Let Our Fire Engine Through!

By New Worker correspondent

Members of the Fire Brigades Union joined Palestine Solidarity Campaign supporters for an evening protest at the Israeli Embassy in London on Monday with the demand “Let Our Fire Engine Through!”
A fully-equipped fire appliance together with fire kit, boots, breathing apparatus and fire helmets, was donated by firefighters from the city of Dundee to the Palestinian fire service in Nablus in the West Bank. It was driven from Scotland to Southampton in the summer to sail to Israel but it has been held at the Israeli port of Ashdod since 21st July.
Dundee has been twinned with Nablus since 1980, and medical kit from the city’s Ninewells hospital along with football kits from Dundee’s East Craigie Football Club were also donated. Over 100 Palestinian firefighters have learned firefighting skills in Scotland, and Gaza protests have been held in Dundee every week since October 2023. Retired Dundee firefighter Jim Malone has championed the cause of Palestinian firefighters for decades and has visited the West Bank seven times, and in 2015 an award-winning documentary, Firefighters Under Occupation, was made by south Wales firefighter Ciaran Gibbons with the FBU's support.
Matt Wrack, the FBU general secretary said “firefighters in Palestine are working to save lives in horrifying conditions. As humanitarians, we cannot stand by while lives are being lost. It is appalling that life-saving equipment donated by our members is being held by Israeli customs while Palestinian firefighters are in desperate need of resources.
“The Fire Brigades Union calls on the Israeli government to release the donated fire engine immediately, and for the UK government to take any necessary action to ensure this aid is delivered safely”.

United for Grenfell!

by New Worker correspondent

Several hundred people from the local community along with many trade unionists joined the 21st Silent March for Grenfell last week, including Fire Brigades Union general secretary Matt Wrack. The dignified and very moving event remembering the 72 people who died in the fire starts from close to the Grenfell Tower every month, and on this occasion ended with calls for justice and change from local community activists including the rap artist Lowkey.

Last week campaigners heard that no criminal charges will be made against the organisations and individuals responsible for the fire until at least 2021. Tasha Brade from the Justice for Grenfell campaign said: “Why do the police have to wait until the Grenfell Inquiry is over before taking action? Aren’t they carrying out their own investigation? So far we know that 11 people have been questioned under caution but we’ve got no idea who they are. Our community wants justice for the victims of the fire and we want it as soon as possible.”

Mounting anger over Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Moyra Samuels speaking

By Theo Russell

Warnings of protests at the Grenfell Tower Inquiry were heard this week as anger and frustration mount over the direction of the inquiry at a meeting between the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) and the local community close to the site of the fire, the worst in the UK since the Blitz.

Frustration and anger is mounting at the direction of the inquiry, where the presiding judge initially refused to take any questions from community members.

Moyra Samuels of the Justice4Grenfell campaign received loud applause from survivors and local community members at the meeting last Tuesday when she said: “There should be protests outside the inquiry, to show the judge that people are not happy with it.”

Her call was backed up by Matt Wrack, FBU general secretary, who said: “If a total ban on the use of external flammable cladding is not announced, maybe we should start protesting against the inquiry.”

Samuels told the meeting: “We are a tough community but unfortunately we discovered that through the fire at Grenfell. We need truth, accountability, change and justice.”

She dubbed Kensington & Chelsea council, the richest in Britain, “the Royal Borough of Murder and Profit”, and said that “trust between the North Kensington community and the council had broken down long before the fire”.

“We were told by fire experts that the refurbishment of the Grenfell Tower was safe, yet now a QC has told the Inquiry that it was actually a death trap. We have discovered that profit is more important than people.”

Matt Wrack added that a parliamentary committee was warned as far back as 1999 that faulty cladding posed serious fire hazards.

Now the inquiry has heard from Angelo Lucchini, an Italian architectural engineer, that the cladding used at Grenfell was equivalent to dousing the building with 32,000 litres of petrol, “enough to fill approximately 600 cars”.

The FBU is calling for a total ban on flammable cladding, which is used for weather and sound proofing, yet incredibly so far the inquiry has shown no signs of calling for a total ban.

The government has admitted that the cladding used at Grenfell was unlawful, yet instead of calling for a complete ban is carrying out a consultation on the use of combustible materials, in which companies making the cladding will take part.

Matt Wrack told the meeting that “very powerful forces are lobbying against a ban, and they have the ear of the government”. These companies are part of a multi-billion pound building, construction and property industry.

Wrack said that before Grenfell no tests were conducted on combustible cladding, which has also been used on hundreds of blocks across Britain, but since the fire dozens of tests have all failed safety requirements.

He said the FBU is also calling for a thorough review of fire and building regulations, which have been gutted in the last 20 years, and cuts to fire brigades. In 2015–2016 there was a 15 per cent rise in fire deaths in London.

Ten fire stations and 600 firefighter posts were cut during Boris Johnson’s term as London Mayor. On the day of the tragedy firefighters had to call for assistance from neighbouring brigades, yet even then had to work in the tower for 12 hours or more with no chance of being relieved.

The FBU has complained to the inquiry about its choice of expert witnesses, who include the same Chief Fire Officers who supported service cuts and deregulation.

Fifteen months on from the fire many survivors are still in temporary accommodation. The day after the fire a survivor said the tower was an “accident waiting to happen”, adding: “For years they’ve abused our community.”

Concerns about the tower’s safety began years before the fire and in 2013 the council threatened Grenfell resident Edward Daffarn with legal action after he blogged about fire safety concerns, including power surges that caused computers and stereos to blow up filling rooms with smoke.

In a blog in November 2016 Daffam warned: "It is a truly terrifying thought but the Grenfell Action Group firmly believe that only a catastrophic event will expose the ineptitude and incompetence of our landlord."

