Grenfell Tower: how capitalism and so-called democracy kill

Look at the system and see the real truth

In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear reactor melted down, quickly killing scores of people and spreading a cloud of radioactivity across Europe. Figures are disputed, but thousands may have eventually died from the meltdown’s effects. The authorities soon homed in on the cause and the alleged culprits. The managers on duty had mishandled a safety test causing the reactor to go into uncontrolled chain reaction. They were duly publicly scapegoated and prosecuted.

But a deeper look revealed a different picture and true causes, which were the product of a systemic culture of fear, secrecy and lack of accountability that characterized the Soviet apparat. The design of the reactor was flawed but, rushing the design into production, the authorities had not shared this information. This cover-up was, in turn, a function of communist ideology and Soviet culture.

Notably, these were longer-term factors, in contrast to the short-term actions that immediately triggered the disaster. However, these were the systems that ultimately precipitated those actions and the accident. Understanding this is systems thinking: the patterns, cultures and mental models from which all phenomena ultimately arise. Systems thinking is about root causes. Any social, political or environmental outcome arises from a system.

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On Wednesday last week, the public inquiry into the Grenfell Tower disaster released its long-awaited 1700-page report. For non-Brits, Grenfell Tower was the London block of flats where 72 people lost their lives in a terrible fire in 2017.

The report pointed the finger of blame at multiple actors: the architects who designed the refurbishment of the building, the building companies who used the flammable cladding that caused the fire and covered up the fire risks, the tenants’ association that didn’t listen to the vocal safety concerns of the tenants, the local Council that failed to conduct adequate safety checks (and didn’t listen to the tenants either), all the way up to central government whose Conservative party minister, in a libertarian frenzy to cut ‘regulation’, abolished the fire safety laws that governed public buildings. The report described the failures as ‘systematic’.

Various individuals were named as culpable and wilfully negligent: a few may be prosecuted, though it appears that thanks to government austerity the overburdened criminal justice system won’t be able to bring the cases to court until 2027 at the earliest (more than ten years after the fire), though the police investigation has so far cost £100m. The report has been in the headlines for a couple of days. The Prime Minister gave a short apology in parliament the day after the report. MPs could be seen leaving the chamber as he spoke, many had already left.

I’m sure some are glad that the culprits have been named and that some of them at least may - eventually - face justice. The guilty companies will probably face fines; the guilty individuals will probably not be sent to prison. I hope the victims’ families get lots of compensation, but it will be paid by the taxpayer not those responsible for their relatives’ deaths and nothing can truly compensate them for their loss. Perhaps the public is reassured that the catastrophe has at last been properly investigated and blame duly assigned.

But the report, while liberally using the term ‘systematic’, doesn’t actually talk about the system that produced the eventual outcome of the fatal fire. So let’s talk about it. Let’s get to root causes.

Starting with the private companies: why did the architects and building companies neglect and ignore the risks of the inflammable cladding that was to turn the building into a deadly inferno? In private emails, company employees and directors were pretty clear: safer cladding would cost too much. What about the - known - dangers of the unsafe cladding? They should be covered up. Safety concerns were raised with one senior company manager. He replied that the critics could “go fuck themselves”.

So what was the motive for choosing the lethal cladding? The profit motive. It was cheaper. As The Guardian put it,

“The picture that emerges [from the report] is of companies with a drive for profit and commercial success at the expense of anything that gets in their way.”

In capitalism, everything else - even lives - is suborned to the profit motive. The government minister in charge of housing was driven by the same factor - to maximise growth, you should cut regulation, even if that regulation was meant to save lives. Capitalism is, literally, deadly.

And what of government? Government is supposed to correct the market and protect the public. Instead it did the opposite. It sought to enable profit maximisation at the cost of people’s lives. Arconic, the multi-billion pound American company that made the deadly cladding, was, according to the inquiry report, “determined to exploit what it saw as weak regulatory regimes…including the UK”. Notably, the minister directly responsible for that regulatory regime, the villainous Eric Pickles, was scornful of the inquiry, complaining that attendance wasted his time. He obviously did not feel responsible: he said so.

Needless to say, Pickles had zero contact with the tenants of Grenfell House. He would not even have been aware of their existence. But in our system he is supposed to be responsible for their safety. Instead, he chose the ideology of the free market - capitalism - as the most important factor. (Pickles is now an unelected Lord in the chamber which scrutinises government legislation. It is thought highly unlikely that he will be prosecuted.) And it wasn’t just Pickles. His decisons took place during years of the Cameron government’s deregulatory ‘bonfire of redtape’.

“The report is clear that this goes back decades…It’s not just the Conservative government that [the inquiry chair is] pointing the finger at. But it is clear that in the [Prime Minister] Cameron years, this drive to cut red tape dominated decision making, and that the policy dominated the thinking in Pickles’ department.” (source).

It’s sometimes opaque how supposedly ‘representative’ democracy enables the exploitation and destruction wrought by capitalism. In a searing, tragic moment, Grenfell precisely, inescapably demonstrates this mechanism at work. The result: the supposedly ‘democratic’ system of government and capitalism conspired to kill people. They were a lethal combination.

