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Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Grenfell Uncovered on Netflix: First-rate journalism highlights how working class victims were left waiting for answers
There are obvious parallels between the Grenfell Tower tragedy in London and the Stardust fire in Artane, Dublin , in that they were preventable calamities where the families of the dead were left waiting far too long for answers. There is also the fact that, in both cases, the victims were mainly working class. That element of the story is tackled head-on in Grenfell Uncovered, Olaide Sadiq's hard-hitting documentary about the 2017 London catastrophe, which claimed 72 lives. 'We were treated as if we didn't matter. We're working class, we're poor,' says one former resident of the west London tower block in comments that carry clear echoes of the official response to the Stardust blaze. Grenfell and its aftermath are told via eyewitness testimonies, including those of Luana Gomes, who was 12 at the time and had to be put into an induced coma after she and her family descended 21 flights of stairs in pitch-black smoke. 'We covered ourselves with the blankets my dad had put in the bathtub. I grabbed my dog. Dashed for the stairwell,' she says. The cause of the fire was the highly flammable cladding attached to the outside of the building in a penny-pinching makeover intended to address complaints that the tower had become an eyesore in affluent Kensington. One expert likens the covering to 'sticking a petrol tanker to the outside of the building'. Safer cladding would have cost extra – but not a lot, around £40 per renovated flat. [ Grenfell Tower, where 72 people died, 'to be demolished', families are told Opens in new window ] By the time of the fire, this cladding was already prohibited across much of Europe (although the situation in Ireland is not specified). But not in the UK, where Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron had led a campaign against state regulation of the private sector. 'The driving ideology was deregulation,' says one contributor. 'The state had no place telling private businesses what they should or shouldn't do.' READ MORE Cameron had been replaced by Theresa May by the time of Grenfell, and she was widely criticised for not visiting the tower block the morning after the fire. To her credit, she is the only prominent politician to appear in the Netflix film, and she accepts her share of culpability. 'One of the issues was the way in which authority had failed to listen to [the residents],' she says. 'I merely exacerbated that by not going to see them first off. It was important given the scale of the tragedy.' Were it possible, some politicians come off even worse than Cameron and May. There is Eric Pickles, now 'Lord Pickles' but, at the time, secretary of state at the Department for Communities and Local Government. At the official Grenfell inquiry, he urged officials not to waste his time – before confusing the death toll from Grenfell with that of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster in Sheffield. [ 'The fire broke our family': Grenfell was, above all else, a human tragedy Opens in new window ] 'Seventy-two residents died. 96 was the number of the victims of the Hillsborough disaster,' says housing journalist Peter Apps. 'That number should sit with everybody. If it's not important, you'll mix it up with another disaster where lots of working-class people died.' Grenfell Uncovered is important public service journalism, and it's a shame that the film couldn't resist a cheesy stunt at the end by appearing to imply that Luana's mother had died in the fire – only for it to be revealed at the end that she survives (though her unborn son did not). That one lapse aside, however, the film is first-rate long-form reporting. It makes you wonder, if Netflix were to apply the same journalistic rigour to Ireland, what might come wriggling out from under the rocks? Grenfell Uncovered runs on Netflix from Friday, June 20th
Telegraph
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Grenfell Uncovered: Netflix should be commended for such sober, vital journalism
The only fault in Grenfell Uncovered, Netflix's feature-length documentary about the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster, is that it doesn't uncover that much. Although director Olaide Sadiq has worked meticulously through the litany of failures that led to the fire that killed 72 people – and although it is absolutely worth reiterating how the warnings were ignored, how private companies put profit before public safety and how the then-government put a crazed disdain for what it called 'red tape' ahead of its citizens' protection – all of this was covered off in gruesome, shocking detail in the Grenfell Inquiry's 1,700-page final report. This was published in September last year and was widely summarised and reported. Still, in an era of global streamers with disparate, global audiences, part of the challenge for documentary-makers is second guessing what their viewers will know already. In this, Grenfell Uncovered has gone for the only available option, which is the full, grim picture. It is not, it hardly needs saying, an easy watch. In many ways, the documentary's trump card is its editing. That sounds very boring, but for the viewer it means a linear narrative, starting from the first 999 call, that then spread its tentacles down timelines of personal stories and historic corporate malfeasance. The dexterous splicing means that in spite of all this context, the film retains an agonising momentum. As portrayed here, Arconic, Celotex and all the other stupidly named multinationals got busy with their 'systematic dishonesty' years ago while in the foreground Grenfell burned. Personal testimony from the families who lost love ones is contrasted with staggering bureaucratic indifference and what the inquiry called 'a merry-go-round of buck-passing'. It'll make you angry, which is precisely what this kind of sober, important journalism should do. This, as you'll have gathered, is an excellent documentary, and credit should be given to Netflix for commissioning it. It is well known in telly circles that these are dire times for documentary film-makers. Big streamers, the line goes, want to steer clear of politics, instead opting for big, user-friendly series, ideally involving gruesome historical crimes about which we can speculate to our hearts' content. Grenfell Uncovered is not that. Not only is it a one-off film, foregoing the subscription catnip of a series for a more powerful one-shot format, but it also goes for the jugular. The Cameron government that loosened regulations are lambasted, along with Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the London Fire Brigade and every individual who could be proved to have shirked their responsibilities. The then-prime minister Theresa May even appears in an interview in which she addresses both her actions and, more importantly, her inactions. Like much of the film, this is not quite the coup it has been presented as – May has said she regrets her response (not going to meet survivors of the blaze when she first visited the site) before. But her inertia was presented in the film as part of a more general theme – of powerful people and corporations having the chance to take action, and choosing not to. Carelessness, yet again, costs lives.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
