Elizabeth Campbell

RBKC & Zionist Propaganda

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Kensington & Chelsea Council’s decision to cancel its annual diplomatic reception was a victory for anti-war campaigners. However, the council leadership’s claim that security threats were behind the move could suggest coordination between the local authority and bigger players in the war on Palestine.

13th February

We published this article on Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC)’s diplomatic reception for embassies based in the borough, the invitees including Israel’s genocidal ambassador Tzipi Hotovely.

Concerned locals, including members of the newly formed Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham branch of Palestine Solidarity Campaign, mobilised, planning a demonstration at the Town Hall and urging residents to contact their councillors to demand the reception’s cancellation. Continue reading →

RBKC Honours Israel’s Genocidal Ambassador

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Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) will honour Israel’s UK ambassador, Tzipi Hotovely, at a diplomatic reception even as the country she represents intensifies its campaign of genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip.

Hosted by the RBKC’s mayor Preety Hudd at Kensington Town Hall on Tuesday, February 20th, the event – an annual reception for ambassadors based in the borough – is a fixture in the council’s calendar although scant information about it is shared with the residents who pay for it.   Continue reading →

Tory Councillor Under Scrutiny from Charity Commission

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Former Mayor of Kensington & Chelsea, the councillor Gerard Hargreaves, has been questioned by the Charity Commission as part of its probe into apparent corruption at al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in North Kensington. Councillor Hargreaves, who represents Chelsea Riverside ward, is accused of proposing that a long-standing debt of thousands of pounds owed to al-Manaar by a fellow trustee be written off. And Hargreaves is understood to be among a faction of trustees suspected of trying to force through the removal of the mosque’s CEO.

Cllr Hargreaves, left, with al-Manaar CEO Abdurahman Sayed

Charity Commission

We have seen the 15 questions sent by the Charity Commission to al-Manaar’s nine trustees, which reveal why the government department consider the concerns raised to be serious enough to meet the threshold for investigation. The alleged abuses at the mosque have dogged the charity for years and are suggestive of abject mismanagement and a culture of bullying.

With the Charity Commission involved, it seems unlikely that all the mosque’s trustees will survive in their positions unless they can offer evidence that they are taking steps to ensure the centre’s governance is fully transparent and compliant with Charity Commission guidelines. The circumstances could be serious enough for the Charity Commission to utilise sweeping powers to impose new systems and personnel on al-Manaar to help it move on from its internal strife and focus on its role as an integral and much-respected community hub and place of healing.

Questions

A source told Urban Dandy that much of the unrest at the mosque has been directly or indirectly connected to Dr Abdulkarim Khalil, a mainstay at al-Manaar from its foundation, when he led fundraising efforts. He has been al-Manaar’s CEO, Chair of Trustees (twice) and remains a trustee.

The debt that Councillor Hargreaves allegedly suggested be written off was rent arrears owed by Dr Khalil for use of al-Manaar’s two-bedroom flat. Trustees had set the rent at the local social housing rate of just under £9,000 a year in 2012.

With NATO having overthrown the government of Libya, Dr Khalil travelled to Tripoli in 2012 to work at what had been the Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation, essentially the Libyan state charity. This was salaried work, but al Manaar’s trustees apparently viewed it as a sabbatical and for six months kept Dr Khalil in receipt of his mosque salary.

It was during his period of working in Libya that Dr Khalil incurred his debt for non-payment of rent to the charity. Year after year, the figure was questioned as accountants prepared the charity’s annual accounts, until 2018 when trustees decided to write of the debt.

Minutes for the January 6th 2018 trustees meeting sent to Urban Dandy include two matters discussed without Dr Khalil, Chair of Trustees at the time, in the room. One was a request from Dr Khalil that al-Manaar contribute to his travel costs for flights to and from Libya. This request was deemed “inappropriate” by trustees as Dr Khalil was not travelling on al-Manaar business.

