After Grenfell Tower, don't forget Ronan Point

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 16^th 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.

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.