SEVEN YEARS after the Grenfell Tower fire, and still lessons have not been learned. Survivors, the bereaved, and the community have yet to see justice served. Meanwhile, the conditions that led to the fire remain unchanged.
 
This year’s Labour Party conference commences in the aftermath of the final Grenfell Tower inquiry report. As trade unionists, it is our duty to fight for serious and meaningful action in memory of the 72 lives lost.
 
The night of June 14 2017 will never be forgotten by firefighters. Yet thousands of buildings are still wrapped in flammable cladding. We still face a crisis in building safety. Profit continues to be put before lives.
 
Decades of political decisions led to the disaster, gutting Britain’s fire safety regime.

Labour’s manifesto committed the incoming government to “take decisive action to improve building safety, including through regulation, to ensure we never again see a repeat of the Grenfell fire.”

To ensure a fire of this scale never happens again, the government must reverse the cuts, privatisation and deregulation that paved the way to tragedy.
 
We must unite as a movement to fight for a complete overhaul of the deregulatory agenda. Businesses have been allowed to self-regulate, prioritising shareholder profits at the expense of people’s safety.

This can be seen across all areas of decision-making relevant to the Grenfell Tower: from construction to risk assessment, failures in inspection and enforcement. Commercial interests and profit must be completely removed from any new system of regulation.
 
At the same time, political and democratic accountability have been stripped away. Local government and fire and rescue services have been hollowed out by cuts, while ministers have overseen a culture of complacency from the top down. Concerns of council and social housing tenants have been systematically ignored.
 
Many such warnings went unheeded before the Grenfell Tower fire, from the residents directly and from the Fire Brigades Union and other fire safety experts in response to other tower block fires.
 
For too long, working-class people have been treated as collateral by those in power. But where bosses seek to lock us out of the room, we must rally in numbers to deliver our demands.

The end of the public inquiry must mark the beginning of a new chapter. A report means nothing without action.
 
This is why the Fire Brigades Union has brought a motion to this year’s party conference, calling for Labour to take the urgent first steps to addressing the building safety crisis. It’s time for the government to invest in local government and fire and rescue services, and to end the privatisation of building control and fire safety.
 
We cannot leave changes to complacent fire service chiefs. The Fire Brigades Union constantly battles attacks on firefighters and public safety, from cuts to recent attempts to remove firefighters’ breathing apparatus at high-rise tower fires. Dead or injured firefighters can’t save anyone — and it’s only the unionised front line speaking up against dangerous policies.
 
That is why we are demanding that Labour makes good on its commitment to give firefighters a voice in policy and setting national standards through a new advisory body.
 
Public service workers carry us through times of crisis. But austerity and privatisation have decimated national resilience, with successive governments failing to identify and plan for risks. As we saw with the NHS during the pandemic, pressure is heaped on the front line while profits are protected at all costs.
 
Since 2010, one in five firefighter jobs have been lost to cuts. Fragmentation and the abolition of national standards have resulted in a fire cover post-code lottery across Britain. The time it takes for a fire engine to reach a fire, and the number of firefighters sent to tackle it, varies wildly depending on which area you live in. Response times are at their slowest in recent history.
 
With the climate emergency at our door, we must be prepared for an increase in extreme weather events. During the height of the 2022 heatwave, as UK temperatures hit record highs, the London Fire Brigade had its busiest day since the Blitz. Firefighters worked in hellish conditions to fight raging wildfires, while fire engines sat empty in stations without the crews needed to send them out.
 
To save lives in the years to come, we need urgent and sustained investment in the fire service now.
 
Trade union members know that health and safety at work is shaped by political decisions — the same is true in the places we live. We must organise so that the new government delivers a fire service fit for the future and decent, safe housing for all.

Matt Wrack is general secretary of the FBU — follow him on X @MattWrack.