However, the second matter produced a better outcome for Dr Khalil as the trustees wrote off £8923 of rent arrears accrued between 2012 and 2015. The decision is justified in the minutes by “uncertainties that surrounded the unfolding situation in his home country (Libya) at the time;” that “while in the flat he attended to Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre matters on a daily basis” and the flat had been “long empty following the departure of the Care Taker.”

The minutes do not suggest that comments were made on the legality of the decision or its impact on other areas of al-Manaar’s work.        

A source told us that it was Councillor Hargreaves who proposed writing off the debt, and that at the time, only months after the Grenfell tower fire, there was so much going on at al-Manaar that it was quite easy for such a decision to be taken without scrutiny.

The Charity Commission’s questions to the trustees, issued early this year, include the following:

“Why did you write off £9000? How did that serve the best interests of the charity?”

And the Charity Commission instructs the trustees to:

“Comment upon the Annual Accounts AC 18 and the reference to a party disclosure for £8923 to a trustee Dr Khalil which was written off.”

Trust

Another matter related to Dr Khalil that the Charity Commission questioned the trustees about was any relationship between trustees and Zubaidah Trust, a charity founded by Dr Khalil with virtually nothing to show in successive annual account submissions. “Trustees to comment if the charity has any relationship with Zubaidah Trust.”

The relevance of this Trust is not clear.

It was during the period of Dr Khalil’s work in Libya that al-Manaar appointed Abdurahman Sayed as CEO. Kensington & Chelsea Social Council oversaw the recruitment process, which, it is claimed by our source, took decision-making power away from those who had previously been able to steer the charity in directions of their choosing. As a result of Sayed’s appointment, various disgruntled staff and board members sought to make the CEO’s life uncomfortable and, early this year, managed to oust him from his role, albeit temporarily.

Suspension

According to our source, five trustees, including Councillor Hargreaves, took it upon themselves to suspend Abdurahman Sayed, without consulting the other four trustees or calling a trustees’ meeting, on 13th January. They had been apparently angered by the CEO’s firing of an Imam who Sayed claimed was receiving a full-time salary for working part-time.

Two trustees allegedly told al-Manaar staff “You are not allowed to communicate with Abdurahman” and a supporter of this faction addressed the congregation at the mosque, urging them to turn against the CEO. He was apparently ejected by people who had gone there to worship.

The other faction of the trustees, none of whom were in place at the time of the decision to write-off Dr Khalil’s arrears, urged the CEO to return to work and somebody reported events to the Charity Commission.

Our source told us that Councillor Hargreaves “does not behave like a trustee, he is completely untransparent.” They accuse Hargreaves of not following any procedures, including complaints procedures, and of participating in a culture in which disputes are treated as personal rather than professional issues.

Adding to this impression, our source told us that Hargreaves complained to council leader Elizabeth Campbell about the presence of a Labour councillor, nominated by the local authority, on the board of trustees.

We contacted Councillor Hargreaves requesting a comment on the allegations made against him and on the more general situation at al-Manaar, but he had not replied at the time of writing.

More Questions  

In their letter to al-Manaar’s trustees, the Charity Commission asked:

“Who voted to get rid of the CEO?”

And instructed them to confirm:

“Which trustees voted for the suspension of the CEO and which voted against.”

The deadline for the trustees to respond was in late February, by which point Abdurahman Sayed had returned to work, his suspension having being shown to carry no legal weight.

Three trustees remain from the time of the apparent financial corruption in 2018. These are Esmail Jasat, who was Treasurer at the time and is now Chair; Dr Abdulkarim Khalil, the beneficiary of the decision, who was then Chair and remains a trustee; and Councillor Gerard Hargreaves, who was part of the council’s Cabinet at the time of the Grenfell Tower fire. The former Mayor remains a trustee at al Manaar and is Chairman of Kensington & Chelsea Council Council’s Audit and Transparency Committee.

