Stop arms to Israel!

 While Boris Johnson and other Tory has-beens join Netanyahu and the rest of the Zionist chorus in condemning Britain’s ‘shameful’ decision to suspend some arms exports to Israel others point out that past Labour and Tory governments, including those of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and even David Cameron had imposed similar sanctions on Israel in the past.
The decision to block 30 arms export licences for Israel is, in fact, a very small step forward for the Starmer government and though some pundits say it marks a breach with the Biden administration it is hard to believe that Sir Keir Starmer would do anything against Israel without clearing it in advance with the White House.
This week we’ve seen waves of protests and strikes sweep across Israel as the demand for a cease-fire grows even in the heart of the Zionist state. We see millions upon millions throughout what the imperialists call the “free world” demanding a halt to the genocide and justice for the Palestinians. We see this in London and on the streets of all our major cities and we must keep up the fight to economically and politically isolate Israel to stop the the fighting and ensure that the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs are restored.

After Grenfell

Following years of interviews and evidence, and after repeated delays, the families, bereaved and survivors of Grenfell fire have, at last, obtained an official account of the causes of Britain’s deadliest residential fire since the Second World War. The blaze that roared through the tower block in one of the poorest parts of Kensington & Chelsea, the wealthiest borough in London, took the lives of scores of people and devastated the local community.
Some years ago, when the Corbynistas were at the helm of the Labour Party, the Kensington Labour Party Research Unit published their own report which said "the borough of princes, Sultans, plutocrats and billionaires” was actually the most unequal borough in Britain'. How, in what one Councillor called “the richest borough in the universe”, with three billion pounds in reserves, could 72 people burn to death in a fire which, even in the earliest days, was blamed on 'cheap cladding'?
The borough has the highest life expectancy in the country, but across the borough the gap in years lived is a massive 27 years. Even more shocking, since 2010 – when a decade of austerity began to pay for the 2008 banking crash – average life expectancy in Golborne Ward where the tower block stood, fell by six years, the worst decline in the country.
On Wednesday, the final 1,700-page report of a six-year public inquiry into the fire was published. The report, as Matt Wrack the leader of the Fire Brigades Union says “demonstrates beyond doubt that central government’s deregulation agenda cost lives. Decades of ministerial failure to regulate the building industry gave the green light for businesses to prioritise profit over human life”.
The report makes over 80 recommendations, which the FBU will assess in detail over the weeks to come. But the union wants much more than that. The fire-fighters rightly highlight the need for national standards set by a statutory advisory body on fire policy, giving a voice to firefighters and control staff and drawing on the best expert advice.
It also exposed a deliberately created system that provides genuine health and safety for the rich but not for the poor. Endless chains of sub-contracting and downgrading of checks made a tragedy like Grenfell virtually inevitable, and the only surprise was the horrific form in which it came.

Grenfell Towers Revisited

By New Worker correspondent

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has firmly blamed every government since the Thatcher era for the Grenfell Tower fire. This is the main thrust of a new pamphlet by the union that was launched at Labour Party conference in Brighton this week.

Entitled The Grenfell Tower Fire: A crime caused by profit andderegulation, the report claims that successive governments have failed to regulate high-rise residential buildings properly for fire safety because they have ignored the views of firefighters, heeding instead “management consultants, industry lobbyists and chief fire officers”.

FBU general secretary Matt Wrack said: “The terrible loss of life at Grenfell Tower was ultimately caused by political decisions made at the highest level. For at least 40 years, policies relating to housing, local government, the fire and rescue service, research and other areas have been driven by the agenda of cuts, deregulation and privatisation.”

The pamphlet did not spare the Labour government for the 2004 scrapping of the Central Fire Brigades Advisory Council, which governed fire safety from 1947 and delivered many of the major improvements in fire protection, along with the abolition of national standards for fire and rescue services.

Going further back it decried Edward Heath’s government for removing a requirement for blocks of flats to have mandatory fire certification from the final Fire Precautions Bill 1970 on cost grounds and for ignoring a recommendation that only those with “operational firefighting experience” be responsible for enforcing fire safety, thus paving the way for privatisation of the fire safety regime.

The Thatcher government later cut building regulations from more than 300 pages to just 25, ceasing a formal requirement, again due to the “significant financial burden” of the legislation.

The Major government privatised the Building Research Establishment, opening a conflict of interest between its role providing advice to ministers and its commercial role in testing materials for construction firms.

David Cameron’s Coalition government cut fire budgets by around 28 per cent in real terms whilst his “one in, two out” policy on new regulations slashed regulations further, with Eric Pickles, then Communities Secretary, repealing various local building acts’ fire safety measures. The pamphlet concludes by claiming that the lessons that should have been learned, such as the Harrow Court fire in 2005, the Lakanal House fire in 2009 and the Shirley Towers Fire in 2010, have been scandalously ignored.

One area in which the lessons of Grenfell have not been learnt is the staffing levels in the Fire Brigade. Last week the FBU organised a protest outside Surrey County Hall in Kingston upon Thames to highlight the state of the service. Pointing out that there are not nearly enough firefighters and emergency fire control staff for the county, the union attacked plans to cut a further seven fire engines at night.

Surrey Fire Control is now expected to take on mobilisation duties for firefighters in West Sussex. One-hundred and thirty-five or 18 per cent of firefighter positions were lost between 2010 and 2019. Last December the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services voiced “serious concerns” about the service’s effectiveness and efficiency in keeping people safe and secure from fire and other risks. Firefighters are constantly moving between fire stations to keep the fire engines available for calls, leaving crews overstretched and demoralised. The service depends on firefighters coming in to work on their off-duty days in order to make the fire engines available for calls.

In response, management have disciplined firefighters for telling their politicians about risks to the community from cuts.

Lee Belsten, the local FBU secretary, said: “Conditions in Surrey fire and rescue service simply aren’t safe for members of the public, or firefighters for that matter. Firefighters work tirelessly to keep people safe but they have had enough. Our members have told us that they won’t stand by and put up with dangerous staffing arrangements for any longer. The union has tried engaging constructively but [we] have been dismissed by management and the County Council. It’s shameful that it has come to this but we cannot continue to compromise public safety.”

The union has warned it will soon be balloting for action if its demands are not addressed.
   
the pamphlet is available from the FBU and it can be downloaded from their website.

An Avoidable Tragedy

Review

by Ben Soton

The Grenfell Tower Fire: Background to an Atrocity. The Fire Brigades Union (2018)

Health and Safety has for a number of years been part of a conspiracy of faceless bureaucrats to stop us from having fun, destroy free enterprise and generally make our lives a misery. Or at least this is the line peddled by the neo-liberal right and their supporters in the media. This nonsense literally went up in flames on 14^th June, 2017 when Grenfell Tower in Kensington caught fire resulting the in deaths of over 70 residents. In their recent pamphlet, the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) covers issues around Health and Safety Legislation with specific reference to Grenfell Tower.

In this pamphlet the FBU covers the erosion of Health and Safety Law from the 1980s onwards. Progressive Health and Safety legislation was introduced in the 1960s; in particular the Factories Act (1961). The situation further improved in the 1970s with the Fire Precautions Act (1971) and (Health and Safety at Work Act (1974). Contrary to myths put out by the right-wing media, legislation began to be undermined in the 1980s and 1990s. Government papers started to refer to “over provision” of regulations. The process of deregulation continued through 1990s and also through the Brown/Blair years.

The most significant factor behind the Grenfell Tragedy was the issue of external cladding. Cladding is a layer of material applied to the outside of buildings as a means of insulation and protection from the elements. It can be made from a range of materials including wood, metal, brick, vinyl and a range of composite materials. The issue with Grenfell Tower and similar blocks is that cladding, if made from flammable material, enables fire to spread along the outside of the building. Suffice it to say, flammable cladding is cheaper than its non-flammable alternatives.

The Grenfell Tower fire was not the first time the issue of external cladding had been raised. In 1991 in Merseyside and again in 1999 in Ayrshire fires spread rapidly through buildings with outside cladding. Luckily in both cases no fatalities took place. A report in 2004 however, stated that measures should exist to inhibit the spread of fire via external walls. Suffice it to say, the FBU has insisted that only non-combustible cladding be used in buildings more than 25 metres high.

In their conclusion the FBU makes a number of demands for improved safety standards.  In a summary of the recommendations they use three simple words: Prevention, Protection, Intervention.

 The last of these words strikes a chord with the Grenfell tragedy. It is a lack of Intervention we have suffered from over the last 30 years – not too much of it.

The pamphlet is available from the Fire Brigades Union, Bradley House, 68 Coombe Rd, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, KT2 7AE.