unsafe cladding | >Re-PHOTO

Budget, Mugabe & Turkish Gays 2017

Budget, Mugabe & Turkish Gays: Wednesday 22 November 2017 was Budget Day and as usual there were protests around Parliament, and I photographed people protesting about Brexit, housing, student fees and the NHS. Outside the Zibabwe Embassy there were people celebrating the resignation of President Mugabe, while people came to the Turkish Embassy in a protest against a ban on LGBTI cultural events in Ankara.

Budget Day Brexit Protests – Old Palace Yard

The usual Remainers had come to protest with some new Budget Day slogans, ‘What’s the Budget for Brexit’ and the punning ‘Brexit spreads Sheet Everywhere’, a reference to Chancellor Philip Hammond’s nickname ‘Spreadsheet Phil’. New independent analysis published in 2024 tells us that Brexit has cost the British economy almost £140 billion.

They had EU flags and also that curiously discreet sign of distress, the upside-down Union Jack (for pedants Union Flag). The opposing Brexiteers accused them of being unaware of which way up to fly the flag.

Political artist Kaya Mar joined them briefly hold his painting of the Chancellor sitting on a floating mine with his computer holding up a sinking Theresa May as the ship of Britain sinks in the background.

Budget Day Brexit Protests

Homes for All Budget and Others – Parliament Square

Housing campaigners from various groups had come to a protest called by ‘Homes For All‘ demanding the government commit to building more homes to be let at social rents. After a long rally in Parliament Square they marched briefly to Downing Street.

The housing crisis is worst for the poorest in society but almost all the schemes brought in by governments this century have been aimed at subsiding those on middle incomes to become home owners. As well as not building social housing there had been a failure to bring in the regulations needed to control the private rental sector to provide greater security of tenure, control rents and ensure properties are kept in habitable condition. Perhaps because many MPs are also landlords.

Only a programme that allows local authorities to borrow money and build home can deliver housing at a cost that those on lower incomes can afford to live in – and that still provide a good return on investments – they point out that by 2010-2011 councils were paying more than £700 million to government in surpluses from council housing.

As well as attacking the government’s record on housing they also blamed the Labour Party for allowing Labour councils to demolish council housing and combining with developers and housing associations to provide new housing at market prices, unaffordable so called “affordable’ properties and and high rents without long-term security of tenure.

They pointed out the need for government funding for necessary fire safety work to avoid another Grenfell disaster including the replacement of dangerous cladding on all tall blocks, the enforcement of fire regulations and a return to proper fire safety inspections which had been abandoned as unnecessary ‘red tape’.

New Labour and London Labour Councils were blamed for demolishing council housing and combining with developers and housing associations to provide new housing with a great reduction in properties at social rents, with homes for sale at market prices, unaffordable so called “affordable‘ properties and at high market rents without long-term security of tenure.

A speaker from Haringey told us the Labour council is giving away £2 billion of council property to a private developer who will build properties the current council tenants and leaseholders will not be able to afford – with a small amount of high-priced ‘affordable properties‘. Like on previous schemes he was confident the developers will get accountants to arrange the books and get them out of most of their obligations to include low-cost social housing. Opposition to the scheme led to some Labour councillors losing their seats and the plans being stopped, though the future remained unclear.

In College Green there were a few people with placards calling for greater funding for the NHS who would also have been disappointed by the budget. Some of them came to join the housing rally, as also did some who had come to protest against the cuts and student fees.

There was also a man with a bell and placards about public debt, though it wasn’t quite clear exactly why he thought ‘The End Is Nigh’.

More on My London Diary at Homes for All Budget protest.

Zimbabweans celebrate Mugabe’s resignation – Strand

Zimbabweans had come to the London embassy where they had been protesting every week for over 15 years to celebrate the resignation of President Mugabe.

But although there was much dancing and singing with joyful delight at his going they had no trust in his likely successor Emmerson Mnangagwa. Regular protests still continue at the Embassy and they have vowed they will continue until there are free and fair elections in Zimbabwe

Zimbabweans celebrate Mugabe’s resignation

Protest at Turkish LGBTI+ ban – Turkish Embassy

Protesters met at the Turkish Embassy in Belgrave Square to read a statement in solidarity with Turkish LGBTI+ people after Turkey last Sunday imposed an indefinite ban on all LGBTI+ cultural events in its capital, Ankara.

They say the ban is illegal, homophobic and transphobic and which they say risks criminalising LGBTI existence and endangering public safety and that it is based on an extremist Islamic morality and violates the Turkish constitution.

Homosexuality has been legal in Turkey since the last half of the century under the Ottoman Empire and under the modern Turkish Republic which came into existence in 1923.

Protest at Turkish LGBTI+ ban

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Grenfell, Idlib, Sudan – 15 June 2019

Grenfell, Idlib, Sudan – 15 June 2019 – Another day I photographed several protests in Central London.

