That no one has been prosecuted for the Grenfell fire and there are still many buildings with the same cladding is a reminder that Labour is carrying on where the Tories left off, writes Steph Pike

In June 2017, 72 people were murdered in a preventable fire that swept through Grenfell Tower. Safety concerns had been repeatedly raised, and ignored, by Grenfell residents who predicted that a disaster on this scale could happen.

The residents, most of whom were working class and black, were treated with contempt both before and after the fire, when the official response to their needs was woeful. The local community, however, pulled together and the Grenfell survivors formed a campaign group to fight for justice and to ensure nothing similar could happen again.

After seven years, the Phase 2 report and recommendations of the Grenfell Tower inquiry was published in September 2024. Six months later, the Labour government made a statement in the House of Commons accepting all 58 of the inquiry’s recommendations with six provisional and out for consultation.

Quite rightly, the reaction of Grenfell survivors groups has been cautious. They have welcomed the report’s findings and recommendations, but expressed anger that no one has yet been charged or prosecuted over the disaster, that the work to remove and replace dangerous cladding from all buildings in the UK has not yet been completed, and that the government’s time scale for putting the recommendations into place, which will take at least two years, is unacceptably slow.

As we have seen with other scandals like Hillsborough and the Post Office scandal, justice for victims can take years and is characterised by the authorities dragging their feet. Progress is only achieved because of tireless campaigning by the victims.

Although the recommendations of the Grenfell inquiry are to be welcomed, they must be implemented quickly and comprehensively. However, in themselves they are not enough. The Grenfell fire was caused by austerity, deregulation and a system that valued and rewarded corporate greed and cost cutting; economic and political conditions that valued profit above human life.

Not one person has been killed by the imaginary enemies that Starmer has pledged billions to arm the UK against, but many thousands have been killed by the real enemy: poverty, austerity and state-sanctioned corporate greed.

Starmer must stop spending on arms, end austerity, tax the rich and build a society where another Grenfell could never happen. However, with Starmer continuing where the Tories left off, this will only be achieved with a mass, united anti-austerity movement.

We must start building this movement in our local areas and join the People’s Assembly national demonstration against austerity on 7 June.

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet