Earlier this week the 23 storey Grenfell Tower was consumed
by fire. Almost fifty years earlier on the other side of London a similar
tragedy occurred, involving another block of flats. On the morning of the 16th
of May 1968, only a couple of months after it had been completed, a gas
explosion at Ronan Point in Newham caused the partial collapse of the 22-storey
building resulting in four deaths. Now Grenfell Tower has been the scene of an
even worse catastrophe.
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| Ronan Point |
The Ronan Point disaster marked a watershed in the history of post-war British housing. For over a decade tower blocks had been embraced by the government as a convenient and (more importantly) cheap means of rehousing the ‘slum-dwellers’ of the country. So like a drab and grey fungus these structures broke out in our cities, blighting the urban landscape with horrifying rapidity. Established communities were swept away and replaced by ‘streets in the sky’, whether or not people actually wanted to live vertically. But the public became far warier of these behemoths after the Ronan Point disaster and the subsequent discovery that many other tower blocks had been poorly constructed. In order to save money many construction companies had built them as cheaply as possible. At Ronan Point the joints were stuffed with newspapers instead of cement. Practices such as these were false economy though, as many towers would be demolished over the following years. And though building regulations became more rigorous after 1968 this did not halt the demise of the tower block in Britain. While I personally would be delighted to see every last post-war atrocity, whether council estate, office block or urban bypass, destroyed it still remains true that the British people were failed in that era. For all the marvellous achievements of the welfare state after the war, the devastation of Britain’s cities remains an unforgivable crime. Our urban areas were degraded into inhuman wastelands, while the buildings erected in their place failed to even remain upright.
Grenfell Tower began to be constructed in 1972, and so
benefitted from improved building regulations in the wake of Ronan Point. Yet
in 2017 it still, quite literally, went up in flames. It seems that the
aluminium cladding recently installed on the structure was responsible for its
conflagration. This cladding had not been in place long, only several years. It
was installed on the behest of the local council, in order to tart up the drab
structure so as not to offend the wealthy residents of nearby Holland Park and
Notting Hill. Even more outrageously the council paid around £12.8 million to have it renovated, while
ignoring the social problems behind the facade. At this stage the official
death toll stands at 30, but it will certainly rise over the following weeks.
Regardless of how many died though, their blood is on the hands of Kensington
Council, who prioritised the tastes of their wealthiest citizens over the
safety of their poorest.
From the 1950’s on the people of Britain have been let down. Our
historic city-centres were torn apart and replaced by the alien and dreary
environments now so unfortunately familiar to us. In 1967 four people were
literally killed by post-war construction. The good intention to improve people’s
lives did not prevent irresponsible cost-cutting. But although it doesn’t justify
the deaths, at least then there was an altruistic, if paternalistic, attitude
to help the disadvantaged. Behind the tragedy at Grenfell Tower lay no such
admirable intentions. Embarrassed by the hulking structures under its
administration, Kensington Council tried to prettify them. No matter how dismal
conditions might be behind the cladding as long as the wealthy neighbours
weren’t offended. It’s a sign of how much things have changed since the
collapse of the post-war consensus. But despite that, in both cases the authorities
sought to cut expenses. What they saved in financial expense though they paid
for in lives.
