The acrid stench infused the air. The landscape, adorned
with messages and memorials, struggled to reconcile the veneration of dignified
grief and irreverent, visceral anger.
I oscillated between both. Grief hung in the ether like a flammable
fume. Volatile, toxic, debilitating. The photos of those whose lives were lost.
The prayers, the pleas, the eulogies. The human faces behind the headlines.
Days before, some of the dead and feared dead would have
taken the train journey I just took, walked the route I just walked to get
there, sat in the park around the corner that I just sat in and exchanged
perfunctory pleasantries with the local shop keeper like I just did.
The photo of Isaac caught my eye. He left school at the same
time as my little boy that day. He will have had his tea, maybe smearing
ketchup on his school jumper, like mine did and went to bed, forgetting to
brush his teeth, like mine did. Wrapped in a blanket of love he may have told
the spiders lurking in a corner of his room a story, like mine did, before
drifting off to sleep clutching his threadbare teddy, like mine did.
The difference between
Isaac and my child is, Isaac lived in a tower block with no fire sprinklers,
exposed gas pipes, combustible cladding (cheaper than the non-combustible yet
aesthetically pleasing variety) and dodgy electrics prone to potentially lethal
surges. Illegal? You’d think so, but Tory cuts to legal aid means rights are now
only available to those who can afford to buy them. That ruled Grenfell Tower
residents out.
Five weeks
on and survivors are still homeless and dependent on sporadic, demeaning state
handouts. A hundred quid here and a voucher for a hotel there isn’t good enough.
Survivors need certainty, security and dignity. That starts with a secure, safe
home. Some children don’t know if they’ll be returning to the same school in
September because they don’t know where their new home will be. Some survivors say
they’ve been told to accept homes without being allowed to see them first. Others
say they fear being forcibly rehoused outside the borough. I’ve been told of
survivors who’ve been threatened that declining housing they’re offered,
however inappropriate, would be deemed as elected homelessness, and would incur
benefit penalties.
Even now,
survivors are being excluded from key decisions that will impact their future.
Security firms were employed, at tax payers expense, to “keep them out” of
Kensington and Chelsea’s council meeting on Thursday. Scenes of survivors being
kettled into a public gallery, side-lined and silenced, prevented from participating
in decisions about their own lives, were a national disgrace. The footage of Tory councillor, Mathew Palmer, mouthing “Don’t
let them in” spoke volumes about the Tories’ contempt for humanity, decency and
democracy.
Making my way back to the tube, I was stopped in my tracks by a child. She was surveying the messages pinned to the street railings and was transfixed by
an elaborate picture of a dove. She asked her Dad what the text
around it said. “I don’t know love, it’s written in a foreign language”. I squinted to read it, “It says, Suaimhneas stíoraí da anam, which is
Irish for, may your souls rest in peace”.
If the souls that perished in Grenfell are ever to find peace, they must first be afforded truth and then justice. We owe Isaac, and all those who died with him, that much.
