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| The Grenfell inquiry has to put cold facts before families’ emotions | The Grenfell inquiry has to put cold facts before families’ emotions |
| (3 months later) | |
| Tuesday night’s first, highly charged encounter between Grenfell Tower survivors and the police and coroner confirmed that it is grim beyond imagining to have only your nightmares to tell you how people you love died, and worse still not to know if they have, to hope still that they were not in the tower but somewhere else, eating or praying or enjoying the cool summer night in a park somewhere. It was a reminder that the fire left almost nothing for the forensic teams to work on. And it exposed the biggest and most damaging weakness of the whole terrible aftermath: that the relationship between the survivors and the police and the Grenfell Response unit, and all the other faces of officialdom, is one absolutely without trust. There is simply no trust at all. | Tuesday night’s first, highly charged encounter between Grenfell Tower survivors and the police and coroner confirmed that it is grim beyond imagining to have only your nightmares to tell you how people you love died, and worse still not to know if they have, to hope still that they were not in the tower but somewhere else, eating or praying or enjoying the cool summer night in a park somewhere. It was a reminder that the fire left almost nothing for the forensic teams to work on. And it exposed the biggest and most damaging weakness of the whole terrible aftermath: that the relationship between the survivors and the police and the Grenfell Response unit, and all the other faces of officialdom, is one absolutely without trust. There is simply no trust at all. |
| Into this raw emotional vortex, the government has pitched a high priest of reason. Martin Moore-Bick, retired appeal court judge, is to conduct an inquiry that will – to quote the prime minister’s bald statement when she announced his appointment last week – establish the facts in order to take the necessary steps to prevent a similar tragedy happening again, and learn the wider lessons. | Into this raw emotional vortex, the government has pitched a high priest of reason. Martin Moore-Bick, retired appeal court judge, is to conduct an inquiry that will – to quote the prime minister’s bald statement when she announced his appointment last week – establish the facts in order to take the necessary steps to prevent a similar tragedy happening again, and learn the wider lessons. |
| Moore-Bick’s appointment, it would be fair to say, was not well-received. An elderly, white, middle-class Englishman does not look like a potential champion of the largely poor, multi-ethnic, multicultural victims of Grenfell. Nor, it was said, could a man whose career had flourished in the thin, pure air of the Royal Courts of Justice be expected to have the appetite to challenge the version of the truth likely to be supplied by officers at Kensington and Chelsea council – people like him. Most of all, he could not be expected to empathise with the survivors. It seemed the government had appointed a fact-checker to mediate in a culture war. | Moore-Bick’s appointment, it would be fair to say, was not well-received. An elderly, white, middle-class Englishman does not look like a potential champion of the largely poor, multi-ethnic, multicultural victims of Grenfell. Nor, it was said, could a man whose career had flourished in the thin, pure air of the Royal Courts of Justice be expected to have the appetite to challenge the version of the truth likely to be supplied by officers at Kensington and Chelsea council – people like him. Most of all, he could not be expected to empathise with the survivors. It seemed the government had appointed a fact-checker to mediate in a culture war. |
| The hostile reaction to the appointment, which prompted the well-regarded local MP Emma Dent Coad to join calls for him to step down, seems to have been anticipated in Downing Street, where Theresa May has painful memories of the difficulty of finding acceptable candidates to lead sensitive investigations into events that have left victims traumatised and distrustful of authority. (You may recall that the child abuse inquiry is now on its fourth chair.) For some days, it was reported, they mulled over the appointment, not least because one of his rulings on a housing matter was overturned by the supreme court in a way that suggested he (and his two fellow appeal court judges) had been too easy on the council involved, at the expense of the homeless mother of five children who had brought the case. | The hostile reaction to the appointment, which prompted the well-regarded local MP Emma Dent Coad to join calls for him to step down, seems to have been anticipated in Downing Street, where Theresa May has painful memories of the difficulty of finding acceptable candidates to lead sensitive investigations into events that have left victims traumatised and distrustful of authority. (You may recall that the child abuse inquiry is now on its fourth chair.) For some days, it was reported, they mulled over the appointment, not least because one of his rulings on a housing matter was overturned by the supreme court in a way that suggested he (and his two fellow appeal court judges) had been too easy on the council involved, at the expense of the homeless mother of five children who had brought the case. |
| Inquiries have become part of the ritual of public disaster. There have been a dozen or so since the 2005 act reformed their legal basis. Yet they rarely leave an imprint on history. | Inquiries have become part of the ritual of public disaster. There have been a dozen or so since the 2005 act reformed their legal basis. Yet they rarely leave an imprint on history. |
