Grenfell, Race, Remembrance

Abstract

The conflagration of the Grenfell Tower in West London on 14 June 2017, and its aftermath, exposed the institutional indifference and hierarchical, colonial system of governance within contemporary Britain. Cutting across a range of political inequalities, and exposing the ‘slow violence’ that communities without capital, especially those seeking asylum or undertaking economic migration, are subject to in everyday life, the tower showcased the imposed voicelessness of refugees in plain sight in Britain. Through artistic and grassroots organising, this voicelessness was, to an extent, overcome. Drawing on the theories of Rob Nixon, Ture and Hamilton, Taiwe Afuape, Micheal White and Etienne Balibar, this article explores the tragedy, and its aftermath, focusing in particular on the role of writer-activists Potent Whisper, Lowkey, Jay Bernard and Ben Okri in working with communities to reclaim the agency of representation in solidarity against violence.

Keywords:

• poetry
• protest
• Grenfell
• slow violence
• community
• rap

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Lowkey, Dan Renwick, Zibiah Loakthar, and John Preston for their thoughtful discussion and responses to earlier drafts of this essay.

POSTSCRIPT

The cover of this issue, Tom Young’s painting of Grenfell, which he reworks on the anniversary each year, brings Grenfell into contact with Beirut. Tom’s studio in the city was nearly completely destroyed in the 4 August 2020 explosion, with Grenfell reading like a microcosm of that large-scale destruction — official incompetence, corruption, international capital, the shirking of responsibility by state actors who have a duty to care and last but not least, the danger existing in plain sight for years.

Notes

1 The concept of ‘slow violence’, as outlined by Rob Nixon and other critics, refers to the systemic persistent, iterative and repetitive impediments that oppress people due to their class, race or status. In contrast to the spectacular violence of a bomb or indeed a fire, this is an ambiguous violence that seeps into the everyday of people’s lives.

2 Snow, in his MacTaggart Lecture, described his fellow journalists as detached members of the ‘elite’ who missed the warning signs of the catastrophe.

3 BBC Three recorded a documentary on Khadija Saye’s participation in the Venice Biennale in 2017 shortly before the fire. It was broadcast following her death on 1 September 2017: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05dwwr3>.