Grenfell: Uncovered review – heartwrenching account of avoidable tragedy
The 2017 Grenfell Tower fire in London which caused 72 deaths is now the subject of Olaide Sadiq's heartwrenching and enraging documentary, digging at the causes and movingly interviewing survivors and their families, whose testimony is all but unbearable. At the very least, the film will remind you that when politicians smugly announce they wish to make a bonfire of regulations, they should be taken, under police escort if necessary, and made to stand at the foot of the tower. As for the housing secretary at the time of the tower's refurbishment, the abysmally arrogant Eric Pickles, he was made a life peer in 2018. With the very considerable help of the housing-issues journalist Peter Apps, the film shows how the horror was created by a perfect storm of incompetence, mendacity, greed, and (that heartsinking phrase) systemic failure. The local council were keen to spruce up its brutalist, concrete (but safe) Grenfell Tower because it was a 'poor cousin' and depressing property values. Decorative cladding was just the ticket and the council allowed the installation of the cheapest tiles, made of aluminium composite material which was terrifyingly flammable. A US aluminium firm's French division sold the council those tiles; in the subsequent inquiry they were accused of suppressing their own research into how dangerous another of their products was. The coalition government of David Cameron, dominated by red-tape-burners, had ignored the terrible warning of the 2009 Lakanal House fire, also in London, with comparable cladding which killed six. Other cladding-related fires in other countries had resulted in tighter regulations – but not in the UK. And senior officers of the London fire brigade had not been aware of the cladding issue and so failed to update the policy of 'stay put', asking people in tower fires to stay in their flats. Firefighters were courageous, though this was a fatal flaw in their managers' approach. Among the government figures, Theresa May, then prime minister, at least has the courage to be interviewed on camera here, though there is something slippery in her statement: 'There was regulation there, it just wasn't up to purpose.' Brian Martin, the civil servant in charge of building regulations at the time, was notoriously dismissive but did have the grace to sound embarrassed at the inquiry. The same can't be said for Pickles, who high-handedly told the inquiry that he didn't have all day to answer the questions and talked about the '96' deaths – apparently confusing Grenfell with Hillsborough. Criminal proceedings and convictions and class-action lawsuits seem as far away as ever. What is there left for us in the meantime? To establish a database of all UK buildings that still have the unsafe cladding, always to make sure we know where the stairwell is whenever we check into a hotel or enter any high-rise – and to support the continuing campaign of the survivors. Grenfell: Uncovered is on Netflix from 20 June.
Daily Mirror
2 days ago
- General
- Daily Mirror
This Morning star emotional as Grenfell survivor describes losing unborn baby
This Morning presenters Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard were left emotional as they spoke to Grenfell Tower survivor Marcio Gomes on Wednesday's show. Marcio, a survivor of the devastating 2017 Grenfell Tower fire that claimed the lives of 72 people, including 18 children, shared his heart-wrenching story with the presenters of This Morning. During the emotional conversation, Marcio, who resided on the 21st floor, recounted the tragic loss of his unborn child. His wife was seven months pregnant at the time of the fire, and he poignantly recalled the moment at the hospital when medical staff broke the news: "At the hospital, they came to me and said-sorry." As Marcio paused to collect himself, Cat was visibly moved to tears. Tragically, his wife was in an induced coma and they were faced with a devastating decision, resulting in the stillbirth of their baby. Ben offered words of condolence, saying: "It's heartbreaking to hear what you've been through, you and all of those other families." Reflecting on the fateful day, Marcio told the ITV presenters that he was awoken by a neighbour in the early hours, alerting him to the fire. Cat asked when he realised the gravity of the situation, and Marcio admitted it wasn't until an hour after discovering the blaze, reports Wales Online. He explained: "When I really understood how bad it was, we've had fires in the tower before; it's not generally a problem, it's contained. Of course, that night, it was very different." Marcio recalled the initial moments after opening the door to his neighbour, with the lights still on and being reassured by the 999 operators. He added: "When I first opened the door to my neighbour, the lights were on; I couldn't really see much going on, phones 999, and it was, 'stay put, you're safe there'. Which was fine, and that was the advice we went with." During an intense interview on This Morning, Marcio described the harrowing moment he realised escape was imperative: "It was awful, it was something I'd never experienced before." Viewers of the daytime TV show were informed that Marcio had desperately contacted the fire brigade four times, initially being reassured that assistance was coming, before it became clear they needed to flee. In a terrifying recount, Marcio revealed: "As I looked into our bedroom, the fire came through our window. It set the curtains, the Moses basket, and basically my room alight. "I only had time to close the door, at that point I said, 'We've got to go, it's now or never'. We couldn't stay in the flat anymore." The gripping tale took another turn as Cat explained how Marcio was separated from his children in the thick smoke as they made their way down. However, they were miraculously reunited outside and ushered into an ambulance for safety. This Morning is available to watch on ITVX. Grenfell: Uncovered is available to watch on Netflix from June 20.
Wales Online
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
This Morning host fights tears as Grenfell survivor speaks on losing unborn baby
This Morning host fights tears as Grenfell survivor speaks on losing unborn baby On Wednesday's instalment of This Morning, hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley spoke to Grenfell Tower survivor Marcio Gomes. Marcio is a survivor of the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which tragically killed 72 people, including 18 children. During their chat with Marcio, who lived on the 21st floor of the building, he detailed the heartbreaking death of his unborn baby. His wife had been seven months pregnant at the time of the fire, he told Cat and Ben: "At the hospital, they came to me and said-sorry." Marcio took a moment to compose himself, and Cat was shown holding back tears while he spoke. This is a breaking showbiz story and is being constantly updated. Please refresh the page regularly to get the latest news, pictures and videos. Article continues below You can also get email updates on the day's biggest stories straight to your inbox by signing up for our newsletters.
