Grenfell should have been a wake-up call – but the UK still doesn’t take fire safety seriously because of who is most at risk: In March 2023, a fire in Tower Hamlets, east London, claimed the life of Mizanur Rahman, a 41-year-old father-of-two from Bangladesh. Five fire engines and 35 firefighters attended the call to …
Grenfell: in the words of survivors – new play is an angry demand for accountability: The National Theatre’s new play, Grenfell: in the words of survivors, written by Gillian Slovo and directed by Phyllida Lloyd and Anthony Simpson-Pike, aims to offer a voice to survivors of the fire. This is a “verbatim play”. Often focused …
Grenfell: Steve McQueen’s film is a silent, unflinching reminder of lives devastated by fire: A memorial to Grenfell victims in west London. Globetrotters/Shutterstock Oscar-winning artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen’s new work, Grenfell, is on show at London’s Serpentine Gallery. The 24-minute film – which the artist captured by helicopter in December 2017, six months after …
The disturbing parallels between Awaab Ishak’s death in Rochdale and the Grenfell Tower disaster: The Grenfell inquiry showed that every death incurred during the fire was avoidable. JessicaGirvan | Shutterstock A senior coroner in Rochdale, a large town in England’s northwest, has ruled that two-year-old Awaab Ishak died as a direct result of prolonged exposure …
Grenfell Tower anniversary: how a quilt in the making is a symbol of the community’s love and quest for justice: Quilts are a repository of memory, personal and collective. The Conversation Tuesday Greenidge is a multimedia artist based in North Kensington, London. When Grenfell tower caught alight on the night of June 14, 2017, her …
Grenfell Tower: finally, the worst type of cladding is to be banned, five years on: Residents have long bemoaned measures taken to make buildings look better, but not safer. Ajit Wick | Shutterstock Five years after 72 people lost their lives in the Grenfell Tower fire, which broke out on June 14, 2017, the UK …
Grenfell Tower: the difficult task of creating a fitting memorial to the tragedy: In the days and weeks after the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy, in which 72 people lost their lives in a fire that consumed the 24-storey residential block in North Kensington, London, dozens of memorials appeared in the vicinity of the building. People …
Grenfell: four years after the disaster, are our buildings safer?: In the four years since the Grenfell Tower fire, which led to the unconscionable deaths of 72 people, one key question remains unanswered. Are our buildings are any safer? The short answer is: not yet. The facts and figures uncovered in the ongoing Grenfell Tower …
Grenfell: it took specialist journals and social media to uncover the real story: Numbers relating to the Grenfell Tower disaster of 2017 are always staggering. The 250 firefighters that attended the fire, the 60 hours the tower burned for, and most of all the 72 people who lost their lives. And now as phase two …
Grenfell Tower: after decades of inaction, politicians still haven’t been held to account: Let’s start with a simple fact: the fire at Grenfell Tower was predictable and preventable. And it could still happen somewhere else today. It happened because local, city and national governments failed to intervene on fire safety the last time they were …
Grenfell Tower: warnings might have been heard if not for the collapse of local journalism: EPA-EFE/Lauren Hurley The delay to the publication of the report into the Grenfell Tower tragedy, which claimed 72 lives in a disastrous – and possibly preventable – fire at the London tower block, has been greeted with dismay and anger …
Grenfell: a year on, here’s what we know went wrong: Never to be repeated. EPA/Neil Hall The Grenfell Tower fire resulted in the greatest loss of life from a fire in Britain since World War II. A year on, we know that the fire’s rapid spread was at least partly due to the cladding that …
A social psychologist explains how authorities can regain survivors’ trust after Grenfell Tower fire: garryknight/Flickr In the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, survivors and their supporters were outraged about the perceived lack of care and compassion shown by government bodies, and the agencies which act on their behalf. Since then, UK authorities have started …
Austerity, privatisation and deregulation aren’t working – Grenfell now calls for change: Camden Council has been evacuating residents from four tower blocks in north London in response to concerns over their fire safety, and a total of 95 local authority and housing association-owned tower blocks across England have now been shown to have cladding that …
Yes, the Grenfell Tower inferno is political – it’s a failure of many governments: One of the key functions of the state is to protect its citizens. Much of the debate in the UK’s recent general election focused on the government’s role in protecting citizens from terrorists. This was, perhaps, understandable given the recent series …