“Now give them justice!” shouts the Daily Mirror, Thursday, September 5. The day before, a highly anticipated inquiry report from across the Channel established the multiple and damning responsibilities in the Grenfell Tower fire that occurred in June 2017 in the heart of London. “The 72 people who perished in the furnace are victims of contempt, greed and dishonesty,” thunders the popular newspaper.
Deregulation of the construction sector, inadequate response from local authorities, ignored concerns, mistakes made by emergency services: the 1,700-page document spares no one. Insulation and coating companies, in particular, are accused of having “knowingly installed hazardous materials on the exterior of the tower,” inhabited mainly by working-class households in the affluent borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Following the publication of the report, Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer apologised on behalf of the British state for “all these years of failures”. But families “warned that justice will not be served until those involved have been tried.” According to the London tabloid, the police investigation is due to be completed next year, “which means that any possible prosecutions would not take place before 2027, ten years after the tragedy.”
At the same time, a titanic project to remove flammable cladding still present on more than 4,000 buildings continues across the United Kingdom. According to the latest census, renovation work has started on half of these buildings. At the end of August, one of them caught fire in east London, without causing any casualties.
