In 2008, Philip Heath, a technical manager for the insulation manufacturers Kingspan, circulated an email about some contractors who had questioned the safety of their product. They, he said to a friend, “are getting me confused with someone who gives a dam [sic]”. In 2017, Kingspan’s insulation panels contributed to the Grenfell Tower fire in west London, in which 72 people died. Heath’s misspelt sneer could serve as the unofficial motto of the many companies, institutions and individuals whose shared culture of contempt – for people, facts and due process – helped to bring about the disaster.
It is a culture that goes beyond Grenfell. You can see it in water companies’ dumping of sewage into rivers, in the flawed responses to Covid, in the Post Office Horizon scandal. It is evident in the continued failure to deal with the unsafe cladding that, seven years after Grenfell demonstrated its dangers, it is a prime suspect in last week’s gutting of a block of flats in Dagenham, east London. If this culture doesn’t change, there will continue to be catastrophes in contexts – home, work, travel – where the public should feel safe.
