Grenfell and the bigger, better society

The last housing scandal in Notting Hill brought down a Conservative government and transformed the social policy of Britain. Peter Rachman was a slum landlord with a pink Rolls-Royce. His appalling treatment of poor immigrants, exposed during the Profumo affair, magnified the myth of exploitative, capitalist, decadent Tories. The 1964 election swept Harold Wilson to power with a promise of rent controls, and the era of council estates, comprehensive education and welfare entitlement was upon us.

Despite the efforts of Wilson and his successors, Notting Hill is the most unequal corner of the most unequal city in the country. Half of the children in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea — most of those living south of the Westway — go to private schools, while a quarter (i.e. most of those in the north) live beneath the poverty line. It is also the most diverse borough in Britain, with 52 per cent of all residents born abroad.

For years we have celebrated Notting Hill for its rich multiculti ambience, an area where trustafarians and Rastafarians jog along harmoniously, sometimes even talking for a few minutes after a drug deal. In reality, like the rest of London, this is a place of parallel communities. We are not at peace, but in a truce which may not last.

In the estates around Grenfell Tower some of Britain’s nastiest Islamists, including the notorious Jihadi John, grew up. It is also the breeding ground for another revolutionary creed. On the day after the fire I saw a young girl hoisting a Socialist Workers Party banner along the pavement behind her mother, proclaiming: ‘Tories have blood on their hands.’ Sadiq Khan, sniffing the wind, concurred, stating the fire was the fault of ‘the [Conservative] council’. It may well be, of course, but he did not wait to find out.