By Tom Charles

@tomhcharles

RBKC’s Secret Deal to Sell Canalside House

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Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) has struck a secret deal with an international property developer to sell the North Kensington community hub, Canalside House. There has been no democratic oversight of the deal, no consultation with the affected communities and the tenant organisations have not been informed. Information on the sale was provided by an unimpeachable source who told us that by this time next year “Canalside House will be gone”.  

Deal

RBKC’s deal follows years of uncertainty in which the council has swung between two polarities: imposing a sale against the wishes of the community and vowing to work with tenant organisations to upgrade Canalside House.  

The buyer, Ballymore, will demolish the building, which sits next to, but not on, the Kensal Canalside Opportunity Area site. Our source explained that ahead of making the deal public, the council is actively seeking to reduce the number of organisations utilising Canalside House. The terms of the sale will obligate RBKC to provide temporary space for the evicted organisations, so the fewer groups using the building, the less work there will be for the council.

This aspect of the deal is borne out in RBKC’s refusal to rent out the biggest and best offices in the building. Those enquiring about using the large first-floor office, rented until last year by Portobello Business Centre, have been informed they can use that space free of charge on an ad-hoc basis, but no long-term tenancy will be possible.  

The large ground floor office, vacated by the Volunteer Centre in 2016 during a previous move by the council to sell, was converted into a cheap hot-desking space but is barely advertised or used. Our source told us that RBKC has categorically ruled out any groups using that space for ongoing service provision to ensure the number of tenant organisations is kept to a minimum.

Following a period in temporary office space provided by RBKC, the deal sees the council hand responsibility for housing the Canalside organisations to Ballymore, a private company with no expertise in providing vital services such as the ones available at Canalside House.

Ballymore’s wish to own everything next to their Gas Works site is further evidenced by their offer for the converted water tower next to Canalside House. The tower’s owner turned down the offer.

image from ballymoregroup.com

History

Built in 1929, Canalside House sits at the top end of Ladbroke Grove. Less than a mile from Grenfell Tower, the centre was a hub of community support during and after the 2017 fire and is one of North Kensington’s last remaining spaces for charities, the voluntary sector, small businesses, and other local enterprises. Tenants include representatives of local African communities, housing cooperatives, care organisations and mental health charities. Continue reading →

RBKC set to become “the best Council”?

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“A challenge given to us by the bereaved and survivors from Grenfell Tower. Simply…to be the best Council.” – Councillor Elizabeth Campbell, leader of Kensington & Chelsea Council, Keynote Speech, May 2022

Kensington & Chelsea Council (RBKC) is consulting with North Kensington residents again. We ask what will be different this time around.

RBKC’s amoral bearings…. ‘What a good thing it is to dwell in unity’

RBKC’s current Grenfell Recovery Programme runs until March 2024. Their planning work for the post-2024 period has commenced with a “wide-reaching conversation” about the future with bereaved, survivors and the local community. In theory, the consultation will provide an outline of what “best council” will mean in practice.

Click link below to read in full

KDR – Planning for the next phase of the Council’s work on Grenfell

Problems

A problem with the current consultation process is that in other initiatives with similar wording and ostensibly aiming at the same outcome – change – RBKC has comprehensively failed to create any identifiable change.

“This Council – its policies, its leadership, its senior people and its culture – has changed.” This was the audacious claim of Cllr Campbell and Barry Quirk, RBKC’s then Chief Executive in March 2020.

Yet, it was not clear what specific things they were referring to. No evidence was offered. RBKC internalised their story and believed it to be self-evidently true.

After June 2017, RBKC enthusiastically adopted noble-sounding policies but didn’t implement them in the community. After the fire, the council’s leadership changed. The chief executive quit and the disgraced councillors Paget-Brown and Feilding-Mellen were made to resign by the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid. But the new leaders carry out approximately the same policies for the same political party and Conservative campaign literature in the borough goes out of its way to avoid mentioning Grenfell and North Kensington.