Grenfell Solidarity March – Westminster

The previous evening I’d photographed the silent march from close to Grenfell Tower remembering the victims of the disaster on the second anniversary of the disastrous fire which killed 72 and left survivors traumatised, and came up to London the following day, Saturday 15 June, for a rather noisier solidarity march, starting and finishing at Downing St, organised by Justice4Grenfell.

My journey up to London had been much slower than usual as there were engineering works on the railway and no trains from my station, and I decided to take a bus the five miles or so to my nearest Underground station for a train to London. On the way the bus passed a recently closed fire station, a reminder of the cuts made by Boris Johnson to the fire services which had contributed to the severity of the Grenfell disaster – though this fire station had been closed by Surrey County Council.

Banners from several branches of the Fire Brigade Union were prominent on the march, which was also supported by other trade unionists and housing activists, including the Construction Safety Campaign, the Housing For All campaign, Defend Council Housing and the Global Womens Strike, as well as others from the Grenfell community.

*Yvette Williams demands Truth and Justice For Grenfell*

From a rally opposite Downing Street the campaigners marched to the Home Office in Marsham St, now also home to he Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, for more speeches. The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea is one of the richest bouroughs in the country, but it is dominated by Tory councillors representing the wealthy areas of the borough who seem to have little regard for poorer residents.

They signed off through their housing organisation the penny-pinching use of unsuitable highly flammable cladding, failed to properly oversee its installation, made other changes that threatened the safety of the residents and arranged for inadequate fire safety inspections, and dismissed the warnings of residents who they labelled as trouble-makers.

RBKC’s reaction after the fire was also severely lacking, and often showed little understanding or concern for the survivors, and their record over rehousing them was abysmal – and remains so now.

Among the speakers outside the Ministry of Housing were Moyra Samuels of Justice4Grenfell and Eileen Short of Defend Council Housing. After the speeches the protesters marched back to Downing St where there was to be a further rally, but I left to go elsewhere.

Grenfell Solidarity March

‘We are the Love’ for Idlib – Parliament Square, London

The Black Eyed Peas song ‘Where’s the love?’ was the inspriation for a protest which was part of an international non partisan campaign to raise awareness about the massacre currently unfolding in the province of Idlib in Syria. It called for an end to the violence in Idlib, the opening up a the supply of humanitarian aid to the people of the city and for those responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity to be brought to justice.

Campaigners stood in a line holding posters which spelt out the message ‘#we are the love’ but this was difficult to photograph, partly because of its length, but also because of the drummer and bagpiper marching in front of it. Bagpipes in my opinion are best heard from the opposite side of the glen and I didn’t stay long.

‘We are the Love’ for Idlib

Hands off Sudan march, Hyde Park Corner

I left Parliament Square to look for a protest march over the massacre of 124 peaceful protesters by Janjaweed militias (Rapid Support Forces) in Khartoum and other cities in Sudan.

They were marching from the United Arab Emirates Embassy in Belgrave Square, and going to protest at the Egyptian and Saudi embassies, as all three countries had been visited by Sudan’s ruling military council and they were thought to be opposing a democratic Sudan and the movement which had led to the removal of corrupt president al-Bashir in April 2019.

From the timings I had for the event I expected them to be at the Egyptian embassy in Mayfair, but when I rushed there from Parliament Square found only a small group of supporters waiting for the protest.

I didn’t know the exact route of the march, but walked back along what seemed to be the its most obvious path, and was very pleased when I got to Hyde Park Corner to see and hear them just emerging from Grosvenor Crescent around a hundred yards away.

They stopped on the pavement just before crossing the road there and there was a lot of loud chanting, mainly led by women at the front of the protests, before crossing the road towards Hyde Park. They stopped again there and there seemed to be some arguments between protests and there was much more loud shouting and chanting, none of which I could understand.

Fortunately many of the posters and placards were in English, and as well the many Sudanese there were also some supporters of English left groups marching with them.

Hands off Sudan march

Grenfell Six Months On – 2017

Today it is four and a half years after the terrible fire at Grenfell Tower which began early in the morning of 14th June 2017, killing 72 people and injuring over 70 others. And many or all of those who escaped will suffer from both physical and mental effects of the night for the rest of their lives, as too will many of the firefighters and other emergency workers.

The pictures here come from the monthly slow and silent walk to demand justice and remembering those killed at Grenfell Tower six months after the fire on Thursday 14th December 2017.

The fire was an event waiting to happen, and warnings of the danger by residents and neighbours had been ignored by the building managers. The reasons the fire spread as it did were almost immediately obvious and rapidly published including the report by Architects For Social Housing, The Truth about Grenfell Tower which came out around five weeks later.

Rather than take action against those responsible, a public inquiry was set up, and began three months later. It’s main effect has been to delay justice, and its first sessions and report were largely devoted in trying to shift blame on to London Fire Brigade, whose efforts on the night had showed incredible determination and bravery.

