THE HECATOMB

An Obscenity

As you go west down Westbourne Park Road there comes a point, as you descend the slope towards Portobello Road, where you suddenly see Grenfell Tower looming up above the houses. I certainly wouldn't have known before the fire that you could see it from there, as one tower-block looks much like another (with the exception of Erno Goldfinger's Trellick Tower, which is very distinctive), but now there can be no mistake. That obscene, charred skeleton is instantly recognisable. I was struck by how utterly matt black it was; it had never occurred to me that soot is so totally matt. You can't help but look up at it, even though you feel guilty doing so, and you come away feeling slightly grubby for having done so, because you know, instinctively, that this thing is obscene.

I was dumbfounded, when I was down there, to find people taking selfies in front of the Tower. It was obvious to me that this was inappropriate behaviour, but I find it hard to articulate why exactly. I have a general prejudice against selfies, so I'm not a good witness, but what is it I'm accusing them of? Lack of respect? Yes, possibly, but why is it not possible to take a respectful selfie? I'm not sure, but I think it's that the picture is essentially of yourself, so you are putting yourself at the centre of the universe, in a way that leaves little room for the proper respect for the dead. This vast disaster becomes wallpaper behind your head in a selfie, and that seems a wrong sense of priorities. Also, it's just very poor taste. Scores of people died there; when I was there many of their remains must still have been in the Tower, so photographing it is just in bad taste.

It seems that the Hammersmith and City Line remains closed precisely because the best view of Grenfell Tower is to be had from the platform (eastbound, I think I was told). The line was reopened on (I think) the day after the fire, but the platform filled up with people gawping and taking photos, and TFL took the decision to close it. Inconveniently the line remains closed "until further notice", which doesn't sound hopeful. No doubt safety was one concern, since they get very jumpy about crowds on their platforms, but I suspect there was also a feeling that these sightseers were intruding on the community's grief, and that someone with a telephoto lens could have a horribly intimate view into some of the flats where the recovery operation was taking place. 


Meanwhile on the Warwick

Local residents were summoned to a meeting with the Leader of Westminster City Council yesterday evening on the Warwick Estate, which was meant to be reassuring. I couldn't be there. Apparently it was hard for Cllr Nicky Aiken, the Leader, Cllr  Rachel Robathan, the Cabinet Member for Housing, and Karen Buck MP  to make themselves heard, and there was a lot of anxiety. They had the Fire Brigade commander who had been at Grenfell, and he was stressing differences. Our blocks do apparently have the necessary fire-stopping, made of appropriate materials, and the insulation material is inert rockwool. WCC do seem to want to be open about this, and they did use Wates, a reputable contractor, to do the work. Nevertheless, this afternoon, people were up a crane at the side of Wilmcote House, removing portions of cladding, presumably for testing, which is not a cheerful sight.


A Complaint

Reactions to this all do vary. On Sunday afternoon our tenant church (the Eternal Sacred Order of  the Morning Star) had a barbecue after their service, as they do annually, and I got a complaint as a result. A tower-block resident was very agitated and demanded to know whether I had given permission for this to happen, as it was really insensitive, when people in the tower blocks were "terrified" of being evacuated. I did not respond that I would have thought there were several things more terrifying than the prospect of evacuation, but I did point out that I was the person being most inconvenienced and disturbed by this barbecue, and that in any case my permission was not required, because they were on the Green and the public highway. Disturbance and inconvenience didn't really seem to be the point; this was just "insensitive" I'm not quite sure whether it was having a barbecue in particular that was insensitive, or just lots of people obviously enjoying themselves, but I was completely taken aback. The complaint was heartfelt, but I couldn't work it out. My caller thought I should have had such consideration for the feelings of tower-block residents that I should have forbidden Morning Star (who mostly don't live locally) from having a barbecue. Perhaps I have not been listening enough to what Warwick residents are saying, but I don't think I could reasonably have guessed that a barbecue would have been thought insensitive. We are two miles from Grenfell, the barbecue was two hundred yards from the nearest tower-block, and this was eleven days after the fire. But it seems that some people have an instinct for public mourning, and that's rather interesting. I note that Portugal declared three days of national mourning after the terrible forest fire that killed 145 people last week; we don't seem to do that sort of thing. What does "national mourning " consist of? I have an idea that it might be something that lots of people locally might think was really appropriate.