There is a version of Grenfell Tower I have never visited, but in some ways I know it. Over the seven years I spent reporting from the public inquiry into the fire, many residents shared their favourite memories of their former homes. I know about New Year’s parties watching the fireworks unfold across London. Bumping into neighbours by the often-broken lifts and complaining about the same old, same old. I know about the friends and shared meals – as one survivor put it to me, “my world”.
I know of a different Grenfell too. Afterwards. Those who had to go into the 24-storey building after the incident, to piece together how a fire killed 72 people, have told me of the darkness and the soot-stained walls. A bedroom with a cot left, almost perfect – and outside, absolute horror. From the hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours hearing evidence the world learned how flames climbed 19 floors in just 18 minutes, how smoke entered the hallways and staircase, the only means of escape, so thick it stopped people from seeing their hand in front of their face. I’ve learned about the smell and the air filled with blackened plastic which landed on the white shirts of those searching for their loved ones, shirts they’d simply expected to go to work in. Survivors have told me how they made it outside and looked up to realise the full extent of the fire for the first time – their flat now surrounded by blue and red and yellow.
The building – standing today wrapped in white plastic with a green heart at the top – is a visceral symbol for the failings that led to the fire and the horrific human consequences. What to do with that symbol was always going to be difficult. Now, eight years after the incident, the Housing Secretary Angela Rayner announced that the tower will be deconstructed. Grenfell United, which represents some bereaved and survivors, criticised the government’s conduct as “disgraceful and unforgiveable”.
On the morning of the fire itself, 14 June 2017, the London Fire Brigade called in experts, afraid the remaining concrete shell of the building had been so damaged it might collapse. Soon afterwards, there was fear in the community about what could happen to the site. Whether it could be immediately replaced by more housing, the tragedy forgotten. It’s why in 2018 a memorial commission was quickly established, led by representatives from the bereaved survivors and residents. The community, it was hoped, would be given the opportunity to decide its future. Since then that commission has consulted thousands of local residents, but understandably never resolved the disagreements about what should come next.
For some, Grenfell will always be the resting place of their loved ones. Some have told me that they want the block to remain simply as a reminder of what happened. With criminal charges not being brought until next year at the earliest, no one in court until 2027, the physical presence of the tower and the way it looms over the area brings hope that what happened to them cannot be forgotten. Yet for others, it’s understandable why a constant reminder of their trauma while they take their children to school or head to work is impossible.
Rayner’s decision was perhaps inevitable. In 2022 Nick Hurd, the independent adviser on Grenfell to the previous Conservative government told me it was an “unspoken truth” that the building would ultimately need to come down. However, he advised the government not to put a date on it, hoping that time to engage with the community and build trust would help ease any conclusion.
But, for the planned memorial to be constructed, a decision did need to be made. This is a community that has been repeatedly failed by those in authority. The public inquiry concluded the fire was the “culmination of decades of failure by central government and other bodies in positions of responsibility in the construction industry”. There were many opportunities for successive governments to identify the risks posed by combustible materials on high-rise buildings, the materials which caused the fire to spread so rapidly but “failed to act on what it knew”.
Even after the fire, the response of the government and local council was “muddled, slow, indecisive and piecemeal”, the inquiry found, demonstrating “a marked lack of respect for human decency and dignity”.
Angela Rayner will have known that when she met families; she certainly knew it when she shared her own experience of social housing with them as the final inquiry report was submitted. But there is hurt in the way this decision was communicated. Whatever happens to the Grenfell site will be controversial. The memorial commission has recommended it should be a sacred, peaceful place for remembering and reflecting. But how can one memorial capture someone’s entire world, let alone a different world for each of those affected?
[See more: How did Labour become so unpopular?]
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