Photo by ChiralJon | CC BY 2.0
No inquiry is required to have it confirmed that the Grenfell Fire in London on 14 June 2017 was a crime whose roots lie in the virulent disdain and contempt, bordering on hatred, of working class and poor people in a society which in the second decade of the 21st century is a utopia for a small minority and a dystopia for far too many.
The burnt out shell of Grenfell Tower stands as symptom and symbol of the class war that has been and is still raging all over Britain, a war that in 2017 has never been more intense and in which only one side is throwing punches and only one side is taking them. Thus it is impossible to consider the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to be anything other than an establishment pantomime capable of delivering only a simulacrum of justice in that its very complexion perpetuates the social injustice that led inexorably to the fire and resulting carnage.
The more cynical among us will not persuaded that the real purpose of the inquiry is anything other than to channel and filter the righteous rage and anger of a community that has been so grievously wronged onto the safe ground of obfuscation, shrouded in legalese and the kind of establishment-speak perfected over the far too many years in which the lives of working class and poor people have been regarded by the rich to be of scant importance.
As Alan Badiou reminds us, we are living in a world in which we have to “save the banks rather than confiscate them, hand out…