For an area in which many residents disproportionately suffer the impacts of poverty and inequality, the upshot has been no meaningful culture change at the local authority during the years when implementing change and offering real political concessions to North Kensington seemed possible. During those years, backing up their declarations of “change” with real action should have been a moral imperative to RBKC, impossible to resist despite their ideological discomfort with socialist policies. This failure was acknowledged by Callum Wilson, RBKC’s Director of Grenfell Partnerships, in an email to residents about the Beyond 2024 consultation: “I do recognise that many people in the community will ask why this work has not already been done, and we need to acknowledge this openly – but nonetheless I think it is important that is done now, however delayed it may feel.”

It is difficult to draw much confidence from this admission given the record. Five and a half years since Grenfell and RBKC have not offered a major vision, nor have they significantly improved their attention to detail in delivering services.

Expectations

There is a natural expectation that does not fade over time that the scale of change should be commensurate with the scale of the crime and the losses suffered. There should at least be a sincere attempt at commensurate change.

If power continues to be distributed unevenly in Kensington, profound change does not look possible. Consultations have taken hundreds of volunteer hours from the local population but have not addressed worsening social and economic injustices. Increased democracy would do more to arrest the prevailing impotence and apathy than another 50 years of consultations, conversations, and co-designs.

RBKC and the media have talked about the local authority ‘regaining trust’ as a prerequisite to North Kensington’s recovery. They need to drop the ‘re’ and focus on establishing trust for the first time since the borough’s creation in the 60s.

“Devastatingly Frank”

In a conversation with Urban Dandy, Callum Wilson acknowledged that there is a long way to go regarding trust: “We know we are dealing with a degree of apathy heightened by Grenfell, with some people not taking part because they believe change is not going to happen. But we have to keep trying and we have to evidence change.”

On ways for the public to participate without having to sign up to the RBKC format, Wilson said: “Spin-off consultations, run by residents with or without council representatives, are possible. They are more organic. There’s an end-of-year deadline for all consultations. We’re happy to receive input, we’re happy for people to make demands.

“I just want as many people to share their views as possible so we can try and build a Council that works better for all our residents.”

RBKC says that over 600 people have spoken to them so far about what they want to see from their council in the next five years. Some have been “devastatingly frank” Wilson told us.

We will pick up our dialogue with RBKC’s Director of Grenfell Partnerships in the new year when the latest consultation has concluded, and the council can explain how they will “simply…be the best Council.”

 

By Tom Charles @tomhcharles

RBKC has bins

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Norland Ward in Kensington & Chelsea is 0.2 miles from Grenfell Tower. In a rational political culture, local politicians seeking election in that ward on Thursday would express support for the victims of the Grenfell fire and solemnly vow to address the worsening economic and social inequality that characterises North Kensington. But in the Royal Borough, pushing policies of injustice and inequality can guarantee you a safe seat, as the Tory candidates make clear in their campaign literature.

We previously looked at Kensington & Chelsea News, the local Conservative Party’s main election propaganda, which sets out their key policies: bin collections, borough-wide parking permits, clean air, low council tax, saving the local police station and money for parks. While some of these pledges are contradictory and some are probably fibs, they are accompanied by the biggest profanity of all; council leader Elizabeth Campbell claiming that “continued support and meaningful recovery for the communities most affected by the Grenfell tragedy will be at the heart of everything we do.”

North Ken Censored

The election propaganda for Norland Ward is more of the same, talking up the threat of a Labour-run council, promoting absurd policies, and ignoring residents in the north of the borough. Even though Norland’s boundary reaches into North Kensington, there is no mention of Grenfell or the poverty that plagues the area.

The Conservative candidates, Stuart Graham and David Lindsay, have ultra-safe seats and plenty of political space to express any conscience or vision they possess. They instead follow the council strategy of studiously ignoring North Kensington. They state they are “committed to standing up for the residents of Holland Park and Notting Hill,” omitting North Kensington completely.

