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Grenfell Tower Inquiry diary week 81: ‘This is Islamophobia, it is racism, the elephant staring back at us in the room’

Insight01.07.221.00 PM by Peter Apps

This week, closing statements covering the aftermath of the fire delivered a shocking new revelation and an expert toxicologist gave his views on the causes of the deaths. Peter Apps reports

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This week, closing statements covering the aftermath of the fire delivered a shocking new revelation and an expert toxicologist gave his views on the causes of the deaths. Peter Apps reports #UKhousing

Two-and-a-half years on from the first explosive opening statements, the second phase of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry is reaching its conclusion.

But it has not lost the capacity to shock, with this week’s evidence delivering a stunning new piece of evidence about the Metropolitan Police’s actions in the days after the fire.

The week also saw Professor David Purser, an expert toxicologist, give important evidence on the cause and time of the death of the victims, as well as the contribution of various materials to the smoke that killed them.

We will begin with the big news of the week, relating to the police.

‘The majority of those affected are believed to come from a Muslim cultural background’

Monday saw lawyers for the various parties involved in proceedings give closing statements relating to the evidence covering the immediate aftermath of the fire.

The first of these came from Allison Munroe QC (pictured above), representing one of the groups of bereaved and survivors.

Not for the first time in this inquiry, her comments raised the issues of racism and discrimination. Describing it as “the elephant in the room”, she said: “Racism and discrimination, we say, played a very real part in the response to this tragedy. The playing field was not level. It never has been.”

Expanding this point, she read from a previously unseen risk assessment produced by the Kensington and Chelsea branch of the Metropolitan Police four days after the fire.

Warning of a risk of “outbreaks of crime and/or disorder within hours”, it said: “There is an expectation that the final death toll from the fire could rise substantially and with the cause still unknown, any subsequent disclosure could have an impact on community tensions.

“Especially when the majority of those affected are believed to come from a Muslim cultural background, combined with the incident occurring during the [holy] month of Ramadan.”

“Members of the panel, this is Islamophobia, it is racism, the elephant staring back at us in the room,” said Ms Munroe.

The response to this document from bereaved and survivors has been furious.

The issue of the death toll – which was unclear in the days after the fire and was estimated at 79 on the day this document was produced – was a major issue of distress and distrust for the community, with rumours circulating that it was being deliberately withheld to limit public anger.

Grenfell United, a group of bereaved and survivors, issued a statement that said: “We are disgusted, horrified. We are angry… Maybe this is why justice for people from our class and culture never progresses.”

Andrew Warnock QC, appearing for the Metropolitan Police, noted that the passage following the one quoted by Ms Munroe discussed working with “community leaders from local Mosques… to support those affected”, as well as “community leaders from other faith groups”.

“The [Metropolitan Police] sought to work in a positive way with all those affected by the tragedy. While it will not have got everything right, it would strongly refute any suggestion that Islamophobia affected its response to the tragedy,” he said.

The inquiry has also heard repeated accounts from bereaved residents seeking loved ones that they were shouted at and threatened with arrest by police.

“This focus on public order detracted resources and focus away from the relief effort,” said Ms Munroe. “This we find extraordinary, inexcusable and unforgivable.”

Danny Friedman QC, appearing for another group of bereaved and survivors, said that the authorities involved in the response were “more concerned about an uprising or unrest than they were about looking after families”.

Ms Munroe cited other examples of racial discrimination in the broader emergency response, including the lack of communication for non-English speakers, a failure to provide counsellors who spoke the language of the bereaved and a lack of Halal food.

She also described discrimination against other groups who should have been afforded protection under the Equality Act.

Disabled residents, known to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s (RBKC) adult services team, were treated with what she called “indignity and disregard”.

“They were grieving for friends, relatives, for neighbours, they were bereft of all their worldly possessions,” Ms Munroe said. “These residents were placed nonetheless in hotels on high floors, in rooms that were not adapted for their most basic needs.”

Pregnant women who fled the tower were left “living and sleeping in entirely inappropriate accommodation”, she added.

Children also suffered. “Families found themselves in hotel rooms with no facilities to sterilise bottles and no cots if they had small children, babies and infants. School-age children, some of whom had exams to sit that week, had no uniforms to go to school in, they had no room to study. Often whole families were sharing one hotel room, so teenagers had no privacy and no space,” she said.

The inquiry has previously heard concerns about conditions in a major ‘rest centre’, located in the Westway Sports Centre, where bereaved and survivors had to go to access support and information.

“There was the insensitivity of the police cordon, which again illustrates a hostile approach by RBKC, seeing residents and survivors as the enemy,” said Ms Munroe. “Residents and survivors described the interviews at the Westway as robotic and little more than tick-box exercises.

“The lack of co-ordination meant that people had to repeat and therefore relive their story and their trauma to myriad individuals and agencies, causing further distress. It was… inhumane and cruel. They did not care about us.”

