Requiem

Over whom shall we weep first?
Over the burned ones?
Over those beyond recognition?
Over those who have been crippled?
Or driven senseless?
Or smashed?
I weep for them all.

A few lines from the much  longer poem by Morris Rosenfeld that covered the entire front page of the Jewish Forward socialist newspaper of New York a few days after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.

In the fire 146 garment workers, mostly young women, mostly immigrants, perished either from incineration or from jumping from the sweatshop premises  in which they toiled for a meagre wage. They were trapped in the upper stories of a tall building in which  there were no fire safety precautions and exit routes had been  deliberately blocked or were inadequate for the purpose. The disaster  drew attention to the dangers of sweatshop conditions and it led to the establishment of a raft of laws to protect industrial workers.

As the tragedy of Grenfell Tower continues to unfold and reverberate  the least one can hope is that people who live in high rise blocks will in future be adequately protected from fire risks and never again fall victim  to the dangers that seem (at this point) to have resulted from gentrification on the cheap (prettification of buildings with sub-standard materials), neglect of statutory landlord responsibilities and the council's refusal to heed the warnings of the residents themselves.