“Show Me the Bodies”

The Grenfell Tower fire is often discussed as a failure of construction or local management. Peter Apps, deputy editor of Inside Housing and the journalist who broke a story on the dangers of combustible cladding just thirty-four days before the fire, argues it was something far larger: a terminal failure of the British state. His Orwell Prize-winning book Show Me the Bodies traces how three decades of deregulation, corporate dishonesty, and institutional indifference combined to turn a reinforced concrete tower into a death trap.

“Show Me the Bodies”

The book takes its title from a remark attributed to Brian Martin, the government official responsible for fire safety guidance, who had previously worked at the Building Research Establishment (BRE). The architect Sam Webb said in a witness statement to the Grenfell Tower Inquiry that Martin used the phrase when Webb warned him that, without a review of the guidance, another fire like the one at Lakanal House was inevitable. Martin denied making the remark. In the 2009 Lakanal House fire in Southwark, six people died.

Sources: Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Phase 2 report, vol. 1, paras 2.10 and 7.2 ^[R015]; Inside Housing, 28 March 2022.

The implication, as critics read it, was stark: new restrictions on businesses would not be imposed unless there was a sufficient body count to justify the cost. The Inquiry later found systematic dishonesty on the part of the companies that made and sold the cladding panels and insulation, which manipulated testing processes and misrepresented test data.

Source: Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Phase 2 report, vol. 1, para 2.19 ^[R015].

Regulation by Death

This mentality was not an aberration but the product of a systematic programme of deregulation stretching back to the 1980s. Under successive governments, the institutions that should have protected the public, the Building Research Establishment, the British Board of Agrément, building control itself, were privatised, defunded, or stripped of the power to intervene effectively.

By the 2010s, this had intensified further. The “Red Tape Challenge” and the “one in, one out” rule (later “one in, two out” and “one in, three out”) meant that any new regulation had to be offset by removing existing regulation, and the Housing Standards Review that followed explicitly excluded safety standards. The Inquiry found that the deregulatory agenda dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, delayed or disregarded. Apps concludes that decades of deregulation exacted a tragic and avoidable price.

Source: Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Phase 2 report, vol. 1, paras 2.13 and 10.4–10.6 ^[R015].

A Pattern of Ignored Warnings

Apps documents how Grenfell was not a one-off failure but the culmination of warnings from a series of earlier fires that were never acted upon. Each exposed the same danger, combustible cladding on the exterior of residential buildings, and each was followed by inaction:

1. 1991

   Knowsley Heights, Merseyside

   Fire spread up the full height of one side of the 11-storey block via its exterior cladding. No one died. Guidance was revised in 1992, but the use of combustible cladding on high-rise buildings was not restricted.

2. 2009

   Lakanal House, Southwark

   Six people died when fire spread through exterior panels. The coroner made specific safety recommendations; the government agreed to review building regulations but delayed action for years.

3. 2017

   Grenfell Tower, North Kensington

   72 people died. ACM cladding with a polyethylene core, described as containing material equivalent to “pure petrol”, had been installed despite repeatedly failing the already inadequate testing standards.

Source: Grenfell Tower Inquiry, Phase 2 report, vol. 1, paras 7.3 and 7.18 ^[R015].

Why This Matters for Teaching

Apps’ account reframes Grenfell as the inevitable result of a government that viewed safety as an optional expense and human lives as a data point in a cost-benefit analysis. For educators, it provides essential context: the fire was not caused by a single act of negligence but by a political culture in which “red tape” (the regulations designed to keep people alive) was treated as a burden on business. Understanding this is central to teaching about Grenfell through the lens of Education for Disaster Justice.