Grenfell showed why deregulation is deadly
The race to “cut red tape” in the construction industry cost 72 lives
I think we are sometimes guilty in the United Kingdom of being quite smug about the persistent problem of gun control — or lack of — in the United States.
We often cite the tight regulations brought in after the Dunblane massacre in 1996 as a good example of what a government can do to solve an issue like gun violence following a terrible shooting. In light of America’s never-ending failure to do something similar, it’s certainly true to say that the British government of that time took action to solve a clear and obvious problem, and that it worked. Legislation severely limiting access to handguns was introduced just a year after Dunblane, and no mass school shootings have happened in the UK since.
But our record in respect to another grave threat is altogether different.
The Grenfell Tower disaster on this day five years ago claimed the lives of 72 people. The fire was able to spread so quickly, and engulf the entire 24-storey building, because of the flammable cladding and insulation it had been wrapped in. The particular type of cladding used at Grenfell apparently did not meet the standards required for tower blocks in the UK, yet somehow it found its way on to nearly 500 buildings.
We can’t say we weren’t warned. Numerous deadly fires in the decades preceding Grenfell had been caused or at least exacerbated by the highly combustible materials that tall buildings were being wrapped in and insulated with. Other issues had also been identified, such as inadequate fire doors and a lack of sprinkler systems. Grenfell Tower had all of these problems and more.
Other countries had introduced far tougher fire safety rules, enforced with rigorous testing protocols. In the UK, successive governments decided that strict building safety regulations of this kind were less important than the profit margins of developers and property owners. Grenfell was the inevitable result of this policy.
The government’s record in the aftermath of Grenfell is equally shameful. Today, five years after 72 people perished because their building had been wrapped with flammable cladding and insulation, around half-a-million people continue to live in buildings with some form of unsafe cladding. Some 58 high-rise buildings are even still covered with the exact same cladding materials that Grenfell had before it went up in flames.
The impact of Grenfell therefore goes far beyond the families of 72 victims. Hundreds of thousands of people continue to be affected to this day. Not only do they fear for their lives, but many are also trapped in a financial nightmare, unable to sell homes that have been deemed dangerous. Instead of admitting its past mistakes and offering to pay for the necessary repairs, the government has instead forced affected people to apply to a fund to obtain a loan that they could be paying off for the rest of their lives. These people are being forced to pay, literally, for a disaster caused by a stark failure of government regulation.
Regulations aren’t introduced for fun; they are designed to solve problems deemed a menace to society and to the planet. In our capitalist economy, corporations exist to maximise profit for their shareholders — if they can cut corners, they will. That’s why we need governments to protect us from capitalism’s worst excesses. Laws and regulations are one of the primary tools used by governments to help protect people’s health, safeguard nature, curb pollution, maintain a stable economy, and reduce the chances of being killed in a horrible disaster.
Politicians of various stripes have long blamed regulations — or “red tape” — for “stifling business”. Deregulation is being touted again now as a solution to the UK’s faltering economy. But we should be clear about what it means. A blanket call for deregulation is a call for more unsafe buildings, more fires, more traffic collisions, more bridge collapses, more financial crashes, more oil spills, more pandemics, more cancer, more deforestation and more climate change. It is a call, to put it bluntly, for more death.
Like those in the United States who continuously block new gun laws, politicians who demand “deregulation” or “an end to red tape” to help boost the economy are usually in the pocket of one industry or another that is scared of having its profits eaten away by some terrible new regulations that will prevent it from killing things. Grenfell was a clear example of this; better building regulations, effectively enforced by the government, would have saved those 72 lives. Grenfell showed why deregulation is deadly.
