Thoth distribution@thoth.pub Google 20260726T131442

urn:uuid:52530940-6917-4dd2-90dd-f3d26b3823bb 03 15 9781914477263 00 EB E107 10 01 01 Before Grenfell Fire, Safety and Deregulation in Twentieth-Century Britain 1 A01 Shane Ewen Shane Ewen is Professor of History at Leeds Beckett University, UK, where his research and teaching interests coalesce around urban history and the politics and culture of disasters and emergency preparedness. His previous books include Fighting Fires: Creating the British Fire Service, c.1800-1978 (2010) and What is Urban History? (2015). He is co-editor of the Urban History journal and has contributed several articles to the History & Policy network. 01 eng 23 Grenfell 12 HBLX 10 HIS037080 23 History ⇒ British and Irish History 23 fire 12 HBJD1 10 POL002000 10 ARC003000 23 fire safety 12 TNKF 10 1.1.2.2.0.1.0 12 1DBKESL 23 Justice4Grenfell 12 3JM 23 Grenfell United 23 late-capitalism 23 poverty 23 building regulation 23 housing development 23 urban planning 23 urban redevelopment 23 high-rise 23 tower blocks 23 neoliberalism 23 deregulation 23 mass-fatality fires 23 london 23 tragedy 01 06 03 00 On 14 June 2017, flames engulfed a residential block of flats in West London. 72 people lost their lives and many hundreds more were traumatised as a national ‘cladding crisis’ unfolded. Yet the Grenfell Tower fire was a disaster foretold – the culmination of successive decades of deregulation, corporate greed and institutional failure to learn from the lessons of past multiple-fatality fires. By advocating a historical approach spanning the twentieth century, <italic>Before Grenfell</italic> deepens our contemporary understanding of the events surrounding the disaster and reveals how past decisions taken by governments and industry bodies created the conditions under which the fire occurred. Drawing upon unexplored archives as well as extensive use of published records, Shane Ewen’s book traces the underlying causes of the fire through more than four decades of deregulation of fire precautions, scientific governance and building regulations by successive governments in thrall to the ideology of neoliberalism. In drawing upon several previous, and often forgotten, multiple-fatality fires, the book sheds light on the historic failures of policymakers to heed the lessons of the past in protecting vulnerable communities, arguing that good policymaking necessitates learning <italic>with</italic> history as well as learning <italic>from</italic> history. 04 00 Introduction: Multiple-fatality fires, deregulation and the value of ‘thinking with history’<ol> <li> From byelaws to building regulations: recasting building control in Britain since the nineteenth century </li> <li> How red tape saves lives: the law on fire precautions in Britain since the 1970s </li> <li> The mixed economy of ‘scientific governance’ in twentieth-century Britain </li> <li> The path of least intervention in the ‘great unswept corner of English housing policy’: multiple-fatality fires in houses in multiple occupation in the 1980s and 1990s </li> </ol>Conclusion: The need to learn before and after GrenfellBibliography University of London Press 01 University of London Press 04 01 20230720 02 WORLD 06 15 9781914477256 06 15 9781914477263 06 15 9781914477553 06 15 9781914477287 WORLD 09 University of London Press 20 01