On the night of June 13 2017, in Flat 82 on the 11th floor of Grenfell Tower, Natasha Elcock fell asleep on the family sofa, after a long day at work. Her partner, Anthony, was watching Trainspotting next to her. Her six-year-old daughter had fallen asleep in her parents’ bed.
What happened next is a scar on the nation’s conscience, still marked in the sky above London by a tower shrouded in white and bearing a green heart.
By the morning, Natasha would be in hospital having flooded her own flat to save her families’ lives. Her uncle Steve Power would be missing on the 15th floor
Steve, a 63-year-old DJ and keen fisherman, is said to have died with his three beloved Staffordshire Bull Terriers wrapped around him, after heeding official advice to ‘stay put’.
Both bereaved and survivor, supermarket manager Natasha would find herself a reluctant spokeswoman for the residents of an estate she had lived on all her life.
“The driving force for me, as a mother, was always the 18 children we lost,” she says, as the fifth anniversary of the Grenfell fire approaches on Tuesday. “My uncle guides me from above. But those children didn’t have a chance to see life. They didn’t stand a chance. We couldn’t not fight for justice for them and everybody else we lost.”
There are so many villains of the Grenfell story, from the corporate giants who have used their millions to evade justice, to those in power who didn’t care enough to keep innocent people safe.
But today is the day to focus on Grenfell’s heroes. The bereaved people and survivors who banded together despite their personal trauma – to provide humanitarian aid, battle for housing and mental health provision, and to fight for justice.
Natasha is the chair of Grenfell United, an extraordinary group of ‘ordinary’, mostly working class people from the tower, entirely made up of bereaved and survivors – who had to step in when every other authority utterly failed them.
“We came out under a police shield to stop the bits of flying plastic,” she remembers. “Our community felt like a warzone.”
She had called the emergency services over and over as their flat filled with smoke and then flames, before her family were rescued by a fireman at 4.45am as the front door buckled, some of the last survivors. Her witness statement to the inquiry, makes for harrowing reading.
Having survived, she found herself fearless. “When we took on the fight, we knew it was David and Goliath,” she says. “We knew from the off we were taking on government, the local authority, multi-million corporates. A few people against a multitude – on behalf of 72 people murdered.”
One of the groups’ first actions was to hold an event at Parliament that I had the privilege of chairing. The testimonies of Natasha and others at last seemed to trigger in MPs a realisation of the horror of that night, reducing many to tears. Yet in the years since, institutional contempt has returned.
She says the group “have channelled our trauma into doing right by people.” Yet, as for the Hillsborough families, there has been a huge cost. “When we took on the establishment, we became the enemy,” Natasha, now 44, says. “Malicious rumours and smear campaigns started up. It’s been relentless ever since.”
Karim Mussilhy, a former sales manager, woke in the early hours of June 14 to his wife screaming the name of the uncle who had often looked after him as a child. “Call Uncle Hesham,” she said. “Grenfell is on fire.” A diabetic who used a stick to walk, Hesham Rahman loved being on the very top floor of the block because it made him “closer to God”. He also perished that night.
Karim, who spent days frantically searching for his Uncle, went on to become the Vice Chair of Grenfell United. “It will be three years in October since the phase one recommendations and nothing implemented,” he tells me. “In another five years will we still be waiting for charges? It’s so frustrating and difficult.
“There is so much cost to this. My wife and son have been racially abused. My kids have been sent pictures of Grenfell Tower with poo emojis. I’ve been told, your uncle was a terrorist. Someone shouted at me that your uncle deserved to die in Falafel Tower.
“The kids are asking questions now you don’t know how to answer. It feels like we are being tortured, purposefully.”
Grenfell’s children have shown remarkable resilience over the last five years. Natasha’s daughter went straight back to school the next day. “But many of our kids are just getting to an age where they are aware of social media,” she says. “The hard part is we can’t protect them in the same way from the negative media.”
Now 36, Karim’s frustration is plain. “What’s actually changed?” he asks. “Nothing. It’s one step back and five steps backwards. I don’t even know what justice looks like any more.”
At a recent evidence hearing Eric Pickles, a former communities minister couldn’t even remember how many people died at Grenfell, mixing the number up with the 96 who died at Hillsborough.
“These days, they can’t remember our names or the number of the dead or even remember Grenfell right,” Karim says. “It makes me sick. This is the murder of our families.”
None of us who were there will ever forget the sight or smell of Grenfell Tower on fire. The bits of toxic cladding that floated on the air and caught in your throat, the way changes in the wind caused the building to flare up again and again. The certain knowledge we were looking at a mass grave.
“I still have the shirt I wore that day,” Karim says. “I haven’t washed it since. It still smells of that day.
“At the time I didn’t allow myself any emotion. I thought I had a job to do and I suppressed how I felt. It’s only now when I talk about it, I want to burst into tears.”
When Grenfell happened, Karim was an outgoing 31-year-old. “I loved socialising,” he says. “I had the best job in the world. This all feels meaningless to me now.”
Natasha’s life has also changed beyond recognition. “I don’t work in retail any more,” she says. “Really, I lived in a bubble until that night. I didn’t pay much attention to things – just family, work, friends.
“Now I understand things – how politics works, the establishment. I see how things really are.”
Grenfell United have achieved so much more than they realise in the last five years. They have inspired cladding campaigners up and down the country, changed laws that will save lives, and challenged Middle England’s shameful perceptions of social housing tenants.
“I would vote for Tash for PM tomorrow, and I would follow her anywhere,” Karim says.
Perhaps most importantly, they have become an extended family. “I feel like under these awful circumstances something was born in all of us that night,” Natasha says. “Some sort of determination came out of the blood, sweat and tears of this journey.
“I’m not going anywhere until justice is served. We’ll keep fighting. We’ve no choice. There’s been moments we’ve all felt like giving up, but we can’t because if we do, they will win.
“We’re ready for the next five years.”
Remembered at last week’s Platinum Jubilee by 72 empty plates and green paper cups on a lonely trestle table, on Tuesday those who died at Grenfell will be commemorated at a service at the base of the tower – the first time it has been seen publicly since the tragedy. The children of the tower will gather as they always do, connected by an invisible bond to their friends both alive and lost.
And then Natasha and Karim and the rest of Grenfell United will join thousands more in remembrance on a Silent Walk, something which has happened every month – except in Covid – since the fire.
The destination will be the same as always. Justice.
Grenfell Silent Walk, 6pm, Tuesday (June 14), Notting Hill Methodist Church, Silchester Road, London W10