Cuts in the London Fire Service made by Boris Johnson when he was London Mayor had left them both understaffed and under-equipped, while earlier privatisation of some of the fire inspection and certification allowed dangerous conditions of buildings including this to go unchecked. The LFB did not have a suitable fire engine for dealing with the high rise fire, and one had to be brought from Surrey.

Governments of both parties over the years had weakened the regulations and inspections in the name of ‘cutting red tape’, responding to lobbying from the building industry, which allowed both highly flammable cladding to be use, and also for it to be incorrectly installed without essential safety gaps.

With tall blocks that meet proper safety standards a fire like this which began with a faulty refrigerator in a single flat would have been contained within that single flat. Many such fires have taken place and been contained, sometimes with most other residents of the building being completely unaware of them. Had Grenfell not been wrongly fitted with unsuitable cladding this would have been the case here, though there were also other problems particularly with the stairways and dry riser that made escape and fighting the fire much more dangerous.

Had the LFB been aware of the problems they were to face things would have been very different (and they would have called for the building to be shut down and the faults rectified.) But they arrived at the fire ignorant of the many defects, and were met with a situation which was for them unprecedented. With hindsight it is possible to say they could have made a decision to go against all their training on fires in tall blocks and try to evacuate the building earlier, but I think it unfair to blame them for not doing so.

The public inquiry continues, and has shed some more light on the details of the crimes that led to those 72 deaths, but seems mainly to have been taken up by those eager to shift responsibility from their actions to others.

Tonight, 14th December 2021, four and a half years later, another silent walk will take place, gathering at Kensington Town Hall at 6pm to start at 6.30pm. This is the first for 18 months due to Covid. The invitation from Grenfell United states:

“We invite you to join us on our Silent Walk in our campaign for Justice.

To show those responsible we are not going anywhere until we have real Change and Justice. So another Grenfell never happens again.”
Grenfell United

More about the walk in 2017: Grenfell Silent Walk – 6 months on

Fire Risk Tower Blocks

Newham 12 August 2017

In the now over four years since the disastrous Grenfell Tower fire in June 2017 there has been little change and no reckoning, with a tediously slow inquiry taking place that began by shifting blame unfairly onto the firefighters but is at last making clear some of the deliberate failures by local government, manufacturers and installers of the fatal cladding and others with a complete disregard for the safety of those living in the tower.

Cladding was not of course the only issue, and there were many other failings that led to the terrible loss of life. Most basic was the attitude of governments of both parties towards health and safety issues, describing essential safety regulations as “red tape” and dismantling what were essential checks to increase the profitability of builders and developers and reduce the liabilities of building owners. It was a system that needed reforming and strengthening, perhaps learning from practice in other countries to provide effective control and not abandoning to commercial whim.

Most of what has emerged in the inquiry only reinforces what was already made clear from informed reports – such as that by Architects for Social Housing – within weeks of the fire, adding truly shameful detail to the broader outline. It surely should have come out in courts within months of the fire and some of those responsible might well be behind bars and companies charged with massive fines, and the main point of the inquiry seems to be to prevent the course of justice.

Local authorities and building owners have been forced to inspect their high-rise properties, and the government has provided at lest some of the money it promised to replace unsafe cladding in the public sector. But little has been done for those living in private blocks who are still living in fear and now pay increased charges for extra fire safety provisions. A parliamentary briefing paper estimates the total cost of replacement of unsafe cladding at around £15m, and so far government has come up with a third of that. Government policy has changed from the initial promise to fund “remediation of historical safety defects, to a suggestion that leaseholders should be protected from unaffordable costs” and even the provision for a low interest scheme to ensure they would not pay more than £50 a month has failed to materialise despite the promise in the current Building Safety Bill.

In August 2017, a number of tower blocks in the London borough of Newham were found to have unsafe cladding. Housing activists Focus E15 Mothers led a demonstration putting pressure on the council to act urgently to make the blocks safe. The council came to a decision the following month to remove the cladding though work to do so only began in April 2018.

The march began at Ferrier Point in Canning Town, with other groups including East End Sisters Uncut, Movement for Justice, the Socialist Party, the Revolutionary Communist Party, One Housing campaigners and Whitechapel Anarchists joining Focus E15 and some tower block residents.

From there they marched to Tanner Point in Plaistow North for a longer rally outside, including some speeches from tower residents. Then came another long march to Stratford and the Carpenters Estate.

The Carpenters Estate was a popular estate, close to Stratford station and the town centre, and was viewed by the council as a prime opportunity for highly profitable redevelopment schemes, wanting to demolish the estate which is well-planned and in good condition. Focus E15 led opposition that in 2013 ended plans for UCL to set up a new campus here and have constantly urged the council to bring back people to the estate where despite a critical housing shortage in the borough, 400 good homes had been kept empty for over 10 years. The march ended with a ‘hands around the Carpenters Estate’ solidarity event against decanting, demolition and social cleansing.

More pictures at Fire Risk Tower Blocks.

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