‘The community’s heart was literally broken and yet some were being characterised as the villains of the piece’

Ms Munroe also pointed to comments made by RBKC staff in the aftermath of the fire, which described survivors raising concern about the council's response as “a small number of known local instigators who continue to fabricate stories in order to further their aims”.

The inquiry has previously heard that Nicholas Holgate, then chief executive of the council, said there was “great concern over community tension”, with “hostile residents very vocal in negative comments towards the incident” in a meeting with central government a day after the fire.

“With the embers of the tower still glowing hot, the spin and deflection began,” said Ms Munroe. “We ask, ‘Why would a responsible authority even seek to raise matters such as this at a time when people were in such physical and emotional pain?‘

“The community’s heart was literally broken and yet some were being characterised as the villains of the piece.”

Particular staff members at RBKC came in for criticism from the community’s lawyers. These included Laura Johnson, then director of housing at RBKC, for her efforts to provide emergency housing.

“Everyday moral restraints make it hard for people, especially public servants, to admit inhumanity or comprehend that inhumanity is not restricted to bad people,” said Mr Friedman. “And yet it occurs in bureaucracies and businesses when basic moral restraints become neutralised or otherwise compromised.

“Consider Laura Johnson. She presided over the assignment of residents into hotels with no regard to their human well-being once warehoused in this way.

“Johnson’s account is about the movement of bodies and things, not people. And she did this in a fashion that no one would ever do to their own family or friend or anyone whose lives they knew anything about.”

Mr Holgate also attracted criticism for his now-notorious decision not to call for outside help, against the advice of his emergency planner, telling colleagues “that looks like we can’t cope”.

“When he protests that it was not part of his make-up as a career civil servant… what he really means is ‘I am not the kind of person who would want to be seen as refusing help for those reasons’. However, out of arrogance and defensiveness, that is just what he did,” said Mr Friedman.

For the council’s part, their lawyer, James Maxwell-Scott QC (pictured above), accepted a number of failures – to add to those he admitted in opening statements for this module.

However, he added: “It would be unwise to assume that everything would have been fine if the council had performed to an adequate level. That sort of thinking breeds complacency about the robustness of the current national and local system for dealing with emergencies.”

‘That indifference caused the people who lived, survived or lost loved ones from this fire to pay such a terrible price’

On a broader level, Mr Friedman (pictured above) was critical of what he called “subsidiarity” – the principle in emergency planning that central government will defer to the leadership of local structures.

“Subsidiarity turned out to be to civil contingency what ‘stay put’ is to fire and rescues. It’s a policy assumption that was allowed to become imprisoning as an article of faith,” he said.

Calling for the inquiry to recommend change in this area, he said: “The rationalist professional outlook of modern bureaucracy has taught itself to be distant and disconnected from people and communities, and especially those who may be marginalised on grounds of class, race and disability. The damage done by such discrimination is profound. It is anti-social.

“The fact that this inquiry is not a commission into social housing or the future of the welfare state should not stop it from reporting on how government became anti-social in its indifference, and how that indifference caused the people who lived, survived or lost loved ones from this fire to pay such a terrible price.”

Ms Munroe said: “No community should have to go through such painful and degrading experiences, as our clients did in the aftermath of this fire.

“When they should have been protected and enveloped in the protective arms of the state, they were treated as a hindrance – second-class citizens who did not warrant the care, kindness and support that they should have been given immediately and unconditionally.”

Ms Munroe closed her statement by quoting the words of Hanan Wahabi, who escaped the tower but lost her brother and his family in the blaze.

She said: “I cannot help but feel that had our community lived in a different part of the borough, on the more affluent side, had we been from a different class, had we been less ethnic, the response in the aftermath would have been immediate. It would have been present. It would have been felt. We may be different. We may be diverse, but we are people.”

‘This was a key event’

Following the closing statements, the inquiry heard two days of evidence from toxicology expert Professor Purser (pictured above).

Professor Purser, who also provided a report for the first phase of the inquiry, was instructed to give his views on the cause and time of death of the 72 victims, as well as the contribution of various materials to the toxic smoke they inhaled.

Much of Professor Purser’s evidence was taken up with his estimates for the time of death of various victims of the fire, which ranged from close to 1.30am for a group who became trapped on a smokey lobby on the 10th floor, through to close to 4.30am for some residents in flats on the opposite side of the building to where the fire started.

It is not necessary to recap the precise, and frequently harrowing, detail of this part of his evidence here. It is worth pointing out, though, that these issues could prove extremely important if questions of causation become an issue in future criminal or civil proceedings.

More broadly, Professor Purser gave evidence about the smoke conditions in the tower and the impact on the residents who were trapped.

He explained that as someone begins to breathe in smoke, they are gradually increasing the percentage of toxins in their blood. When they pass certain thresholds, they will collapse and then die.