| There are exceptions – the Francis inquiry into care at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS foundation trust revolutionised attitudes to staffing levels and paused the rise of the accountant in the NHS, as well as exposing a wretched sequence of events. But generally it is the ability of public bodies to slide out of charges of institutional or systemic failure that lingers. The embodiment of this characteristic of authority unchecked by accountability is the 27 years between the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, and last year’s inquest verdict of the unlawful killing of the 96 who died, followed last week by the announcement of criminal prosecutions. But note, it was not the well-regarded initial inquiry led by Lord Justice Taylor but the fight by the families that finally broke down the omertà of power. | There are exceptions – the Francis inquiry into care at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS foundation trust revolutionised attitudes to staffing levels and paused the rise of the accountant in the NHS, as well as exposing a wretched sequence of events. But generally it is the ability of public bodies to slide out of charges of institutional or systemic failure that lingers. The embodiment of this characteristic of authority unchecked by accountability is the 27 years between the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, and last year’s inquest verdict of the unlawful killing of the 96 who died, followed last week by the announcement of criminal prosecutions. But note, it was not the well-regarded initial inquiry led by Lord Justice Taylor but the fight by the families that finally broke down the omertà of power. |
| There are important lessons from the experience of Hillsborough, and the devastating cost exacted on the families of being disbelieved. They show both the limits and the strengths of the kind of inquiry that is due to take place into Grenfell. First it is not an inquest; its purpose is not to establish the precise cause of each and every death. It is not about apportioning blame, although it may point to individual responsibility. And it’s not a truth and reconciliation commission, although an element of catharsis will be a part of it. It is about establishing the evidence, the sequence of events, and their relative significance. | There are important lessons from the experience of Hillsborough, and the devastating cost exacted on the families of being disbelieved. They show both the limits and the strengths of the kind of inquiry that is due to take place into Grenfell. First it is not an inquest; its purpose is not to establish the precise cause of each and every death. It is not about apportioning blame, although it may point to individual responsibility. And it’s not a truth and reconciliation commission, although an element of catharsis will be a part of it. It is about establishing the evidence, the sequence of events, and their relative significance. |
| For the Grenfell families, who warned for years of fire risks and were ignored, this appeal to the precedence of facts over emotion will not be an easy message. The fire should never have happened as it did. It is not that there should have been fewer deaths, but none. Of course many survivors want much more than an investigation limited to the dry facts of cladding and insulation, of fire doors and sprinklers. Naturally, they want to extend far beyond that, to culpability, charges, convictions – and to the other elements that shaped the disaster: the politics and sociology of public housing. | For the Grenfell families, who warned for years of fire risks and were ignored, this appeal to the precedence of facts over emotion will not be an easy message. The fire should never have happened as it did. It is not that there should have been fewer deaths, but none. Of course many survivors want much more than an investigation limited to the dry facts of cladding and insulation, of fire doors and sprinklers. Naturally, they want to extend far beyond that, to culpability, charges, convictions – and to the other elements that shaped the disaster: the politics and sociology of public housing. |
| Moore-Bick ran himself straight into trouble when, in his first public words, he acknowledged that some people would be disappointed by his remit. It will not be easy for him to extricate himself. Now he has launched a consultation. He must make it an opportunity to explain why it is in the survivors’ interest to keep the focus narrow. He should consider appointing a diverse and expert panel to assist him. He must persuade the survivors that he will use his judicial authority for them, not against them, to lend weight to his assessment of the causes and his account of the facts. He must explain that until that happens, no wider case can be made. He has to convince them that they need a fact-checker, the better to fight the culture war. | Moore-Bick ran himself straight into trouble when, in his first public words, he acknowledged that some people would be disappointed by his remit. It will not be easy for him to extricate himself. Now he has launched a consultation. He must make it an opportunity to explain why it is in the survivors’ interest to keep the focus narrow. He should consider appointing a diverse and expert panel to assist him. He must persuade the survivors that he will use his judicial authority for them, not against them, to lend weight to his assessment of the causes and his account of the facts. He must explain that until that happens, no wider case can be made. He has to convince them that they need a fact-checker, the better to fight the culture war. |
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