountability for the provision of public goods. And such accountability has especially been eroded by national government’s desire to cut regulation. Since the creation of Tony Blair’s Better Regulation Task Force, “better” has meant “less” (Cobham 2017). The most recent Conservative Manifesto in 2017 affirmed a continued commitment to the same project. The One-in-Two-Out rule endorsed by the Manifesto espouses the principle that for every new piece of regulation introduced, two existing pieces should be rescinded. The manifesto also supported the Red Tape Challenge, which effectively claims that excess regulation has eroded the self-help principle practiced by responsible citizens. The Challenge encourages individuals and organizations to proactively inform government of any red-tape that stands in their way (“About Red Tape Challenge” 2015). Prior to the 14th June fire, the Grenfell Action Group had become concerned with the findings of the Lakanal House fire in 2009, where 6 people (including 3 children) died in a 14-storey South London social housing block. The inquest found that a number of renovations had removed fire-stopping material and that safety inspections by Southwark council had not identified the problem (Wainwright and Walker 2017). At the time, the coroner of the Lakanal House case called for a review of part B of the Building Regulations, which covers fire safety. This part was last reviewed in 2006 even though the intervening years have seen constant innovations in building technology and materials. Housing minister Gavin Barwell reported to the House of Commons in October 2016 that the government would indeed be reviewing Part B (Barnes 2017). But no review was forthcoming up until the events of June 14th. Once partially comprised of slum housing, North Kensington now includes some of the most valuable real estate in Britain. The network of community activists and organizations in the local area who have resisted mal-management, gentrification, social cleansing and deregulation are part of an historical struggle over meaningful community control of the area’s redevelopment. They consider the Grenfell fire to be a seminal and galvanising moment in this struggle. Take, for instance, the Westway: an elevated motorway originally built in the late 1960s which cuts through the borough just north of Grenfell Tower.