And what of the people most affected, including those who were to die? Tenants voiced their concerns about the safety of the building. Edward Daffarn sent a message directly to this effect eight months before the fire. He was ignored, by the tenants’ association, by the local Council and of course no prizes for guessing whether his concerns ever made it to the inboxes of central government officials, let alone ministers.

The inquiry report threw the local community a bone, “those who emerge from the events with the greatest credit, and whose contributions only emphasised the inadequacies of the official response, are the members of the local community”.

But the inquiry itself hardly put them first either. In a process that lasted more than seven years, the ‘Grenfell families’ were not allowed to interrogate the witnesses themselves. This was the preserve of highly-paid lawyers (the inquiry is estimated to have cost £200m). The fathers, mothers and children of those killed were granted precisely four days out of 7 years and over 300 hearings of the inquiry to put their concerns and questions directly.

Such is the quality of accountability in our current system, as well I know from my own experience at the pathetic ‘Chilcot’ inquiry into the Iraq War to which I testified, which likewise took many years at vast expense to produce an enormous but mealy-mouthed report, and resulted in precisely nil prosecutions for the lies and war crimes of the Blair government, whose former members, like Alastair Campbell, enjoy lucrative careers, and doubtless enjoy their index-linked government pension too. Blair himself, obscenely, has just published a “major new book on the art and science of leadership” (per the publisher), no doubt for a large fee (currently secret).

Like Grenfell, Chilcot’s report was in the headlines for no more than a day; the Prime Minister (Cameron this time) gravely told parliament that its recommendations would be implemented. A few months later, I checked with a friend in the Cabinet Office (the central part of central government). Of course, the report had been entirely forgotten. Not even a all-staff memo (perhaps telling civil servants not to tell lies or break international law) had resulted from its publication.

So, to drum the point home if it’s not already clear, it was the political and economic system - capitalism + ‘democracy’ - that killed the people of Grenfell. They died horribly, from the inhalation of smoke and toxic gases, and in terror, some as they tried to escape. Grenfell, like Chernobyl, might be an extreme case. But the truth is often revealed in extremes.

Others have gone further. Gillian Slovo, who wrote a play based on the testimonies of the victims, has said the system worked as it was supposed to. She quotes Karim Musilhy, who lost his uncle in the fire:

“The system isn’t broken. The system was built specifically this way to keep us where we are and them where they are.”

‘Us’ are the tenants; ‘them’ the government. One of the reasons the tenants were ignored is that many were first-generation immigrants, some asylum seekers, mostly non-white. A more politically marginalised community is hard to imagine. If instead the inhabitants of Grenfell had been white middle-class lawyers and TV producers would the Council have ignored them?

And there were marginalised among the already marginalised. About 40% of the building’s vulnerable and disabled residents, for whom escape plans were never prepared, died. In his lengthy statement introducing the report, the inquiry’s head, Sir Martin Moore-Bick, never mentions the words ‘race’ or ‘disability’ (though he does mention ‘vulnerable people’). Neither word appears in the 52-page executive summary. These persistent and structural marginalisations are, as ever, relegated. By ignoring them, Moore-Bick has in fact reinforced this exclusion. His statement is a recitation of institutional failings by the companies and authorities concerned. He never mentions structure or system. Black, brown and disabled people died in grossly disproportionate numbers on that terrible night. This fact receives from Moore-Bick no special attention.

So, we can add the systemic exclusion and marginalisation of non-white races and the disabled to the list of root causes. The inquiry report doesn’t say this, any more than it cites the ultimate and deadly effects of our system of government and economy.

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When I was a young man, someone said to me, so if you’re so sure of the problem, what’s your solution?

This can be easily summed up: what if the residents had been in charge of the building?

We cannot know for sure that this would have avoided the tragedy, but we can be sure that the tenants would have taken their safety concerns much more seriously than the Council or Whitehall government that were supposed to protect them. When I tweeted this idea, someone responded with the usual criticism of bottom-up self-government, that the residents might not be willing or competent to manage their own building.

But it’s easy to imagine a system where an group elected by all the tenants take the decisions, informed by independent disinterested experts (who would of course cost much less than all the officials currently charged with the building’s safety¹) and mutually-supported by a network of likewise self-governing buildings. Not really so implausible. I lived in a self-governing building like this in New York City. It’s called a cooperative (though of course there the city government maintained ultimate control).

Will this happen? The report didn’t recommend it (instead it recommended safety reviews and more regulators). Neither did Starmer mention it in parliament. In fact, as far as I can see, no one has suggested it, so trammelled are we by the mental boundaries that define what’s possible.

The covert purpose of public inquiries is to reassure the public that lessons have been learned and that catastrophes like Grenfell- or the Iraq War - will not be repeated. It’s a process of re-anaesthetizing the public into its mistaken belief that the ‘system’ works for them; after all, the system is capable of correcting itself. We can only hope that this time the patient doesn’t go back to sleep. I’m not optimistic. Are you?

As ever, please feel free to comment below.

1. It’s hard to discover the salary of the Chief Executive of the council but I did find a news report that their deputy was paid an almost incredible ££447,476 in 2020