His studies, which included examining blood samples from victims and survivors, concluded that it was likely the deaths of those found inside the tower were caused by smoke rather than flame.

He said the conditions in the lobbies – the landings outside the six flats on each floor – were extremely severe in terms of smoke, with conditions that could cause collapse within three minutes.

On the stairs, however, the conditions were bad but never quite as severe as the lobbies. Professor Purser estimated that an adult could descend for 15 minutes before being overcome.

Crucially, though, this depended on how much smoke they had inhaled before entering the staircase. If they had already breathed in a lot while in their flats or in the lobbies before entering the stairwell, their chances of surviving were much lower.

This is why some people were able to descend from the top floor, even after the stairs had filled with smoke, while others collapsed and died almost instantly on entering the stairwell.

Professor Purser also drew attention to the significance of the lobbies filling with smoke so rapidly during the relatively early stages of the fire.

This was a key factor, he said, in discouraging people from leaving – particularly those with disabilities or children.

“I feel [this] strongly inhibited those who had remained in their flats from attempting to escape,” he said. “[It] led to many of them remaining in their flats and ultimately led to them being overcome by asphyxiant gases and dying in their flats. So this was a key event.”

“Not only did they have the immediate problem of the horrible conditions they were facing in the lobby, but they also had the question of, ‘If I were to make it through this lobby to the stair, what’s it going to be like,’” he added.

This is important evidence, because the inquiry has heard much in earlier modules about the failure to fix, check and maintain self-closing devices on the flat entrance doors in Grenfell Tower despite repeated specific warnings.

Doors that stood open after residents fled burning flats were a key cause of the rapid smoke spread to lobbies, Professor Purser said.

As the inquiry discussed at length in its first phase, residents who phoned 999 were also advised to stay put and await rescue until at least 2.35am.

‘The total concentrations of [carbon monoxide] in the smoke would have been derived more or less 50/50 from these two materials’

So what caused the smoke that filled lobbies, stairwells and ultimately the residents’ flats with choking, toxic smoke?

Professor Purser pointed to three ‘fuel packages’ that were primarily responsible for it.

First, the cladding system on the outside of the tower, comprising the aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding panels (pictured above) and the plastic foam insulation.

Second, the window surrounds, which included the uPVC frames and various insulation materials installed around them.

Third, the contents of the flats that were ultimately consumed by the fire.

During the early stages of the fire, with not many flats on fire, the smoke came mostly from the first two of these packages.

Professor Purser said the contribution of carbon monoxide from the ACM panels and the insulation on the walls of the tower was “approximately equal”.

“The total concentrations of [carbon monoxide] in the smoke would have been derived more or less 50/50 from these two materials,” his report said.

It was the carbon monoxide which ultimately caused the deaths, he said.

The insulation, mostly made by an organisation called Celotex, also released hydrogen cyanide when it burned, which is also an asphyxiant gas.

However, Professor Purser estimated that the smoke contained 27 times more carbon monoxide than cyanide, making the carbon monoxide much more significant in the deaths.

He said the contribution of cyanide to the deaths was “relatively minor”, but added that it may have been more significant in triggering the collapse of some of the victims. This was particularly true for the three residents stuck in the lobby on the 10th floor.

Professor Purser’s evidence followed Professor Luke Bisby, who explained the contribution of the various materials to the fire spread.

Professor Bisby’s research found that the cladding panels made a far larger contribution to the fire spread than the insulation, putting its contribution at between 2% and 10%.

So taking their evidence together, the view appears to be that the cladding panels were responsible for the fire spread, but both the cladding and insulation were responsible for the smoke.

What’s next?

The inquiry will now move into its final module, which will consider additional evidence relating to the circumstances of the deaths of the 72 victims.

Our coverage of this last module will be a little different, as we have explained here.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry week 81: headlines

The Grenfell Tower Inquiry’s headquarters in Paddington (picture: SWNS)

‘Islamophobic’ police document predicted ‘crime and disorder’ after Grenfell due to ‘Muslim background’ of victims

The Metropolitan Police has been accused of Islamophobia by lawyers acting for the Grenfell Tower community, as a result of a document that predicted “crime and disorder” in the days after the blaze due to the fact that “the majority of those affected are believed to be coming from a Muslim cultural background”.

Rapid spread of smoke to lobbies a ‘key event’ in Grenfell deaths, expert says

The “rapid” filling of lobbies outside flats with smoke, often due to missing self-closers on front doors, was a “key event” in the deaths at Grenfell Tower, an expert toxicologist has told the inquiry.

Cladding panels and insulation contributed approximately equal amounts of toxic smoke at Grenfell, expert says

The cladding panels and insulation boards used on the walls of Grenfell Tower contributed roughly equal amounts of suffocating gas to the toxic smoke that trapped and killed the victims of the blaze, an expert toxicologist has said.

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