In 2013, the council threatened legal action, saying that the group’s online posts demanding action amounted to defamation and harassment. In response, the Grenfell Action Group was formed. It had ignored the residents’ complaints about the lack of fire extinguishers, sprinklers as well as faulty lifts and lack of accessible exits. It had tried to rehouse its working-class and ethnic minority residents for years with tempting offers of flats outside London in places such as Reading. Sitting in the middle of an area with some of the highest property prices in Britain, Grenfell Tower was an indelible blot on the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s Conservative Council and its vision for the area. Nothing illustrated this more than when Grenfell Tower went up in flames killing 72 people on 14 June 2017. When ‘gentrification’ or ‘social cleansing’ is mentioned, one could immediately think of London’s Notting Hill - an area with a long history of rapacious landlords, avaricious developers and obscene displays of both privilege and penury.
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