The Norland campaign literature is aimed squarely at those who already live in comfort. In the irrational borough, this group is attended to slavishly: “We need a council that has a record of standing up for residents and delivering more while costing less.” Continue reading →

Review: Kensington & Chelsea News

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The latest propaganda from the Kensington and Chelsea Conservatives comes in the form of a glossy A3 publication with the tagline, Community News. The Spring 2022 edition of Kensington & Chelsea News has the look of a free local newspaper but is a campaigning leaflet for the Tories ahead of next month’s council election. Its mix of policy pledges and class-conscious signaling makes clear the council’s priorities five years on from the Grenfell Tower fire. We read and analysed it so you don’t have to.

Page One

‘K & C News’ bucks the trend in these dark times by starting with a feel-good story titled “Café Society is here to stay.” The article features reassurances that locals can still object to pavement licenses being granted if noise is an issue. Even more reassuringly, K & C News informs us that Café Society will operate “from Sloane Square to Westbourne Grove,” skidding to a halt just before it gets to North Kensington. This geographical description could be a mere rhetorical flourish to name two upscale streets popular with the rich Tory voter base. Or it could be more sinister; the first signal to K & C News’s readership that the north of the borough is of little concern to the council.

The next headline is also good news but comes as a bit of a shock: “South Kensington saved by local campaign.” In my ignorance, I hadn’t known that South Kensington, the richest area in the country, faced an existential threat. The detail is that London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan, wanted there to be a big glass building there, but heroic local (Conservative) councillors thwarted his plan. South Kensington was rescued from the jaws of Khan back in November, but this newspaper is campaign propaganda to remind core Tory voters and donors that the council remains devoted to them. For those who follow the politics of RBKC, particularly its public relations approach to the five years since the Grenfell Tower fire, it is interesting to be able to read a document that sets out their true priorities, however dressed up in deceit they might be…   Continue reading →

Colin Hall, Holland Park School, the Council, Power and the Media

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Colin Hall, the Marmite headteacher of Holland Park School will retire at the end of this academic year having led the school for 21 years, a third of its history. Outstanding Ofsteds and the best-paid head in the country, but Hall leaves with a tarnished legacy. Just down the road from the school is Kensington Town Hall, where those who have overseen the council’s deficient response to the Grenfell Tower fire are still comfortably in positions of power. Hall’s reckoning contrasts with RBKC’s Taylor-Smith, Campbell, and Quirk, who have sailed through on a wave of spin with no media pushback against their running of the richest, most unequal local authority in the country.

HPS

News of resignations and appointments at Holland Park have been arriving in parents’ inboxes. The big one was provided, using death announcement vocabulary, by newly installed chair of governors Jane Farrell on 29th September: 

20210929031338686_LetterfromChairofTrusteesHollandParkSchool

Among the other resignations was former head of Lehman Brothers and major donor to the Conservative party, Michael Tory. Nominative determinism now exhausted, it seems that HPS will embrace a more centrist liberal inclusive philosophy with Farrell as chair of governors and the new New Labour-supporting Bercows representing the parents. The major turning point for the HPS old guard was an article in The Guardian last month by Fiona Millar, wife of Alistair Campbell.

There are obvious dots to be joined but there might be nothing more to this new centrist liberal power theme at HPS than coincidence. After all, the articles in The Guardian and The Times were served up by a highly organised campaign by former pupils and staff determined to expose what they call a “culture of humiliation.”

Strange

Two investigations are underway at the school, one independent and one by RBKC. Expect much to be added to the list of alleged abuses brought to the public’s knowledge by the Former HPS collective.

Yelling at children through a megaphone is both strange and abusive, as is sending the naughty children to the adventure playground on Southern Row so the mock Ofsted inspectors didn’t have to see them, and so is putting up ‘Wanted’ posters of unknowing children for their ‘Grade Ds in all subjects’.

