 Hi and welcome to the fourth episode of IMTV, that's the International Marxist Television Channel hosted by Socialist Appeal. My name's Adam Booth, I'm the editor of Socialist.net and this week we're joined by Nico Baldian who's the chair of the Kensington and Chelsea momentum group and Kensington and Chelsea is obviously the borough where a year ago almost exactly to the day we saw the awful tragedy of the Grenfell disaster which killed officially 72 people and today we're going to be with Nico discussing the events that happened a year ago, the inquiry that's going on today and the fight for justice for Grenfell. So Nico to start us off can you tell us and remind us about the events that happened almost a year ago today? Why did this disaster, this tragedy occur? What were the factors that led to it happening? Yeah sure, of course Adam. Well the actual fire started just before 1am on the fourth floor due to a faulty fridge and it quickly spread to the outside of the building, the cladding which had recently been installed acted as a chimney and burned incredibly quickly within the half an hour the east side of the building had been engulfed in flames by 2am the flames had engulfed most of the top floors of the building and and spread round to two-thirds of the building. Now there was several things that led up to this fire there was the complete lack of concern for health and safety by the TMO the local council the residents raised concerns repeatedly they were continuously ignored and the the project was was done on the cheap without concern for these for these concerns the cladding itself was something that's incredible is even produced it's so dangerous it had been banned in furniture inside buildings since 1988 but it was was put around the building in order to make it look presentable from the outside but it had devastating consequences for the people who lived there. So as you say you had this disaster this this tragedy of the fire spreading very quickly and also what was very quick and the aftermath was the the protests that we saw. Protests on the streets almost the day after massive protests outside Kensington and Chelsea town hall lots of anger particularly towards Theresa May who I remember was very kind of robotic at the time seemed very cold very distant what do you think was it that that really led to this kind of outburst of anger this this this massive outpouring of of kind of this mood of of disgust on the streets you know what where did that come from was it just about the fire were the bigger factors at play. Well I think the the main the main reason it came about so explosively was because people were very much aware that they had been ignored all this time they were very much aware that their community in north Kensington in the royal bar of Kensington they were aware of the the value of the price of the property around that area and they knew that there had been a policy of managed decline they knew they had been neglected because they had been living it for the past you know years for the past years you know there was a long history of campaign of campaigning and and working class struggle in that area and so that was part of it the other part of it was of course that at the time where they knew a crime had been committed the no one was being arrested there was there was you know no one they had a list of people who they who they knew ignored them they had the contractors who who put it up they knew there was something wrong with the cladding and they were seeing you know the architects studio e and and all these other organizations just taking down the information about their involvement in the project to refurbish Grenfell and when you see all this happening of course people are going to be furious and mad and they're furious also with Theresa May with with the bonfire of regulation and there was also the complete lack of response from the local government from the council it was left up to the community to charity council isn't it this is a Tory run this is a Tory run council and it goes back a long time for the the whole point of the TMO was to avoid culprability was arms length management and the way it functioned where you know you'd have to give in a if you had a complaint about something and you wanted to raise it at the AGM you had to give in written notice six months in advance and it was up to the chair whether it will be heeded or not it was a completely corrupt in the pocket of the council organization and it was what I could only describe as as a as a war on the working class with this managed decline with the counselors who have links to property developers aspiring Rockfield Manning used to work for a property developing company he was aspiring in this area we believe this is the deputy leader this was the deputy leader of the Tory council in charge of the redevelopment he he he was in charge of housing he was in charge of housing yeah so this was immediately apparent to everyone it wasn't a surprise you know but but the complete lack of response and just the man going on to the radio as well and he would he would say that residents never wanted sprinklers when all this time you know we had residents who lived in that house who complained about the fire safety who were in the end vindicated by their death uh and had been had signed you know letters 90 percent of the residents had signed and then this man says that they don't want sprinklers it's just absurd so so all of this led to the buildup of anger and now one year on a lot of these revelations are coming out as part of the inquiry that's in full swing started recently still ongoing and probably will be presumably ongoing for for some time and there's lots of these kind of these like I say these revelations these scandals kind of coming to light what do you as as someone who's been involved in these campaigns and seeing these campaigns as part of Kensington and Chelsea momentum what what what are the campaigns that are going on for justice what are people demanding what do they what would they like to see happening on the back of this inquiry and uh and the back of these campaigns right well the the the main thing I think people want to see is people arrested and go into jail and those who are responsible are held to account uh the the justice campaign has had to fight this is like Grenfell united uh and and justice for Grenfell have had to fight in order to get the most basic uh things like uh extra panel members or widening the remit of the inquiry instead of just being purely how the fire started and spread uh they wanted to wire the remit of the inquiry to cover some of these social issues which led to the start of the fire and all of this they've had to fight for even even uh you know the the promises that Teresa made may made about housing residents within three weeks to even have people housed they've had to fight and and struggle to to get these most basic demands uh for they've they've done a good job and they campaigned it wasn't just about uh Grenfell they also campaigned to have the cladding removed from all the other buildings and this Teresa may has finally promised it but what's the progress been on that there's there still hasn't been any cladding removed from the government uh I think there's like been about free I'm not sure there's been about free that local authorities have removed the cladding themselves how something like 300 buildings I think they identified nationwide they've got this dangerous building yeah absolutely uh and and now uh finally she's made the promise to do it uh we'll see we'll see what becomes of that promise broken promises are a speciality of Teresa may we shouldn't forget they they are indeed uh uh but even our limited promise is going to come out of the affordable house building program um which isn't isn't correct bit of a slap in the face for people who've been campaigning over these things um I mean you've brought up an important issue there the question of affordable housing um