We wake up to the knowledge that the country is riddled with tower blocks like that one. There were people at upper-floor windows. A baby was thrown from an upper-floor window - and caught. As so often seems to happen, we find our sense of community in tragedy. A disaster happens, or an atrocity: doors are thrown open; beds are offered for the night; volunteers and donations arrive. This time, Muslim volunteers - the reports specified Muslim, but they weren't alone - came from all over London to help. This time, places of religion and halls and safe spaces in West Kensington are already over-stocked with donated bedding, food, clothes, nappies, even furniture. The MP David Lammy showed his emotion as he spoke to Channel 4 News about the friend he lost, an artist, who died with her mother.
Meanwhile, in the background, the necessary conversations have begun about how this could possibly have happened. Grenfell Tower was built in 1974, same year as the film The Towering Inferno was released. Safety features fell a long way short of today's standards, and we now know that renovations, alterations, et cetera, can compromise (ie, drill through or remove) such safety features as fireproof walls and panels. 9/11 hasn't faded from the collective memory, and we now learn that there have been more or less regular tower-block fires around the world since then. Floating like so much rubbish on the tide of emotion is the politics: May doesn't care because she didn't meet the people; Corbyn is exploiting the tragedy to highlight the division between rich and poor. Nonsense. Both those individuals are human, which is enough to refute all of that.
What happened was, I suppose, people. However well-intentioned, or self-interested, or both, or otherwise driven, people got together to make this happen. Urban planners, high-rise architects, successive local authorities, private contractors, all working within rules and to financial constraints imposed by governments. And then other people were not empowered to stop them: the poor and vulnerable, voiceless people who were given homes in the block. What might happen now is that we collectively raise the money to re-house the residents of (initially) the upper floors of all those other blocks, and we manage to do that separately from the political process, which can't operate without soundbites, arguments and "balanced" debates between party members who oppose each other and get nowhere. Politics, democracy as practised today, gives us only division.
Maybe the disaster-relief fund will pick up enough momentum to get the job done, and the politics will evaporate. Imagine that - the revolution finally arrives, and it turns out to be a house-building project.
Or are we human? Are we going to spend our time arguing over who's at fault and who can be blamed, as if picking a scapegoat would give us closure? There are people who will sleep tonight on the upper floors of tower blocks. Or not sleep. I say: let's stop arguing and build houses.
Meanwhile, in the background, the necessary conversations have begun about how this could possibly have happened. Grenfell Tower was built in 1974, same year as the film The Towering Inferno was released. Safety features fell a long way short of today's standards, and we now know that renovations, alterations, et cetera, can compromise (ie, drill through or remove) such safety features as fireproof walls and panels. 9/11 hasn't faded from the collective memory, and we now learn that there have been more or less regular tower-block fires around the world since then. Floating like so much rubbish on the tide of emotion is the politics: May doesn't care because she didn't meet the people; Corbyn is exploiting the tragedy to highlight the division between rich and poor. Nonsense. Both those individuals are human, which is enough to refute all of that.
What happened was, I suppose, people. However well-intentioned, or self-interested, or both, or otherwise driven, people got together to make this happen. Urban planners, high-rise architects, successive local authorities, private contractors, all working within rules and to financial constraints imposed by governments. And then other people were not empowered to stop them: the poor and vulnerable, voiceless people who were given homes in the block. What might happen now is that we collectively raise the money to re-house the residents of (initially) the upper floors of all those other blocks, and we manage to do that separately from the political process, which can't operate without soundbites, arguments and "balanced" debates between party members who oppose each other and get nowhere. Politics, democracy as practised today, gives us only division.
Maybe the disaster-relief fund will pick up enough momentum to get the job done, and the politics will evaporate. Imagine that - the revolution finally arrives, and it turns out to be a house-building project.
Or are we human? Are we going to spend our time arguing over who's at fault and who can be blamed, as if picking a scapegoat would give us closure? There are people who will sleep tonight on the upper floors of tower blocks. Or not sleep. I say: let's stop arguing and build houses.
Just a tree today, flowering. Ordinary miracle.