Since when did a Police investigation have to wait for the outcome of a public inquiry? Even allowing for the pandemic, how did the public inquiry into Grenfell Tower take seven years? And if, at 11 o'clock this morning, an official report had found that a fire in the Palace of Westminster had caused the avoidable deaths of 72 Members of Parliament, then by 11 o'clock tomorrow morning, the people named in that report as potentially responsible would have been remanded in custody. You had better believe that the cells would have been found.
They blamed the villagers for Aberfan. They blamed the miners for Orgreave. They blamed the fans for Hillsborough. Until today, they were still blaming the residents and the firefighters for Grenfell Tower. We all know what they did to the subpostmasters, to the victims of the Windrush scandal, and to the victims of the contaminated blood scandal, whose proposed compensation remains derisory to the point of obscenity. And for Covid-19, they have tried to blame the care home workers, the Muslims, the BAMEs, and the North.
Aberfan happened under a Labour Government. The last Labour Government refused to hold an inquiry into Orgreave, despite being led by MPs for County Durham and for Fife. It also refused to hold an inquiry into Hillsborough, in that case as a favour to Rupert Murdoch. The failings that led to the Grenfell Tower fire went back decades. The first wrongful conviction of a subpostmaster was as long ago as 1999. People were given contaminated blood when Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan were Prime Minister, while records were destroyed under Tony Blair. And now, we wait to see what this Labour Government will do in response to Sir Martin Moore-Bick's report. As with Lord Butler or Sir John Chilcot, these Establishment types can deliver the goods occasionally. Can the same be said of Keir Starmer?
John McDonnell was vilified for having called the fire at Grenfell Tower "social murder", Jeremy Corbyn was mocked to scorn for wearing a green tie in solidarity with Grenfell United and for attending its silent marches while telling the House of Commons that this kind of thing would never have happened to rich people, and Diane Abbott was given what Diane Abbott is given when she called for commissioners to be sent into Kensington and Chelsea Council. They stand fully vindicated, with the Prime Minister's having repeated the class and race critique from the Despatch Box to no dissent from any part of the House.
Between this and the reform of what is at best the outdated Right to Buy, the Government cannot risk its credibility on housing. It needs to withdraw the Labour whip from Jas Athwal.
Said Starmer: “Today is a long-awaited day of truth. It must now lead to a day of justice—justice for the victims and the families of Grenfell—but also a moment to reflect on the state of social justice in our country and a chance for this Government of service to turn the page. That is because this tragedy poses fundamental questions about the kind of country we are. A country where the voices of working-class people and those of colour have been repeatedly ignored and dismissed. A country where tenants of a social housing block in one of the richest parts of the land are treated like second-class citizens, shamefully dismissed, in the words of one survivor, as “people with needs and problems” and not respected as citizens, as people who contribute to Britain, who are part of Britain and who belong in Britain.”
ReplyDeleteAs you say, no one quibbled with any of that. It is no longer controversial.
Of course, everyone has always known it. It is just that no one any longer pretends not to. The factions that did, and sometimes the same individuals, had previously held that these were positively good things.
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