Towers and Statues…

Earlier today, I went out on an expedition to purchase a light-bulb and a couple of other stupidly small items. For this, I had to travel to the nearby town to mine, for my local shops couldn’t provide. Part of the journey took me past the pair of tower-blocks; which were looking particularly shabby, run-down and carbuncle-like. Moment’s hesitation – surely they weren’t that ugly – but then it struck me; they were missing their cladding. The council had finally got round to stripping that crap off it, it seemed (I don’t go to this town much).

I mention this, for quite ironically something reminded me of Grenfell on the very day of the anniversary of the fire which claimed the lives 72 people and injure hundreds more, some permanently.

The Towering Inferno

That fire – and the aftermath – was one of the defining events of the premiership of Theresa May; along with Windrush, the Vanity Election and naturally, Brexit. It highlighted a myriad of long-term issues with the country at that time; the economic inequalities, the ‘race-to-the-bottom’ contracting, the severe housing shortage (in quality, quantity and affordability) and the the tone-deaf ‘we’re sorry you feel that way’ bollocks from (particularly) Conservative politicians, be it local councillors or the then Prime Minister herself.

It is worth looking at the whole disaster again through the prism of Black Lives Matter; here we have a tower-block stuffed with human beings far above the capacity it was designed for in the 70s, which coupled with poor quality of finish and shoddy maintenance created obviously sub-standard living conditions. And that unlike the rest of the borough the majority of these people were from ethnic minorities.

That the Council – elected by the wealthy, white parts of the borough – had deliberately withheld funding for such things as fire safety and decided to not use fire-resistant cladding or fit sprinklers on cost grounds alone. That the money ‘saved’ was actually used to bribe the richest inhabitants via a tax refund just before an election. No guesses needed to work out that the inhabitants of Grenfell or the surrounding pocket of social housing were not amongst the recipients.

On the face of it, this looks like racism. But it wasn’t. At least in a conventional sense of the term.

At no point did the council deliberately decide to house minorities in substandard properties – for all their properties were substandard. There was absolutely nothing stopping a minority purchasing a property within the rich part of the borough – as long as they could afford the several million quid asking-price. The ‘stay put’ orders given wasn’t the callous orders from authority not caring about the lives of non-whites; it was the standard operating procedure regarding high-rise fires – not realising that the renovation had effectively destroyed it’s fire resistance. The shoddy response times from the emergency services wasn’t due to them not caring about minority lives; that was due to funding cutbacks due to Austerity and the fact the council had decided to allow the surrounding area to become overbuilt, thus restricting access.

No. Those folks lost their lives for they were poor. And after stripping out the recent migrants (both legal or not), in this country a higher proportion of minority groups are poor due to the legacy of discrimination. After all, we all know the term “it takes money to make money” and a larger proportion of white Britons grow up with said inherited wealth than minority groups do.

The Unfulfilled Promises

I’m mentioning this because now after three years since the disaster, we can look to see what changes – y’know, all the promised ones – actually bore fruit. Answer: not many.

Yes, some of the flammable cladding has been removed since. Yes, some social landlords have been more diligent about performing things such as gas safety checks. But we’ve seen near-nil movement on dealing with overcrowding, shoddy maintenance, lowest-possible-bid mentality with contracts or increasing the accountability of social landlords from their tenants. Hell, we’ve not even seen any damn legislation to increase the building standards – if the proof of the pudding is the eating, this time we’ve not even been shown a picture of it. Just the promise of pudding later.

I think I can be rather certain that said pudding-promises will remained unfulfilled as long as Mr Johnson is Prime Minister.

Think of the Statues!

Here in the UK, the Black Lives Matter movement has gotten diverted; from against cases of racism in institutions such as the police to the possible offence caused by various statues.

Now, while a few statues basically ‘deserved it’ – the Colston one in Bristol springs front to mind – going after ones such as Churchill, Drake, the building named after Gladstone and so on positively reeks to me of Progressive Identity Politics.

As I explained months ago, this action is classic bourgeois progressivism; the focus on symbols, words and items rather than actual structural change to society. Which is – unless I really don’t understand the situation – what Black Lives Matter are demanding. For it can be terribly easy to remove the offending items – from removing statues to censoring old TV shows – yet allow the ingrained, pervasive legacy of racism to remain strewn though British society.

Unknown Demands

I think a large proportion of the BLM leadership are aware of this. However, they’d allowed the argument to focus on the statues for they’re rather unsure what their demands should actually be – for after all, all this was kicked off by a foreign event, not a British one.

I’m not blind to the power of symbols; but I’m all too familiar with officials – either by accident or design – ‘mistaking the map for the territory’, such as thinking say institutional bullying is ended by an anti-bullying policy and not by actively trying to root it out.

I’ve been around long enough to know that when the demand(s) are fuzzy or aspirational, they’re ignored – what works best is when they’re concrete, ‘reasonable’, will deliver a genuine improvement and can get “outsiders” to rally to it too.

I think you can guess I feel that housing can be this rallying-point.

Delayed Justice?

It is not racism per se; but it’s an issue which affects minorities disproportionately. It also is a perfect bridge for the white working class to join forces with BLM to push for change which will help them all – for in this case, they’re both getting almost equally shafted by our capitalist society. Best of all, it’s harder to argue against; after all, it takes some very interesting corkscrew logic to defend the rights of uncaring social housing providers and greedy slumlords to provide accommodation which is overcrowded, overpriced and unsafe.

If this was carried off, it would improve the lives of millions of people; and minorities would benefit more than others. Yet… it wouldn’t look at all like ‘affirmative action’, which pisses off some folks.

As everything on this blog, merely my own thoughts and opinions. Part of my Essays series.