public inquiry | >Re-PHOTO

The Future For Aviation – 2014

The Future For Aviation: The protest at London City Airport on Monday 21st July 2014 by ‘The Future‘, a campaigning group set up to fight climate change and ecological devastation by non-violent protest along with some local residents addressed specific issues related to that airport, but also wider questions about the future of aviation, both still very much with us. A decision is expected shortly by our new Labour government on further expansion plans for the airport following a public inquiry which closed in February.

The group used a painted circle around one eye as a symbol that the people are watching those in power, calling on politicians and others to take action rather than let themselves be bought by corporate interests. And they stated “we will judge them if they choose the toxicity of London City Airport over the health of local people and of London.”

Ten years later, ‘The Future’ are forgotten, and while there has been nothing like enough action the growing signs of the coming catastrophe are just perhaps beginning to get some movement, though still too little and too late.

It should now be clear to every thinking person that we have to find ways to reverse the growth in the aviation industry. To end airport expansion and increasing numbers of flights. Not ideas like changing to bio-fuels or specious calculations over planting trees to compensate for the CO2 generated by flights, nor on the pipe-dream of electric aircraft but quite simply reducing the number of flights.

Quite how this can be done is a matter for discussion, but some measures, such as removing the subsidies for aviation and banning incentive schemes with air miles and discounts could be simply implemented.

Heathrow and London City Airport also pose other problems, generating pollution and noise pollution both from their flight and from the traffic and congestion they generate in urban areas of our heavily polluted city.

The history of London City Airport is a case-study in how the aviation industry has operated by deception. When set up it was to be a low traffic site providing limited services between European capitals for business travellers from the nearby Canary Wharf and the City of London using small, quiet aircraft specially built for short take-off and landing.

Even so the Greater London Council opposed its setting up in the former Royal Docks in Newham, surrounded by densely populated areas but were overruled by central government.

Those initial promises have been long been superseded and by 2014 passenger numbers were 25 times as great with the airport no a a major commercial airport, its runway extended to allow use by larger and far more noisy aircraft, including some scheduled trans-Atlantic flights. From a handful of flights a day there were by then around 15 per hour in its allowed operation times. And more new housing in the surrounding areas had made the airport’s site even less tenable.

The airport was then about to make a planning application for further expansion. Then London Mayor Boris Johnson directed Newham Council to turn this down, but in 2016 transport secretary Chris Grayling and communities secretary Sajid Javid overrode the decision and gave the £344 million scheme the go-ahead.

In 2023, Newham Council again turned down further expansion plans but the airport again appealed. A public inquiry took place in December 2023 to February 2024, and a decision was expected by 23rd July 2024. But the general election means that the decision will now be made by our new Labour government. It will be a key indicator in demonstrating if our new government is really serious in its announced intentions to combat climate change and pollution.

More about the protest at ‘The Future’ at London City Airport.

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Grenfell – 7 Years On

Grenfell – 7 Years On: Seven years after the terrible fire that killed 72 people in Grenfell Tower and left many others traumatised we still have no justice. None of those whose deliberate actions and failures that set up this firetrap and made a disaster virtually inevitable has yet to be brought to court.

The inquiry dragged on and although it has ended taking evidence its final report has been delayed and delayed. Initially due in late 2023 it is now expected to be released in Autumn 2024, although that may well be delayed yet again.

When it does come it will almost certainly be too little as well as far too late. Grenfell was a crime and the major criminals were obvious from the start. The inquiry – as it was always meant too – has tied the hands of the police in pursuing the criminals and bringing them to justice. It seems doubtful there will be many if any prosecutions and if they take place they are likely to be only for minor offences.

I don’t think anything much of significance has emerged from the years of the inquiry that was not already evident in early reports on the fire – such as that published by Architects for Social Housing in July 2017, although we have some more detail. But the inquiry has mainly served as an opportunity for some involved to take part in buck-passing and blame others or to claim ignorance of the obvious.

And of course to generate considerable incomes for the lawyers, who have had a field day thanks to the excessive adversarial nature of the inquiry. The delays in publishing the report are all down to the inquiry having to consult with those who are named in it. We urgently need a streamlined process for such inquiries – and this should almost certainly involve prosecutions of the more obvious criminals before the inquiry begins.

But although the grass has grown longer, Grenfell Tower is still there as a reminder of the terrible events which began which shortly before 1am on Tuesday, 14 June 2017. Although by the first anniversary in 2018, from which the pictures here come, its scarred and blackened bulk had been hidden by white sheetong. But at the top was a grey panel with a large green Grenfell heart and the message ‘Grenfell – Forever In Our Hearts‘.

As I wrote in 2018, “Some felt it should have been left standing uncovered – particularly as the disaster was caused by covering up the building to make it look nicer for the academy at its base. Without that covering the fire would have been a minor incident with no loss of life.”

