Grenfell Tower is not going away. It featured in the Queen's Speech. The tragedy is very obviously abut something more than the personal disaster it represents for so many.
It is about indifference to those who need social housing.
It is about a contempt for standards.
It is about a failure to accept all people are equal.
It is about a society that has over emphasised the value of money.
It is about a society which once talked about the importance of homes, and tried for several decades to make sure that all enjoyed the security that having a place to call your own provided for just about every other aspect of life, but which has for nearly thirty years dispensed with this most basic of provision for well-being for far too many.
It is then about a society that has gone wrong. That has forgotten to value its members. That is indifferent to the needs we all have. That has inappropriately put its faith in money. And where enough people (but not all, as comments in this blog and elsewhere prove) have suddenly been shocked into realising that this is a mistake. After the similar realisation that Brexit is very obviously an error that is still careering towards the creation of a real crisis that will impact vastly more people than Grenfell Tower, albeit very differently, it is as if a new political awareness has been awakened that, for once, cannot be ignored. The fact that we have a government that is obviously unable to govern only highlights the incapacity that many now feel in the face of something so clearly wrong.
So what can be done? The first thing to say would seem to be that looking to the current government for answers will nit help. Yesterday's Queen's Speech was lamentable, precisely because it showed no inclination to tackle any of the issues involved.
Second, then, political change is necessary. I have no idea if that will happen. What I do know is that there is an astonishing interest in political issues at present. This month will see the biggest ever traffic in this blog's eleven year history. I am aware that others are experiencing the same thing: there is a hunger for debate, and the number of new people commenting is also indicating a willingness of some to partake where they previously observed. I welcome this.
Third, this has to translate into action. Ultimately democracy depends on political parties and whilst I choose not to join one, there is a need for more people to do so. 100,000 people joining the Tory party to turn it back into a one nation party that has concern for making the lives of all better would utterly transform British politics in a way that almost nothing else could do at present.
Fourth, some shibboleths need to be faced. Grenfell Tower is already symbolic, but it also represents a reality in UK housing policy. This now subsidises private landlords and not tenants. It is biased towards home owners and not those who aspire to a secure home for their families. It promotes the myth of property as wealth, and not as homes. It does, therefore, divide society. The best indictation of change will, then, be the willingness of people to not only become involved but to also demand that these divisions be removed. So the question is whether or not politics can move from being about reinforcing the power of particular interest groups to an alternative based upon the promotion of broader communal values.
There will be very obvious indicators that will suggest if this is happening. So, for example, will funding for social housing be made available?
Will subsidies for landlords be reduced?
Will capital gains be charged on home ownership?
Are changes to tenancy arrangements that deliver longer term security possible?
Can private developer land banks that are designed to fuel house price increases be tackled with a policy of 'use it or lose it?'
Is there a wilingness to substantially increase the council tax on empty property to encourage its use?
Might council tax be reformed to better reflect value, to reduce the penal rates on lower value property and to properly reflect the enormous change in house prices since it was introduced by levying many more bands at higher rates?
Will local authorities be allowed to build again?
Might they be allowed to borrow to do so?
Will they be allowed to have their own work forces to prevent the risks from loss of accountability that it seems outsourcing creates?
Might the public sector be allowed to pay appropriately once more?
Will we, in other words, accept the price for caring? Because that's the key question. Caring has a cost, and across the board the mood has been created that we cannot afford to care. Will Grenfell Tower change that? Or will we remain indifferent?
And will we continue to be politically adrift, as is so obviously the case at present, or will a fundamental change across the political spectrum to create a new political consensus where people matter be the new direction for UK politics?
Time alone will tell. I live in hope.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
The Labour Government elected in 1945 passed The Town and country Panning Act 1947 which provided that all development values were vested in the state, with £300,000,000 set aside for compensation of the then landowners. Developers would purchase land at existing use value ; after permission to develop was granted, the developer would be assessed a ” development charge ” based on the difference between the initial price and the final value of the land. This part of the ’47 Act was repealed by the 1951 Conservative Government . Much of the frenzied speculation in land over the last sixty years has resulted from this repeal .
