decision making experts

Grenfell Protest Calls for Justice: On Monday 14th May 2018 Parliament were debating a petition with over 150,00 signatures calling for a panel of decision making experts to sit alongside Sir Martin Moore-Bick in the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry.

*A woman who worked in the Grenfell nursery and her mother with placards*

PM Theresa May had 3 days earlier announced there would be two experts appointed for the second stage of the inquiry, but the Grenfell community wanted experts to be included in the first part and were questioning who the experts would be and how they were to be chosen.

*‘When One Neglects Towers, One Will in the End Neglect People’*

The protesters also wanted a promise that the recommendations of the inquiry would be accepted and implemented in full and that those responsible for creating the terrible fire risk to be brought to justice.

Unfortunately the inquiry had been set up to enable the guilty to evade justice. Despite the mass of clear evidence against those responsible it enabled the police to state they had to let it run its course before they could examine its evidence and decide if there should be prosecutions. And the inquiry had no power to start criminal proceeding and would not investigate the very issues of a “social, economic and political nature” that were central to why it happened.

*Clarrie Mendy of Humanity For Grenfell, whose cousin Mary Mendy and her daughter Khadija Saye died in the fire,*

As well as the Tories wanting to protect their own, particularly in the Kensington and Chelsea Council, Labour, including then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn colluded in this deliberate pushing of Grenfell into the long grass, although he also called for further efforts to establish a process to investigate those “broader failings” which Sir Martin Moore-Bick was determined to avoid.

Despite this, as well as many speakers from local Grenfell organisations, there wer also prominent Labour Party speakers at the event – Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor Richard Burgon, Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbot and then Labour MP for Kensington Emma Dent Coad.

*The Revolutionary Communist Group have supported the campaign to get the truth about Grenfell*

SNP MP Joanna Cherry also spoke, but the event organisers refused to let a more radical speaker from the Revolutionary Communist Group go to the microphone. But the RCG, who had been active in organising protests over Grenfell as well as taking part in the monthly silent walks, had as usual brought their own public address system for their speaker.

Last year after a short, inept and very partial failed “consultation” with Grenfell survivors and bereaved families, then Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced that Grenfell Tower would be “brought to the ground” and a memorial set up in its place.

*Then Labour MP for Kensington Emma Dent Coad* *who lost the seat in 2019*

More pictures at Grenfell Parliamentary Debate Rally.

Also taking place outside the Houses of Parliament on Monday 14th May 2018 was a protest by the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party UK calling for the release of their party leader, Begum Khaleda Zia, jailed in February for five years for embezzlement of international funds donated to Zia Orphanage Trust.

Her arrest and conviction was widely seen as a political attack by her rival Sheikh Hasina Wazed, leader of the Awami League; the two women dominated politics in Bangladesh for many years. Khaleda Zia died in December 2025 a month after Sheik Hasina who had been forced to resign in 2024 was sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment. More about this protest at BNP say release Khaleda Zia.

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