Grenfell Tower, where 72 lives were lost. Photo: LOZ PYCOCK_CC-BY-SA 2.0 (detail)

COINCIDING with last week’s closing of the 300-day inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire comes the publication of a damning and moving account of the events leading up to the entirely preventable disaster that claimed 72 lives, 17 of them children.

From the use of flammable cladding that tore up the 24-storey block in a matter of minutes to the London Fire Brigade’s “stay put” policy that left residents trapped in burning homes they could have easily escaped from, the blaze resulted from a shocking catalogue of failures, errors and omissions, all underpinned by corporate greed and institutional indifference.

At their heart lies the watering down of building regulations, begun in earnest by Margaret Thatcher 30 years earlier, happily continued by Tony Blair and accelerated by David Cameron, who in a New Year’s Day speech in 2010 brazenly vowed to “wage war against the excessive health and safety culture for good” on behalf of “UK plc”.

“It tells us something about how we are governed and the priority our political and economic system placed on human life,” writes author Peter Apps, deputy editor of Inside Housing, who has been following the tragedy from day one.

The book’s title, Show Me the Bodies, is taken from remarks said to have been made by Brian Martin, the civil servant responsible for fire safety guidance at the privatised national research laboratory, BRE, to justify not tightening up regulations in response to a series of devastating fires at home and abroad, including Lakanal House in Southwark in 2009 in which six people had perished.

There were simply not enough deaths to justify new restrictions on businesses.

In an official culture of cost-cutting and eliminating as much red tape as possible, this sort of attitude was par for the course, and meant that the use of ACM cladding, which contained petroleum-derived plastic, went ahead in the refurbishment of Grenfell Tower.

Martin at least had the decency to express bitter regret for his actions, or lack of them, at the inquiry.

Not so the building companies involved whom Richard Millett KC, lead counsel for the inquiry, rounded on for their “incompetence”, “cynical” and “possibly dishonest practices”, accusing them of engaging in a “merry-go-round of buck passing”.

Joining them in the rogues’ gallery is Kensington and Chelsea Council, which managed Grenfell Tower and oversaw its unpopular refurbishment a few years earlier, insisting that cheaper ACM cladding be used in order to save money.

Tenants’ complaints about shoddy workmanship and defective fire doors were ignored by high-handed officials, while a tenants’ blog – Playing with Fire – that in 2016 predicted “an incident that results in serious loss of life” was seen as “scaremongering”, with one of the authors sent a letter from council lawyers accusing it of being “defamatory”.

Apps alternates each chapter with a running account of that dreadful night on June 14, 2017 that started with a minor kitchen fire, which normally would have been easily contained.
Instead, flames escaped through a gap between the wall and a poorly fitted window and ignited the cladding.

Fire fighters’ heroic attempts to rescue residents aside, the London Fire Brigade’s performance lays bear the results of successive cutbacks in the service, culminating in the closure of 10 fire stations by Boris Johnson in 2010 when he was Mayor of London to save £100m.

Lack of equipment, faulty communication devices and the absence of any plan for an out-of-control fire meant that the LFB was wrong-footed from the beginning. It enforced a “stay put” policy when a full-scale evacuation was needed early on.

Apps’ story will leave you both devastated and angry. “The world that gave us the Grenfell Tower fire looks irredeemably dishonest,” he writes in conclusion. “Thirty years of deregulation had exacted its tragic and, ultimately avoidable, price.”

• Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen. By Peter Apps. One World, 10.99. https://oneworld-publications.com/work/show-me-the-bodies-2/