Dr Gordon Macleod gordon.macleod@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
The Grenfell Tower atrocity: Exposing urban worlds of inequality, injustice, and an impaired democracy
Macleod, G.
Authors
Abstract
The fire that erupted in Grenfell Tower in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London on 14 June 2017 is widely acknowledged to be the worst experienced during UK peacetime since the nineteenth century. It is confirmed to have resulted in 72 casualties and 70 physically injured. It has also left a community physically and emotionally scarred. That the catastrophe occurred in the country’s wealthiest borough added to the shock while the circumstances surrounding it also begged questions relating to political and corporate responsibility. The UK Prime Minister swiftly established a public inquiry which is ongoing and anticipated to stretch well into 2019. This paper offers a preliminary analysis of what some are interpreting to be a national atrocity. It begins by describing the events at the time of the fire while also identifying the key controversies that began to surface. It then examines the local geography of Grenfell Tower and the surrounding Lancaster West Estate revealing an astonishing landscape of inequality across the borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The paper then uncovers how such inequality was combined with a malevolent geography of injustice whereby for several years residents raised regular warnings about the building’s safety only to be disregarded by the very organisations which were there ostensibly to protect and safeguard their livelihoods: the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea municipal authority and the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation. The paper then deepens the analysis identifying how these organisations disavowed the local democratic process, in doing so dishonouring so tragically the Grenfell residents. It then finds this democratic disavowal to be multiscalar: for amid an incremental neoliberal political assault on the national welfare state, public housing across the country has become wretchedly devalued, stigmatised, and the subject of scandalous maladministration. A final section offers some preliminary analysis of the early stages of the Grenfell Inquiry, while also revealing the dignified resistance of Grenfell community in the face of London’s increasingly plutocratic governance.
Citation
Macleod, G. (2018). The Grenfell Tower atrocity: Exposing urban worlds of inequality, injustice, and an impaired democracy. City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action, 22(4), 460-489. https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2018.1507099
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Jul 30, 2018 |
Online Publication Date | Sep 20, 2018 |
Publication Date | Sep 20, 2018 |
Deposit Date | Aug 8, 2018 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 28, 2024 |
Journal | City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action |
Print ISSN | 1360-4813 |
Electronic ISSN | 1470-3629 |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis Group |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 22 |
Issue | 4 |
Pages | 460-489 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1080/13604813.2018.1507099 |
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Accepted Journal Article
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Copyright Statement
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in City on 20 Sep 2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/13604813.2018.1507099.
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