In What Ways Is The Recent Grenfell Tower Tragedy Illustrative Of The Deeper History Of Class Domination In Britain?

In what ways is the recent Grenfell Tower tragedy illustrative of the deeper history of class domination in Britain?

Her Majesty's Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea witnessed a tragedy of great magnitude on the fourteenth of July, 2017. Except, it wasn t really the borough that witnessed or felt it, it was the overwhelmingly black and Asian, migrant, working class and impoverished, unworthy people within this rich, white borough who experienced, and are still experiencing the damaging and long-lasting effects of a social housing tower block home to over six-hundred people burning to it s very core. The Grenfell Tower tragedy was sparked by a faulty fridge but the denial of residents claims, the decision to cover the brutalist structure with a flammable but attractive material, and the institutionalised xenophobia are all to blame, and each of these reflects a deeper history of class domination in Britain. David Lammy has described the residents of the tower as the working poor certainly not powerful, very little agency (2017). This essay will explore the class element of the Grenfell Tower Tragedy in terms of the incident and it s predeterminants, the immediate response to the fire, and the aftermath of the fire. Overwhelmingly, we will see that class domination, namely through austerity is a pivotal theme in the tragedy, and is further complicated and made more insidious by issues of national belonging and racism, both of which intersect with class.

The crux of why Grenfell was entirely destroyed by what was meant to be a contained fire, was ultimately because of budgeting and economic concerns. In an interview for Channel 4, Akala, a MOBO-award winning musician, argues the people who died and lost their homes, this is because they are poor there is nowhere that rich people live in a building without adequate fire safety (2017). The building s design was flawed: there was only one stairwell for the entire building (which abides by British regulations but contravenes many EU standards), which later contributed to the deaths of many during the fire. Whilst the flats were designed, Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) argue, to contain a fire within a single flat, the disaster demonstrated that this was certainly not the case. It has also been widely documented that the tower was refurbished in 2016 using flammable cladding the fire could have been prevented from spreading for just two pounds per unit more. One cannot help but link the unsound structure and design of the building to the fact that it was social housing, inhabited largely by people of North African and Middle Eastern descent, who coincidentally are also largely Muslim. Black Africans and Caribbeans suffer from a relatively stable forty-per cent poverty rate compared to just nineteen-per cent for white people in the UK (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2017). Safe housing has not been a priority for the council regarding these poor, marginalised groups.

The apathy regarding the standard of living of those living in the Tower largely reflects class domination which is well established in Britain. Gilroy (1987) argues that Britain s Black population have become a sub-sub proletariat, suffering from extreme forms of disadvantage and exploitation Grenfell tower is just an expression of black lives being valued at less than white bodies. The council s website itself sends a clear message: While the majority of the borough is well developed, there are a small number of sites which could provide development opportunities and a further boost to economic prosperity more explicitly, there are areas of the borough inhabited by mostly black, low-income people, which serve as obstacles to the borough s development. This echoes an additional argument of Gilroy (1987), that the black presence in Britain is constructed as a problem or a threat to the united, homogenous, white national we . This has led many to consider Grenfell Tower as an act of social cleansing, designed to rid the seventy-one per cent white borough of its ethnic minority residents.

But for Hall (1980), race is the modality through which class is lived . The disproportionate victims being of ethnic minority backgrounds do not simply reflect racial hierarchies, but also a long-standing history of an oppressed working-class British population. Virdee (2014: 25) highlights the use and abuse of the white working-class community to serve different political functions, most significantly in forging a racist form of nationalism. Whilst the tragedy was not colour-blind, the poor, even having white privilege, have been disproportionate victims. As McKee (2017) argues, this deeply reflects the same forces which were at play during Hurricane Katrina in 2005: a disaster that targeted the poor, of which the poorest were black and other ethnic minority people. However, Grenfell was not a natural disaster, but the result of human inaction and value systems. A British, Conservative government who does not govern in the interests of the poor has been instrumental in making cuts to social housing, falling from 5.5 million homes in 1980-81 to 3.8 million homes in 2010-11, and slowly declining (gov.uk, Social Housing Lettings 2013) investment is no longer in social housing. Austerity has struck local authorities, who then have to choose where to direct their resources, and for Kensington and Chelsea, this has not been dwellings such as Grenfell Tower which were in urgent need of rejuvenation. Whilst social welfare in Britain in the post-war period was viewed as a golden age (Virdee, 2014: 99), this has been relatively short lived, with cuts to public services disproportionately affecting the poor.

Whilst the occurrence of Grenfell Tower tragedy was largely to do with politics of the poor and what Gillborn (2008) has called minoritized groups , it s immediate response was also a class issue. Skeggs has been instrumental in articulating the agency, or lack thereof, of working class people in Britain. She considers the example of the white-working class and how cultural inscri ptions, such as being lazy and corrupt, are readily placed on this group because they are not attributed with agency (2004: 87). This principle can be expanded to include the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire. Residents had been encouraged, in already existing fire safety information and by firefighters at the time, to abide by the Stay Put policy, not knowing that this was not applicable in the case of recently renovated, and especially newly compartmented and cladded buildings (Halliday, 2017). As David Lammy suggested: good working people do what they re told so they stay in their flats, and they don t challenge authority (2017). Inscri ptions of class and its meanings are so internalised and successful upon these vulnerable bodies that they have ultimately resulted in the deaths of possibly hundreds of working class people, who didn t challenge authority because they saw themselves as uncapable and law-abiding. Whitehead (2017) suggests: poor people, BAME people, older people, LGBT people and disabled people are easier to dismiss as an irritation or as trouble makers than white, middle-class folks who broadly possess more money, power and influence. It would be interesting to consider how upper-middle class people would react to the same policy in the event of a fire. Skeggs (2004: 71) explains that people enter the labour market with different values, which makes them more or less susceptible to exploitation, so in this sense, sex, race and gender do matter . The value attributed to the residents of Grenfell was low because of their poverty and race, which in turn inscribes ideas of powerlessness onto them which have, very unfortunately, proved true.

