Today, 14 June, thousands will march in North Kensington in London to continue to demand justice for the 72 who were killed in the Grenfell fire nine years ago.
The Met has announced that – following the release of the findings of the 1,700-page Grenfell inquiry – they are investigating 57 individuals and 20 companies for gross negligence manslaughter, corporate manslaughter, misconduct in public office, fraud, and health and safety violations.
In the fine print, however, the police acknowledge that any court cases are unlikely to begin before 2029 – an appalling twelve years after the fire itself.
They could have been seizing evidence and making arrests in June 2017, of course, but they were more concerned about policing public anger at the time!
Justice denied
Almost a decade on, not only has justice been denied and delayed for the survivors of Grenfell, but the government has dragged its feet on acting for the thousands who remain trapped in homes covered in flammable cladding.
The Regulator of Social Housing recently published statistics showing that at least 1,924 social housing blocks have “life-critical fire safety” defects relating to their exterior walls. And that is just in the social housing sector.
“It’s another Grenfell in the making,” commented one resident of a block of flats in Kirkby, Merseyside last year after the entire building was forced to move out due to flammable cladding.
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And sure enough, both in Britain and across the world, fires have continued to break out in buildings knowingly constructed with highly flammable, unsafe materials.
In 2019, student accommodation in Bolton went up in flames in minutes due to its cladding. In 2024 a cladding fire in Valencia in Spain killed 12 people. And in 2025, 168 people were killed in the Wang Fuk Court fire in Hong Kong, where Styrofoam window surrounds and flammable netting meant the fire soon spread across seven apartment blocks.
This is nothing short of social murder on the part of the profit-hungry developers and construction companies.
Red tape
So what has Sir Keir Starmer done about it so far in his time as Prime Minister? As for the recommendations from the Grenfell inquiry itself, most are yet to be implemented.
Likewise, the promised ‘Hillsborough law’ – legislation that would create a “duty of candour” for public officials and authorities – has once again been kicked into the long grass after facing push back from the security services who demand exemption from accountability.
To most, the clear conclusion from all of this would be that there has been a complete failure on the part of the government to implement the most basic of reforms following the Grenfell fire despite the deaths of 72 people.
But for Reform’s (former) housing spokesman, Simon Dudley, the pendulum has swung too far! Burdensome building regulations make housebuilding unprofitable, he claims. He went on to explain that the Grenfell fire was a “tragedy” but “everyone dies in the end.”
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Dudley was promptly sacked in a PR gesture for saying the quiet part out loud.
But what Dudley said – appalling though it is – accurately reflects the callousness of big business and the logic of capitalism: they may concede to regulations in light of public pressure but as soon as what they see as red tape starts getting in the way of profit, it must be ripped up.
Justice
Although they may be less crass in their language than someone like Dudley, Starmer’s Labour is beholden to the exact same capitalist class and its interests. These parasites have been cutting corners and putting profits over working class people’s lives for decades.
This is what is at the root of Labour’s failure to act to stop another Grenfell, just like the Tories before them.
Despite all of their lip service to Grenfell’s victims, Starmer’s government would rather tear down the remains of the tower and try to bury the memories of those killed than risk upsetting their profiteering masters.
To bring the corporate criminals behind Grenfell to justice, and make sure such a tragedy never happens again, we must take the power out of the hands of the capitalist class for good.
With unfettered access to all the resources, materials, and wealth they hold, we could easily make use of the expertise that already exists to plan and build safe housing for everyone.