I continued “The academy in front of the tower was also built without proper regard for access for fire engines to fight the fire when it happened. To make things worse, Boris Johnson had cut the fire service drastically and they no longer had the equipment to fight the fire in the upper stories – it had to come from Surrey – and successive governments had removed regulations and cut safety inspections (they called it ‘red tape) which would have prevented the inferno.”

Here are the details from the Grenfell United web site of the 7th Anniversary Silent Walk:

Join us at the Silent Walk on 14 June 2024 to mark 7 years since the Grenfell Tower Fire. We will gather at the Nottinghill Methodist Church from 6pm and the walk will begin at 6:30pm. There will be speeches and a call to justice at the end.

Please walk in silence with us to show those responsible we are not going anywhere until we see justice.
Grenfell United

You can see more from the first anniversary walk in 2018 at Massive Silent Walk for Grenfell Anniversary Among those taking part were both then Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.

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Grenfell 4 Years On – Still No Justice

Like many I woke up on the morning of 14th June 2017 to the news of a terrible fire that had engulfed a tower block in North Kensington with horrific stories of the death of so many trapped in the building, particularly on its upper floors. It had begun early in the morning after I had gone to bed and switched off my computer and phone, so I hadn’t got the text from an agency asking if I could go there. Clearly by the time I woke up to the morning news the area was swamped by the media and I decided not to add to the pressure on the survivors and the local residents who were traumatised by what they had seen and heard.

I was shocked by the news, but not surprised. It came after years when the government – particularly the coalition, but others too – had been attacking health and safety measures as ‘red tape’ and making cuts to the fire service, particularly in London, that I’d reported on. And after years of attacks by local and national governments on social housing. Though I was shocked to find that the London Fire Service, thanks to cuts made by the London Mayor Boris Johnson, now longer had an appliance to deal with fires in such high-rise buildings and had to call on the neighbouring suburban Surrey Fire Services for one.

I then knew enough about the design of such towers to understand that this fire should not have been possible. If design and building regulations had been followed it should have been confined to the flat were it started and quickly burned out. Instead the videos clearly showed its rapid spread up the outside of the buildings.

It took only a few weeks for the basic facts behind the fire to be discovered, with Architects for Social Housing in particular producing a straightforward account of the many faults, The Truth about Grenfell Tower on July 21st. Their report not only identified the various faults in the type of cladding and in particular its incorrect installation, but also of the lack of proper oversight in large schemes such as this and the culpability of local councillors and officers.

An unnamed senior architect stated at the end of a lengthy comment to ASH,

‘Since PFI was introduced by Thatcher we have a legacy of hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-standard buildings – schools, hospitals, police stations, etc – that the taxpayer is still paying extortionate rents for under the terms of the 30-year lease-back deal that is PFI. This is her legacy of cosy relationships between local authorities, quangos and their chummy contractors. It is a culture of de-regulation, of private profit before public good. Thomas Dan Smith, the Leader of Newcastle City Council from 1960 to 1965, went to gaol in 1974 for dodgy dealings with local authorities in property development, albeit from a different motivation; but what the public must demand and get now over the Grenfell Tower fire are criminal convictions, and soon.’
https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/2017/07/21/the-truth-about-grenfell-tower-a-report-by-architects-for-social-housing/

What should have followed in the next few months was the criminal trial of those responsible, after which there could perhaps have been a public inquiry in particular looking at the lessons to be learnt and the changes in laws required. Instead we got the usual empty rhetoric from politicians and and public inquiry that was set up in September 2017 but only began taking evidence in June 2018. Much of its first phase was concerned with trying to transfer responsibility from the faults of the building and those responsible for it onto the London Fire Brigade, who had acted heroically on the night and managed to rescue many, and in particular to demonises LFB’s Dany Cotton, who shortly afterwards took early retirement.

This report by retired judge Sir Martin Moore-Bick, selected by Theresa May to lead the enquiry should and hopefully will be seen as an incredible indictment of our public inquiry system, which seems to exist to push issues into the very long grass and allow the guilty to escape any real judgement allowing them to spend millions on barristers to muddy the waters and save their skins. The firefighters and the survivors don’t have that protection.

The enquiry continues with some startling testimonies from those responsible for the defective refurbishment and councillors and officers as well as from residents. So far these broadly repeat and support the conclusions of the July 2017 ASH report – but it has taken almost 4 years longer. It’s hard to read some of the testimonies and not think that person should be in jail. But the chances of any justice for Grenfell still seem remote.

In the days after the fire I went on several protests and four days later made my way to see for myself and, like others pay my respects to the dead. The pictures with this article are from that visit. Since I’ve returned for some of the monthly silent walks and other protests in the area, though these have been suspended for Covid.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.