you're a resident of Kensington and Chelsea one of the most unequal boroughs you know known often as you know a playground for the rich but also home to many councilor states working-class neighborhoods um what and you've also been involved obviously in in in campaigning on this issue um about kind of social cleansing gentrification you know the campaigns against the demolition of these housing estates can you explain a bit more about the kind of long-term trends that have been going on there what have you seen as part of these campaigns around inequality around gentrification yeah well um just from my own experience a few years ago I actually lived down in Chelsea down on the opposite side of the borough and it was a few years ago in 2014 where the excuse was used of a cross rail station and the desire of the council was to they never said this openly but you could tell by looking at a map to put a cross rail station where our estate was and we had seen the agents of Sloan Stanley and the aristocratic families that owned most of Chelsea surveying the the property for its value and its wealth just recently you've had the Sutton estate also in Chelsea which was a housing association which was moving towards becoming purely a property developer like any other and it actually had the houses to rehouse all of the Grenfell survivors if it if it wished to but they had purposefully destroyed the bathrooms to make the houses uninhabitable but the houses were there we have so many empty houses you go in some streets there's one one in three houses are empty and you can see it when you knock on their doors you can see the the echo and why they're empty they're empty because there's not enough millionaires or they're owned by someone who lives somewhere else that put they're bought as investment to speculate on the run on a system for profit it's not for need it's not for it's not to house people who are homeless not to house the people who need homes there's enough houses today to rehouse everyone from from Grenfell in luxury accommodation if if the political will was there to do it and this is what Jeremy Corbyn's obviously proposed and that was Jeremy what Jeremy Corbyn proposed and it got such a backlash because it questioned the sacred right of private property which is obviously what capitalism is built on which is what capitalism is built on but it's private property for the wealthy and misery for the working class but you touched on an important point earlier which is that these councillors have actually got links to the property developers that are doing this this very social cleansing this gentrification they're the ones promoting this investment this parasitic kind of speculation that's right we've got one in one in ten councillors in London have direct links with property developers and obviously that's also shown up recently in Haringey when they've had the privatisation there of the housing stock and I believe the old council leader even once she was kicked out her first job has been within weeks to become part of a private property developers firm as well so it shows it's not just the the rich Tories it's also the right wing of the Labour Party absolutely you know there's there's when it comes to the just the question of of seeking justice you know there's there's very specific circumstances which led to the fire at Grenfell it didn't happen anywhere it happened in Kensington and Chelsea because of all the things that had built up to it to this to this culture of neglect and also you know the cladding is in over 300 houses it's it's not just affecting us here but it's it's they try to use to justify themselves you see it now in the inquiry everyone's trying to shift the blame to someone else and say no oh no we we done everything right but so and so did this wrong and they and they're playing like a game of merry-go-round to to try and shift the blame when really they're all guilty they all played their part and they should pay for it and it's no excuse that there are hundreds of other criminals and crooks like them who put profit before you know the lives of people and you talked about increase this isn't the first one is it because there was also the Lakanal house in Campbell well 2009 I believe where there was a fire and in that situation you had an inquiry and they came up with a set of proposals to ensure that this would never happen again and yet here we are now in 2018 a year after the Grenfell fire a lot of people are saying that this won't be the last one either the another Grenfell is just around the corner so what what are the kind of demands that the the justice campaigns the justice for Grenfell campaigns what are they saying what do we need to happen you know not just in terms of putting people in prison but on a wider scale to ensure this genuinely doesn't happen again well then so we need the cladding removed from the buildings they speak of tougher regulation and for it to be enforced but in my personal opinion I think that every time you have regulation it's it's not enforced fully or in the in with the huge amount of public pressure and the huge amount of complaints that residents are raising up and down the country you know the cladding will have to go the regulation will have to get tougher it would have to be enforced but when you know the movement dies down and when the pressure of big business to cut red tape to to get rid of so many things that get in the way of profit reasserts itself there will be new dodgy materials new bodged bodged work new new instances where the regulation will no longer be followed or it will be weakened it will be made more ambiguous and then you'll have something else happen again so what we have to do in my opinion is take power out of the hands of this you know out of the hands of riding out of the hands of rock people like rockfield malin out of the hands of the of the manufacturers and put it into the hands of working class people to nationalize the banks to nationalize the construction industry to build homes safe homes affordable homes social homes in order to actually deal with the problems we're facing up and down the country the housing crisis we're facing everywhere and on that basis on a socialist basis we can actually make sure this won't happen again i mean one thing i i i i think i you know i've got no direct connection with it but is the the blacklisting of all the construction workers all the time they raised health and safety they would lose they would you know not be able to find work in the future all this history of working class people being ignored and being denied power has led to this culture where they could get away with you know putting huge gaps in between the the window and the and between the window frame what they got they cut the size wrong and they and they filled it up with plastic so if if working class people had the power to say hold on there's health and safety risks here without fear of losing their job maybe we wouldn't see it there's so many waves that we wouldn't have seen it but ultimately i think we need to have working class power to have control over our own lives and that's what socialism is about it's not just abstractly calling for fairness it's about power and ownership thanks very much Nico and thanks to everyone joining us at home uh whether you're watching or listening uh if you've enjoyed what Nico's had to say today or you're interested in finding out more the current issue of socialist appeal has a double page spread dedicated to the issue of the Grenfell tragedy and the anniversary of the fire and the inquiry that's currently taking place if you'd like to find out more about other topics check out our website socialists.net and tune in for the next episode when we're going to be discussing the student movement and the lessons from the recent ucu strikes in the meantime subscribe to our podcast on itunes or on stitcher and follow us on soundcloud and youtube for more episodes of imtv see you next time thank you