Whilst some may have expected a radical display of empathy after the tragedy, the long-term response has merely echoed existing relations of domination and apathy. Since hundreds of people have been made homeless and propertyless since the fire, one would expect a large-scale government disaster response. However, most of the relief has come from the local community and the wider British population. Lammy makes a significant point: This is not Victorian Britain. We should not delight that it s the charity [doing all the work] (2017). His point raises questions: Who has taken responsibility? Why has the government failed, yet again, to support these innocent victims? The Prime Minister visited the area in the days following the fire, guarded from any contaminating contact with the bereaved and newly homeless , dead to emotion or empathy (Toynbee, 2017), in contrast to Jeremy Corbyn who comforted victims. This is symbolic because Conservative policies have largely informed the contemporary penalising of the poor that has been made explicit through Grenfell. Her lack of empathy demonstrates a lack of understanding about what this tragedy has exposed a neglect of the poor in this country, so much so that it has resulted in merciless deaths of many people.

The government has shaped the language surrounding the fire: they have avoided referring to the victims of the fire as dead, but instead used the term missing . Khan explains: it hasn t been a week and already the media is attempting to downplay this corporate mass murder by dumbing down the death toll and giving less news coverage gradually. The denial of the number of deaths has been taken as patronising by many local residents, such as Nadia who says: have you seen the building? There s more than 17 people dead where s the rest? We re packing boxes, we re sending food, to who? They ve died! (Press Tv News, 2017). Police have suggested that the death toll will not be known until 2018 (Corcoran, 2017), which provides a time frame for the government to recover from the public outcry that has ensued since the tragedy. A public enquiry has been formed, but naturally, many are sceptical of the outcomes. Khan states: perhaps if the Grenfell tragedy was an obscenity committed by enemies of the state and not the state itself, we may have had a chance of receiving better justice, the dead would have received some dignity and the media and government would be on our side . Issues of responsibility and justice are consistently being avoided by elite groups who survive through each successive tragedy, while poor victims bear homelessness and trauma.

Ultimately, the unsafe design of the building and fire safety mechanisms were left inadequate because poor people are not seen as proper consumers in Britain and are thus socially less valuable than their wealthy counterparts. This class exclusion exists in tandem with Britain s racial politics, where minority groups disproportionately occupy social housing most of those living in Grenfell paid the price of being a doubly minoritized group, through race and class. The systems in place for responding to such an event were inadequate yet maintained, and as various theorists have suggested, the tradition of working-class people being removed of agency was at work. The long- term response has been equally insufficient no groups have yet been held accountable for the fire, many victims still remain homeless, and the government remains static. It may be expected that numbers of deaths will not be revealed until it is politically suitable and media coverage reduces. This has led David Lammy to describe the event as corporate manslaughter , which may appear extreme but in reality, the Grenfell tragedy fulfils this definition.

Akala, speaking in an interview with Jon Snow. People died in London fire because they were poor . Published 15 June 2017 on Channel 4 website.

Corcoran, K. Police say the final Grenfell Tower death toll won t be known until next year . Published June 28, 2017. London: Business Insider UK.

Gillborn, D. Racism and Education coincidence or conspiracy? London: Routledge, 2008.

Government Statistics, Social Housing Lettings . Published in 2013 on UK government website.

Gilroy, P. There Ain t No Black in the un ion Jack . London: Routledge, 1987

Hall, S. Chapter 12- Race, articulation, and societies structured in dominance , in UNESCO, Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism , 1980.

Halliday, J. Stay put safety advice to come under scrutiny after Grenfell Tower fire Published Wednesday 14 June 2017, London: The Guardian.

Hajra Khan, Why Was Grenfell Towers Allowed to Burn?, http://www.lappthebrand.com/?p=3404

Joseph Rowntree Foundation: Poverty rate by ethnicity , Published 22 March 2017

Lammy, D., speaking in an interview with Owen Jones. `The Grenfell Tower fire is a crime of epic proportions`. (Published 21 June 2017, Youtube) Martin McKee, Grenfell Tower fire: why we cannot ignore the political determinants of health BMJ 2017 357 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j2966 (Published 20 June 2017)

Press TV News, London s Grenfell Tower blaze killed 500 residents: Local resident (DJ Isla/Nadia), Published Saturday June 17, 2017.

Skeggs, B. Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge 2004

Satnam Virdee, Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider. Chapters 1, 2, 9.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Website: Economic Profile.

Toynbee, P. Theresa May was too scared to meet the Grenfell survivors. She s finished . Published Friday 16 June, 2017. London: The Guardian.

Whitehead, J. Grenfell Tower is about race and class . Published 22 June, 2017. The F Word Blog.