Yesterday in London a demonstration organised by the campaign Grenfell United and the Fire Brigades Union marked a year since the Grenfell Tower Fire. The demonstration was smaller that you might have hoped but it was very lively and combative. The relationship between the local community and the FBU forms the bedrock of the campaign. Whatever the debate on the reasons for the fire local people saw Firefighters risk their lives to save as many lives as they were able to in the very taxing circumstances.
Swindon Tenants Campaign Group 
Well said Martin. In Leeds we held a vigil in remembrance of the dead and in solidarity with the survivors – amongst whom we include the firefighters who were left utterly traumatised after their desperate struggle to save lives in impossible circumstances. We heard a really moving speech from the secretary of our local section of the Fire Brigades Union, describing how exhausted firefighters re-entered the building up to four times (when they would normally only be allowed to go in once before standing down and resting); how they shared their oxygen with suffocating victims; and the enormous obstacles they faced due to numerous problems with the construction of the building. He gave a special mention to the phone operators in the control room – 11 people who took over a 100 calls from people trapped and terrified, literally forced to listen to people die in no small part because of faulty stay put advice for which these operatives and their firefighter colleagues on the scene were NOT responsible. This unimaginable ordeal and trauma has been made worse by some of the disgusting attacks on them from sections of the media – just as the ordeal of surviving tenants and the bereaved has been made so much harder by the knowledge that this carnage need not and should not have happened.
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