Angela Rayner is right: Grenfell must fall

Yahoo

07-02-2025

Just for once, let's applaud Angela Rayner. She has just announced that Grenfell Tower is to be demolished. As Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister might have said: a courageous decision, Secretary of State.
Pulling down the tower's burnt-out shell was long overdue, endlessly postponed by Tory governments paralysed by class guilt. This is a nettle that perhaps only a proudly working-class Labour politician could have grasped.
No West Londoner who lives within a mile or two of Grenfell Tower will ever forget waking up on June 14, 2017, to witness the pall of smoke and smell the acrid fumes of this hideous human catastrophe, in which 72 people died a terrible death. Yet nobody could then have imagined that the structurally unsound, tottering wreck of Grenfell would still be standing eight years later and that its proposed demolition would ignite furious protests.
Grenfell United, the most vociferous of the bereaved families' pressure groups, has denounced the Deputy Prime Minister's decision as 'disgraceful and unforgivable'.
The outrage was predictable, but how representative is it? Keeping the tower standing since the fire in 2017 has come at an exorbitant price: cumulatively, more than £300 million. The Grenfell families could all have been rehoused in luxury for far less than that. Many might have liked to be given the choice.
The objectors appear to think that unless the tower remains as a standing rebuke to the authorities, nobody will ever be held to account for the failures that led to the disaster. But the investigation grinds on regardless of gesture politics, with decisions about criminal prosecutions due next year.
Meanwhile, the area around Grenfell remains blighted, while those who live and work there are left in limbo. For example: after the fire Kensington Aldridge Academy, a school in the vicinity of the tower, was moved into temporary huts on the parade ground of Wormwood Scrubs. The school was later allowed to move back, but has been obliged to rent the huts indefinitely.
The truth, which nobody in authority has had the courage to say out loud, is that the burnt-out tower is a dangerous eyesore and wholly inappropriate as a memorial. There is no comparison with the bombed-out City churches, such as St Dunstan-in-the-East, whose ruins were preserved as a reminder of the Blitz – Britain's 'finest hour'.
A much closer analogy is with the King's Cross fire of 1987, when 31 people died in the Underground station. Thousands of passengers walk past the memorial, with its clock, every day.
In the aftermath of that fire, major safety improvements were made (not least the smoking ban on the Tube) that have prevented any repetition. Yet nobody thought keeping a charred, empty station platform was the proper way to commemorate the King's Cross victims, who are certainly not forgotten.
The Grenfell families have every right to be consulted about any memorial to their loved ones. There are plans for a garden of remembrance and a 'sacred space', with a winning design due to be unveiled this summer. But the main obstacle to any memorial is the tower. The sooner it is demolished, the sooner work can begin on a permanent monument.
As a compassionate society, our hearts go out to the victims. But we cannot allow those who claim to speak for them to obstruct healing and renewal. Even after the Great Fire of London of 1666, rebuilding began immediately. The entire capital rose again in less time than has elapsed since Grenfell. The same happened after 1945, though it took a little longer.
Now, our dysfunctional state overcompensates for failures. The families of victims are entitled to justice, but not to a veto over remedial action. We must learn the lessons of Grenfell, certainly, but London is a metropolis for the living, not a graveyard for the dead.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.