Revolutionary Communist Party

Grenfell – 2017 & Hong Kong: On Wednesday 6th December 2017 I photographed two protests outside Kensington Town Hall in both of which people demanded answers from Kensington & Chelsea council about the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower almost six months earlier.

The protest had been approved earlier at a public meeting and was supported by the Justice4Grenfell campaign and the Revolutionary Communist Group who both came with PA systems.

J4G refused to let the RCG speak at their protest and tried to persuade them to move away, but they refused.

But they did pause their protest and turn off their sound system for the J4G’s main speakers, MPs Kate Osamor and Emma Dent-Coad.

After that the RCG resumed their protes as J4G appeared to have stopped – but soon they also began again and there were two protests taking place a few yards apart. A small group from J4G came to shout angrily at the RCG, and there were threats of physical violence with one man having to be held back by his friends after he tried to start a fist fight.

Also protesting with the RCG were some from Class War, who stood with posters of disgraced Councillor Rock Feilding-Mellen, who as deputy council leader and cabinet member responsible for housing and for the flammable cladding and other cuts which had created a disaster waiting to happen. Since the fire he had fled the area and hidden away – and under the large image of his face was the single word ‘WHERE?’

I tried hard to photograph both protests, moving between the two groups.

Both shared the same aims, both condemning the failures by the council which had led to a small fire turning rapidly into a major disaster and, after the fire its failure to respond adequately and in a timely way to the needs of the survivors, both calling for criminal charges against those responsible in Kensington and Chelsea council, the TMO and the cladding company and others.

Both calling for a real role for the local community in the official inquiry into the fire which they feel has already disrespected local residents and fear will be a cover up.

Now eight years later the inquiry has told us very little that was not already covered in the report by Architects for Social Housing published 5 weeks after the fire and there have still not been any criminal charges made against those responsible.

There have been some related cases, with people being prosecuted who have fraudulently tried to profit from the disaster – which were discussed in a blog post by Steve Tombs of the OU, The Poor Get Prison… Grenfell as a Site of Crime?, but none for those directly responsible for the tragedy.

Many will have noticed the enormous contrast between this and the recent fire at the Wang Fuk Court complex in Hong Kong where Reuters report at least 156 people died in a fire rapidly spread by substandard plastic mesh and insulation foam.

The first reports in the UK media over the fire also included that police had already arrested a number of people in connection with the fire. Reuters reported 15 on suspicion of manslaughter as well as another 12 arrests in a corruption investigation.

Grenfell protests outside council meeting.

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People’s Assembly against Austerity 2.0: Last Saturday, 7th June 2025 the People’s Assembly had organised what they hoped would be a huge anti-austerity demonstration against Labour’s Austerity 2.0 which seems a return to the policies of the Cameron and other Tory governments, cutting spending on public services while ensuring the rich continue to get richer.

They say:

Austerity is not an inevitability; it is a political choice. By sticking to her arbitrary ‘fiscal rules,’ Rachel Reeves is plunging the country into more crisis.
By choosing to spend money on arms rather than public services, social security and our NHS, this government is actively impoverishing us. We say no – and we mean it.

Recent government announcements of a huge increase in defence spending are based on a return to the worst excesses of the Cold War and a false narrative of Russian invasion of all of Europe – something that the criminal and disastrous invasion of Ukraine when what Putin thought would be over in three days has turned into years of attrition, ruining the Russian economy, actually makes less likely.

Arms manufacturers have always played on our fears to boost their profits – and they are the only people who come out of wars as winners – both the Ukrainian people and the Russian people will end up as losers whatever the final outcome in Ukraine. And it was them and the NATO military hawks who kept up the isolation of Russia and the manipulation of politics in Ukraine and elsewhere after the fall of the USSR rather than welcoming Russia into our fold.

Already our government has drastically cut the aid budget, probably the most important expenditure to promote peace across the world, and is also planning huge cuts in benefits in an attack on the most vulnerable in our society.

It has also continued its attacks on migrants with a new Immigration White Paper which will attack our migrant communities and affect millions of migrants, continuing the racist policies of previous governments. We need migrants, particularly as our population is ageing. Those already here are making a positive contribution to our country – and would do more if we introduced safe ways for them to come here, particularly to join relatives already living here, allowed asylum seekers who can to work, recognised their qualification and made it easier for them to become British citizens. We need a positive approach to migrants rather than the increasingly hostile one.

Many on the protest came to protest about the increasing privatisation of the NHS and the failures to adequately resource it, about the cuts in education and about misguided and inadequate housing policies which have led to huge increases in rents – while making landlords wealthy. About the increases in energy prices and in prices generally which are making many poor. About the failure to abolish to two child cap on benefits which has put so many children into poverty.

*Kid Starver Out – and a cut up Labour Party card.*

We live in a country with massive inequalities and with governments that are inatroducing policies to increase these. The protest called for ‘Welfare not Warfare’, to ‘Tax the Rich’ and ‘Stop the Cuts’.

We would not need to bring in tax increases to greatly increase the amount of tax the country receives but could bring in billions by simply clamping down on tax evasion and tax avoidance. We should outlaw all those schemes that enable companies and individuals who earn money in the UK from not paying taxes. We need to change the law so HMRC would work to a simple rule – if you earn it here, you pay tax on it here – and enforce it. It would probably bring in at least another £20 billion a year.

Saturday’s protest was not the huge demonstration that the People’s Assembly had hoped for, though it was a respectable size, perhaps 3-5,000 people. The drastic and inaccurate weather forecast may have put some people off, but the many groups who backed the event only came in small numbers. Sometimes only just enough to carry their banner.

By far the largest and loudest bloc on the march was that of the Revolutionary Communist Party. Until 2024 called ‘Socialist Appeal’ it was relaunched under this new name. Back around the 1970s it was the Trotskyist Labour group ‘Militant tendency’, set up around the newspaper ‘Militant’ in 1964 and finally proscribed by the Labour Party in 1982.

Many more pictures in my Facebook album Welfare Not Warfare, Stop The Cuts March.

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