Grenfell fire: “It’s like Victorian days, where we have nothing and they have everything”
By
our reporters
9 August 2017
A Socialist Equality Party team has been campaigning in Ladbroke Grove, ahead of the August 19 public meeting, Grenfell Fire—Social Murder: A crime against the working class.
Mary, a local resident told WSWS reporters, “I know a whole family who died in the fire. I lost one whole family and two friends. My son lost friends of his. It’s really hard.
“In 2009 and 2014, that building [Grenfell Tower] was condemned, but they just put a plaster over it. Why would anybody want gas pipes put in corridors and staircases [carried out by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council (RBKC) during the 2016 refurbishment]? It was cheaper than putting them in the flats and doing the job properly.
“We have to pay for that, it is social cleansing. The sooner they push us out, then they get their own way. We can’t fight back because we haven’t got the money, the power, the education that they have. They’ll always win because they’ll use the big words, they’ll use the courts. How can we fight? Who have we got behind us? Until this tragedy we had nothing, we weren’t heard.”
Regarding whom she held responsible for the fire, Mary said, “I am not sticking up for the people that put the cladding on—they need to be punished and put through court. Because everybody is making cutbacks and that company probably thought, ‘OK, we are going to put this cladding on, but maybe we can cut back.’ The people who own that cladding firm are responsible. They killed the people, as well as the council who put gas pipes on the stairwells. I was in Grenfell before and after it was reorganised. The money spent wasn’t worth it. It was still an…