ABOUT THIS BOOK

An account of the systemic failures that led to the Grenfell tower fire.

The 2017 Grenfell tower fire in London was a “slow disaster,” the product of a long accumulation of faults and errors that resulted from erroneous assumptions and organizational and governmental decision-making. This book offers a critical perspective on the systematic failures that lead to one of the greatest tragedies in Britain in our time.

Before Grenfell is a poignant and timely analysis of risk, fire, and safety in postwar Britain. Tracing the evolution of state housing policy in relation to multistory housing since the mid-1950s, the book adds to a burgeoning history of the British experience of fire and safety in high-rises and investigates a latent housing crisis in contemporary Britain against a backdrop of increasingly deregulated urban building development. Drawing on public inquiries, newspaper accounts, and oral histories, Shane Ewen details other avoidable disasters, including the Ronan Point tower block explosion in 1968, the Summerland leisure center fire in 1972, and the Bradford City Football Club fire in 1985. The book closes with a powerful chapter on fire safety campaigners, including survivor groups, who are seeking justice for the victims of fire disasters. Before Grenfell aims to exert pressure on policy-makers to act on the lessons of fatal disasters in order to both prevent future casualties and establish a legacy for those who lost their lives.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Shane Ewen is a reader in urban history at Leeds Beckett University.

REVIEWS

Shane Ewen’s book Before Grenfell contains irreplaceable historical context for understanding the causes of the Grenfell Tower fire. The book skewers the mistakes made by ministers and their advisors, who were supposed to set the rules to make our homes safe, but instead gave private profiteers a free hand. It is a well-researched and highly readable account of fire safety and deregulation over the last century. I strongly recommend the book to everyone serious about justice for Grenfell.'

— Matt Wrack, General Secretary, The Fire Brigades Union, UK

In following the threads of this story further back than anyone else, Ewen has produced a compelling, vital and shocking record of the long history which led us to Grenfell Tower.

His masterful work brings to light long forgotten stories and provides an urgent warning about what the future may hold. It is a crucial, urgent contribution to the current debate on fire safety, but also an excoriating story about our shared history and the long running failure of the British state to protect its most vulnerable citizens from fire. It should be read by anyone who cares about this story and many more yet to learn about it.'

— Peter Apps, Deputy Editor of Inside Housing and author of Show Me The Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen

‘This is a high quality, painstakingly researched and factually accurate piece of scholarship. It has a clear historical approach that convincingly details the relevant trajectory of regulation and deregulation – and a whole lot more – that underpins the Grenfell disaster. I learned a lot from reading it. It will be a go-to guide to relevant legislation, received wisdom and debates about fire safety, science, building standards and regulation’.

— Stuart Hodkinson, Associate Professor in Critical Urban Geography, University of Leeds, UK

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction. Before Grenfell: Deregulation, 'Organised State Abandonment' and 'Thinking With History'

1. From Bye-Laws to Building Regulations: Recasting Building Control in Britain Since the Nineteenth Century

2. The Value of Fire Precautions in Britain Since the 1970s

3. The Mixed Economy of 'Scientific Governance' in Twentieth-Century Britain

4. The Path of Least Intervention in the 'Great Unswept Corner of English Housing Policy': Mass-Fatality Fires in Houses in Multiple Occupation in the 1980s and 1990s

Conclusion