Over 100 people living in the block told an emergency residents’ meeting on the Grenfell refurbishment in 2015 that the council’s Tenant Management Organisation and the contractors were “using cheap materials and cutting corners”.

The day after the tragedy one of the messages on the tribute wall nearby read “Justice for Grenfell. Jail those responsible”. That is still what the community is demanding, and they want the cladding contractors and the senior politicians responsible to be included.

A trades council in the shadow of Grenfell Tower

By Theo Russell

Matt Wrack calls for support at the meeting

 

Local trade unionists in West London are mobilising to build support for the first AGM of a new trades union council that kicked off with a meeting in June.

Local union and community activists came together on 27^th June at the Maxilla Social Club, in the shadow of Grenfell Tower, to mobilise support for the relaunch of the Hammersmith, Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea Trades Council.

They were addressed by Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union (FBU) general secretary, on the latest developments in the public inquiry, alongside Merril Hammer, Chair of Save Charing Cross Hospital, Christine Blower, former General Secretary of the NUT, and Liane Groves, Unite Community National Coordinator. The meeting was chaired by Roger Sutton from the Greater London Association of Trades Union Councils.

Veterans of the old local trades councils along with local trade union and Labour Party activists discussed how to obtain sufficient affiliations to ensure the new combined trades council, which will launch formally at the AGM on 23^rd October, can survive as a viable organisation.

Matt Wrack told the meeting that: “Trades councils are at the heart of local communities, and with the fall in trade union membership are needed more than ever to build the links in order to improve peoples’ live.”

“Trade unionism is not just a top-down process, we need them to engage with local disputes and with the wider community who are not in trade unions.”

Wrack spoke at length about the impact of the fire on his members and major problems with the Grenfell Inquiry. He said that about 1,000 firefighters, almost all FBU members, had been questioned by the Metropolitan Police, some for as long as six hours.

With an FBU rep attending each interview, this had been a huge organisational challenge for the union.

He said that London Fire Brigade members were “disgusted” by the treatment of the Grenfell incident commander, Michael Dowden, and said the inquiry was starting in the wrong place by focusing on the fire itself rather than on the long list of bodies responsible for the disaster.

“Those people responsible for the tower’s cladding, the contractors and businesses who sold the materials, are not the ones being asked difficult questions, it’s the people who turned up on the night.”

Wrack said the disaster was caused not just by austerity but by the attacks on public services that began with the 1979 Thatcher government.

“Housing and safety regulations were weakened, building controls part privatised and cut to pieces, and fire regulations fragmented, with firefighters having died as a result. Since 2005, 50 per cent of fire safety officers have been lost and local government budgets have been hardest hit by austerity since 2010.

“The inquiry should look into the past cuts to council housing, public services and local authority resourcing, and the deregulation of the building industry and fire safety testing regimes.”

He added that there was “utter complacency from central government” since the fire, saying: “I have no confidence that the inquiry will bring change. The only way to do that is to organise a huge community movement – that is the only way we will get change, that is the only way we will get justice.

“The UK is the fourth richest country in the world but no longer conducts any fire safety research, and ranks 34th in fire resilience. Eleven thousand firefighters and 40 fire stations have been lost, and there are not enough crews to man the remaining fire engines.”

Mounting anger at huge rise in fire deaths

THE FIRE Brigades Union (FBU) last week reported that its London members are deeply upset and angry to learn that the number of people killed in fires has risen sharply in the capital, according to the latest figures released by the London Fire Brigade (LFB) this week.  

In 2016, the latest year for which figures have been made available, there were 46 deaths in London caused by fire, up from 33 the previous year – a 40 per cent increase. The figures, published in the LFB’s Fire Facts briefing, do not include the 71 victims of the Grenfell Tower disaster.

Paul Embery, FBU executive council member for London, said: “We are deeply concerned at the correlation between the rise in deaths following the deepest cuts to the brigade in its history, which were pushed through by the former mayor [Boris Johnson].

“This disturbing increase has happened at a time when over 1,000 frontline firefighter posts have been ditched, 10 fire stations closed, and specialist rescue equipment and fire engines have been removed from service.

“In recent years firefighters have had to work with one hand tied behind their backs. Station closures and fewer fire engines mean it is taking longer for fire crews to make it to the incident scene. This means they arrive after the fire has become more intense, when the possibility of rescuing victims becomes fainter and the work far more dangerous.

“Critically, overworked firefighters are now struggling to provide the preventative fire safety work which has historically driven down the number of fatal fires.

“Firefighters welcome mayor Sadiq Khan’s commitment not to make any further frontline cuts to the brigade. However, we need to look at adopting a strategy that gives the brigade the funding it desperately needs in order to drive down fatal fires.”

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack also raised serious concern over a multi-million-pound donation to the LFB by the London Freemasons.

The Masons will gift LFB £2.5 million for the purchase of two extended height aerial vehicles. London Fire Commissioner Dany Cotton had asked for the specialist equipment as part of a review into the brigade’s resources that she was asked to undertake by London Mayor Sadiq Khan in July.

But now the vehicles will be provided for on a charitable basis. The FBU says it is extremely concerned that a life-saving public service is now relying on handouts rather than adequate funding from the Government.

Matt Wrack said: “Whilst we appreciate the charity of anyone who wishes to support our firefighters, the idea that a professional, life-saving public service has to go around with a begging bowl to organisations with deep pockets is deeply alarming.

“If the equipment is needed to save lives, then the funding for it should be provided by Government. This deal sets a pretty awful precedent that could allow the Government to discharge its responsibilities in the future.

“We also have grave concerns that the donation in question has come from an organisation that disbars women from joining – a deeply offensive practice that needs to come to an end.”