The audio of a teacher screaming at children, recorded this month, is grim, but apparently the norm, and when this is considered alongside Mr Hall’s propensity to deliver long assemblies on the subject of himself, even to sixth formers on their final day, it suggests not just an abuse of power, but also an understanding among pupils and staff the power being abused is absolute and unchallengeable. From a distance HPS is surreal and eccentric, but if you’re there every day it’s real and normalised.

Still, these revelations alone, if they had happened in a more ‘normal’ comprehensive not on inner London billionaires’ row, would not have been enough to arouse the interest of The Guardian. Mr Hall is a complex headteacher, and plenty of parents like him and his approach, the way he sets about instilling high standards (at least aesthetically) for students. Will The Guardian follow the story as it moves on?

RBKC   

And what of The Guardian‘s silence on RBKC’s ongoing, very public failings? Holland Park is one of the schools that suffered from the entirely avoidable fire at Grenfell Tower, and Holland Park families continue to suffer under the local council also facing accusations of failure to meet its duty of care.

The difference? Perhaps RBKC’s 13-strong crack team of PR spinners pulling the wool, enabled by an establishment media staffed by journalists who consider the social order of Kensington, the haves and the have nots, as natural, or, at best, an opportunity for virtue signaling.

More detail on that another time, but it’s clear that The Guardian and the other establishment outlets have the power to tip the balance in certain situations, and there is enough evidence that RBKC has betrayed the Grenfell victims repeatedly and deliberately to justify serious analysis by the nation’s media.

£

Hall’s retirement was announced the same week that the Pandora Papers revealed that Kensington is home to billions of pounds worth of property owned by tax dodging members of the one percent. If I was aiming for power via Keir Starmer’s Labour party I probably wouldn’t want to piss off potential donors like Michael Tory by empowering North Kensington residents who might demand more democracy or even devolved power locally. 

The Guardian gave a platform to the once voiceless of Holland Park School. That is good. But they don’t challenge other unaccountable power nearby. 

The previous leadership of RBKC fell because they disrespected the mainstream media, trying to lock them out of a council meeting, something the government knew was a no-no. The despised social cleansers, Paget and Mellen, were made to resign and the pressure on the Tories eased. Their heirs at RBKC have been untroubled by an indifferent, ignorant media…

 

by Tom Charles @tomhcharles

Grenfell: Final Betrayal Looms

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Four years and three months of trauma have unfolded since the Grenfell Tower fire which claimed the lives of 72 people in London’s North Kensington. Those with the power to facilitate justice and recovery have chosen alternative courses of action, victimising residents while protecting their own narrow power interests. So, it is unsurprising that the final betrayal looms.

The Government seems as though it is on the brink of disregarding the bereaved, survivors, wider community, even the notion of the sanctity of life, in deciding the fate of the Grenfell site, without consulting those most affected.

A leak to The Sunday Times a fortnight ago broke the news that the tormented structure is to be “torn down” due to unspecified “safety fears”.

The leak came from “senior Whitehall sources” who described the plan to fell the Tower as a “fait accompli”, making a mockery of the Government’s own Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission which has worked to “ensure that the bereaved families, survivors and North Kensington residents lead decision-making on the long-term future of the Grenfell Tower site”.

There is resistance locally to the Tower being taken down. Not just because there is no expert consensus on it being unsafe but, more importantly, many among the bereaved consider it to be the burial ground of their loved ones; a sacred place.

Litany

This latest insult to the victims is no anomaly. From the outset, those with power have cynically contradicted their own performative pronouncements of ‘change’ to deny the victims the means to rebuild our tight-knit community.

A month after the fire, newly installed Kensington and Chelsea Council (RBKC) Leader, Elizabeth Campbell, used the word “change” 11 times in a speech to survivors. At the same meeting, one of those survivors pleaded with the council: “I beg you, do not play a game with us. I beg you, do not tell us lies. I beg you, do not waste our time.”

