‘Politicians guilty in London Grenfell disaster’

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Monday, September 10, 2018

TUC 2018: Politicians should be held accountable for Grenfell Tower blaze, congress hears

CONGRESS called for politicians to be held to account today over the decisions that led to 72 people dying in the Grenfell Tower blaze last year.

Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack said it was chilling that Grenfell Tower’s refurbishment had turned it into a death trap, with ventilation and safety systems not functioning and the cladding meaning the whole building was “effectively wrapped in petrol”.

“Grenfell Tower was safer in 1974 than in 2017. That raises some pretty fundamental questions”, he pointed out.

Unite‘s Maxine Loza, a bus driver from the Grenfell neighbourhood, said a colleague had “lost his home and his daughter” in the fire.

She called for the public inquiry to “be bolder” and “bring scrutiny to the deregulation of building standards.”

The atrocity was “not unlucky but the result of decisions taken by people in authority”, she said, backing Mr Wrack’s call for politicians responsible to be “held to account”.

Composite 3 on Grenfell also called for an end to outsourcing health and safety and building control as well as a ban on combustible materials on the external walls of buildings.

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has published a damning report showing successive governments ignored its warnings about building cladding systems nearly 20 years before the entirely avoidable fire that killed 72 at Grenfell Tower last year: here.

DELEGATES at the Trade Union Congress in Manchester yesterday voted unanimously for Composite Motion 3: Grenfell Tower. The motion condemns the tragedy where 72 men, women and children died while also condemning the use of flammable cladding and the lack of safety regulation: here.

Deregulation and austerity: public safety is still at risk post-Grenfell. The fire regulatory system is broken and requires a radical overhaul, says KAREN LEE.