Tragedies like the Grenfell Tower fire inflict deep wounds on a community and leave scars that take years to heal. Think of the Hillsborough disaster: that was in 1989 and it has barely been out of the news for the last 35 years. Feelings are as strong as ever in Liverpool, where most of the victims came from.
The Grenfell Tower disaster has parallels to Hillsborough. Both were the result of negligence and incompetence and both included elements of deliberate obfuscation and deception.
No wonder that the campaign group Grenfell United, representing survivors and families of those who died in the fire, reacts strongly when it feels that the events of that night in June 2017 are at risk of being forgotten.
Grenfell United wants justice, and rightly so. Although Sir Martin Moore-Bick’s inquiry is now over and the results published, nobody yet has faced prosecution for the wrongs that led to the fire.
Last month, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner announced that the charred shell of Grenfell Tower must now come down, provoking a predictable outcry from Grenfell United, which accused her of “ignoring the voices of the bereaved.”
Yet the structure cannot remain. Besides the high cost of propping it up, the tower is unsafe; why risk another accident?
Rayner is right. It’s time the tower came down and a fitting memorial built to honour those who died that night in 2017.