But Campbell’s claim of change has not converted into action and the desperation of the community has endured.

Theresa May also promised action when she was Prime Minister, with new homes to be offered to survivors within three weeks of the fire. RBKC’s 1,200 long-term empty homes, 9,300 second homes, and 6,000 homes owned by companies registered in tax havens were not utilised. Instead, the council – overseen by the Government’s Gold Command and Grenfell Taskforce – made survivors endure excruciating waits to be rehoused, often offering inappropriate flats.

Sajid Javid, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Secretary at the time of the fire, declared in its aftermath: “The legacy of Grenfell can and must be a whole new approach to the way this country thinks about social housing… It demands nothing less.”

In 2018, RBKC followed suit, stating that the Lancaster West estate, the site of Grenfell Tower and a target of RBKC’s rapacious social cleansing before the fire, was to become a “model for social housing in the 21st Century”. By 2020, this vision had been downgraded to “a model 21st Century improvement programme” with the estate receiving no more money per property than other estates in the borough.

With the local authority missing in action when the Tower burned, the local community stepped in to provide emergency support and relief. Yet, in 2018, with local children suffering from trauma, RBKC cut £1.1 million from its youth services budget. Gold Command and the Taskforce made no intervention. The Government was silent again when, that same year, RBKC attempted to sell-off one of the area’s last remaining community centres, Canalside House – only stopped by a grassroots campaign.

The council scrapped its Grenfell Scrutiny Committee in 2019 following a ‘consultation’ attended by 15 people. Attempts to democratise life in the borough have been blocked by the local Conservative Party, that dominates the wealthy central and southern areas but has no mandate in the north of the borough.

While the streets around Holland Park – a mile from Grenfell Tower – have flats that sell for £10 million, North Kensington is sliding backwards across a range of indicators. A Moroccan man residing there can expect to live for 20 years less than white British man in the south. Infant mortality has risen alarmingly in the north since the Conservative Party’s austerity campaign, the 2009 rate almost tripling by 2019.

In this context, the local and central Government’s response to the fire has been little more than public relations spin. It has safeguarded its authoritarian grip over this borough of obscene wealth, royals and oligarchs but has done nothing to empower those so devastated by the Grenfell atrocity.

Taken individually, each betrayal can be rationalised as a mistake. Taken together, they represent the systematic abuse of the Grenfell victims.

North Kensington is now a neighbourhood frozen in time, at the exact moment when 24-hour news crews departed the scene in 2017. Lives have continued, further elections have been fought, but the trauma is still lodged in our bodies. We cannot undo what happened, and we are still waiting for justice.

Those with the power to improve our lives have only worsened the torture by repeating the soothing ‘change’ mantra, calculated to ensure that whatever is offered to the community by way of empowerment remains illusory, superficial and, ultimately, humiliating.

Memorial

With all other attempts by the community to engage with the Government having ended in frustration, the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission represents the last hope of controlling the legacy of Grenfell.

With 10 representatives from the community (five next of kin, three former Grenfell residents, and two Lancaster West residents) the Commission’s stated aim is to “develop a community-led vision for the memorial” which will then be implemented by the Government.

Staffed and run by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (now the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities), it has been handicapped from the outset.

The Memorial Commission has suffered from the inevitable consultation fatigue of RBKC’s four years of ‘community engagement’. Just 17% of Grenfell households and 4% on the rest of the estate voted to elect the community representatives.

No checks and balances on Government power exist. On the fate of the Tower, the Government is the strongest player.

At a Memorial Commission meeting this year, I advised the co-chair and the community representatives to review the terms of reference as a matter of urgency. Without decision-making power, their function is merely to facilitate the Government and council with a masquerade of ‘consultations,’ ‘change’, and ‘community-led’ ‘co-design’.

The Sunday Times story exemplifies that power imbalance. By undermining the community’s ability to decide, the Government is stripping us of our most basic dignity.