The development land tax which was implemented was worse than useless. Labour governments tried this twice more with similar results. If you want to encourage an activity (development) the last thing you do is tax it. They even tried to introduce it again as Planning Gain Supplement in the early noughties, as recommended by Kate Barker’s report on housing supply. Economic illiteracy. Fortunately we now have a future chancellor who will implement the appropriate solution – LVT. That’s the sensible ‘use or lose’ solution.
I agree with him! Do you know about the iniquitous “PLU”? My sister dropped it on one occasion and explained when I asked. Someone had moved in to their neighbourhood and the word had gone round, “Are they PLU?” i.e. people like us, or Do we want to know them? We all live in our own bubbles, our own comfort zones, and don’t want to do the adventurous (and very interesting) thing of getting to know people from other socio-economic groups and other ways of life. We remain in wilful ignorance. I spoke about this briefly from the platform at last year’s Labour conference!
I forwarded your blog to a friend and this was part of her response. Is this an advance on ‘othering’ or just another manifestation. we allow modern life to insulate us against each other so readily! I think the thrust of this blog is just what we need to contemplate and act upon. Thank you for writing it.
It’s what I thought important at 6.30!
This raises fundamental questions about the stratification of our society. I worked as a teacher in schools in different parts of the country and each one replicated the same hierarchy: ‘shit’ council estate (always designated ‘the worst in Europe’)/lower middle class/middle ‘middle’ class etc.
Of course our housing stock reflects these social divisions – perhaps we need a long term transformation of this, a sort of social ‘healing’ that gets us, finally, out of the shadow of the 19th Century.
A difficult subject has arisen by the news that the state is to obtain the use of 70 social housing flats in the area in a block that has apartments selling for £1.5 million. I have every sympathy with the displaced victims of the tower but i can see many people having problems with social housing costing so much. Difficult subject i know but in the same way as decisions have to be made about dispensing health care and it costs ( a cancer drug that extends life by 3 months at a cost of £10000 is acceptable but at a cost of £1million less so and may not be approved), its a difficult question but the cost of socisl housing must be proportionate. Although it would be classed as social cleansing, it would probably be much cheaper to house the victims in larger properties with gardens in somewhere like Hastings. And more acceptable to the tax payer, many of whom must be saying themeselves “I cannot afford to live in Kensington”
You do rather ignore the fact that London cannot survive without the people who can only afford to live in social housing
Why can’t they commute in from less expensive areas like many others do?
Because they aren’t paid enough
What minimum wage do you think covers a London commute?
I think your time here is up: your crass insentitivity to your fellow human beings is boring me
“which has for nearly thirty years dispensed with this most basic of provision for well-being for far too many”
I suppose one could argue that even one person homeless is one too many but to suggest that the UK has ‘dispensed’ with providing homes for the vest majority of the population is absurd.
If you’re that concerned, will you be offering accommodation in your own home for any homeless people?
If not, one could dismiss your comments as the usual bleeding heart liberal hypocrisy one has come to expect from your sort of relatively comfortably-off (if not as well off as they think they ‘deserve’ to be) hand-wringing left-wing pseudo-intelligentsia. Although one wouldn’t want to get personal about it.
Oh for heaven’s sake debate at a meaningful level
People want their own homes, not lodgings
And for the record, I have three bedrooms, and each is occupied
Your assumption that I live in a mansion with rooms to spare is as wide of the mark as your capacity to argue is
I think that we need to demand that these deathtraps be brought into public ownership, managed by and responsible to the tenants, and if it costs £70000 a flat to have them modernised, then that should be spent straight away.
It baffles me how any human being could argue against.
We have a pamphlet which is reproduced on our website http://www.labourland.org Welfare for the Rich. I’m looking at it now on our stall at the Unison conference.
The case for the defence.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-21/nauseating-stupidity-confiscating-homes-greater-good
Not Zero hedge’s finest hour, it has to be said
I’d have deleted the whole thing as diatribe here
Doesn’t Zero hedge have a libertarian bent?
Yes
That does not mean I don’t read it sometimes