Primarily, it has not explained the ‘safety concerns’ that exist in relation to the Tower and why, if they are so serious, the children of Kensington Academy are back at school in the shadow of the structure. It is understood, with second opinions gleaned from other architects, that at least 10 of the 24 floors of Grenfell Tower could be preserved and incorporated into a fitting memorial.

Alternatives

There is plenty of discussion in North Kensington about the fate of the Grenfell site. The community should be empowered to decide how to honour those lost, rather than being hamstrung by the machinations of government.

Differences of opinion on this personal and sensitive issue exist, but there is also an apparent consensus on the site becoming green; a place of nature and tranquillity, open to everyone, a symbol of hope, peace and dignity.

As well as being the UK’s most traumatised area, North Kensington is the country’s most polluted, dominated by the A40 Westway flyover, which was imposed on the local population in 1970 and causes one in 12 local deaths with its pollution. An immersive experience of nature, using the Biofilic design movement, would facilitate reduced anxiety and depression, would be welcomed in this concrete jungle.

Why not be ambitious? Smaller cities than London have shown what is possible: Singapore’s solar-panelled Supertrees; Paris’s rooftop urban farm; and, perhaps most presciently, Milan’s Vertical Garden, built in a tower block.

There is no shortage of imagination and inspiration here in North Kensington. But to create something impressive and effective as a memorial, an empowered local community is a prerequisite. We need a safe space to implement the will of the people – without leaks, games, spin, insults and pain. If we are disenfranchised yet again, the memorial will be insufficient to honour the scale of the loss and pain.

There must be no “fait accompli” regarding the way we, as a community and as a nation, honour the victims of Grenfell. The site must never become a reflection of establishment control; devoid of imagination and empathy, a symbol of class war and indifference.

The legacy of the Grenfell Tower can and should be a break with the past and become a green sanctuary representing the vibrancy of North Kensington.

 

By Tom Charles @tomhcharles

Photo by Melanie Juno Wolfe / North Kensington Community Kitchen

This article was first published by the Byline Times @BylineTimes on 23rd September 2021

2020 Vision: RBKC & North Kensington

~ Urban Dandy London ~ 4 Comments

“This Council – its policies, its leadership, its senior people and its culture – has changed.”

Cllr Elizabeth Campbell, Leader and
Barry Quirk, Chief Executive
Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, March 2020

 

Since June 2017, Kensington and Chelsea Council (RBKC) has claimed to be undergoing a culture transformation. This website has shown that this assertion is untrue; that public money has been spent to thwart resident empowerment, while austerity spending cuts have been imposed on vital services. Two strategies used by RBKC to frustrate North Kensington’s development have been manipulation through public relations and divide-and-rule of the community. We tackle both here, exposing the PR con using contributions from local people who have stayed faithful to the ideals of community through three traumatic years and have come together to produce this piece.

Background

In this article, we update our challenge to RBKC over its claims to have changed following the Grenfell Tower fire. Since June 14th, 2017, we have presented an evidence-based rebuttal to the council, revealing a fraud perpetrated against residents by RBKC before, during and since that crisis. Not once has RBKC disputed our criticisms with evidence. While we have provided real-life examples of serious failings, the council’s response has been to parrot their ‘change’ mantra.

This update was planned before the Coronavirus had impacted daily life so severely. Many people have been quick to predict that positive political, economic, social, philosophical and cultural transformations will spring from the crisis. We believe that only unified, grassroots action changes things and that adversarial journalism is indispensable in this.

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RBKC’s Change Policy

By Tom Charles

The Conservative leadership of RBKC lives in an altered reality. On the ground: no change; in their press releases and public utterances: change. It seems that truth is not important, careful PR management is. RBKC remains intractable in this approach, typified in the quote above from the leader and chief executive of the richest local authority in the country. Over the past three years, we have published the following stories, exposing the lie of Campbell and Quirk, two functionaries for a rotten council that needed root and branch change… Continue reading →