The Fires that Foretold Grenfell, review: Distressing yet important viewing

This BBC Two documentary is one of the most traumatic things that's been on television for a very long time

“Hello Catherine.

“Hello Catherine. Can you make any noise so I know that you’re listening to me?

“Catherine, can you make any noise?

“Can you bang your phone or anything?

“Catherine, are you there?

“I think that’s the phone gone...”

These were the last moments of Catherine Hickman. The words are those of the 999 operator as thick acrid smoke and flames engulfed Catherine in her flat. She had been on the phone for a full half an hour, and, for the whole of that time, was advised – told in fact – to “stay put”, because the fire brigade knew where she was, was coming to rescue her, and because, as she was told, she didn’t know what was on the other side of her front door. The exchanges, based on a transcript and voiced by actors, are the most traumatic thing I’ve witnessed on television for a very long time.

She could easily have been calling from Grenfell Tower on 14 June last year. She wasn’t, though. She was one of the victims of a notorious earlier blaze in a block of council flats, at Lakanal House in Camberwell, south London back in 2009. It had been fitted with flammable composite cladding, and there was no sprinkler system. That was why Catherine died. That her sisters allowed her words to be used for this broadcast was noble indeed – because, as they explain on the film, they did not wish her life to have been lost in vain.

As The Fires that Foretold Grenfell forensically and graphically illustrated, the rigid use of the “stay put” rule, official complacency and a collective failure to learn lessons over many years led inexorably and inevitably to the loss of 72 lives at Grenfell Tower (and even that was mercifully fewer than it might have been). And, given the history presented in this distressing and important documentary, the answer to the question so often asked: “Could Grenfell Happen Again?”, is: “Certainly”.

The filmmakers take five egregious examples of official failure over the past half-century or so, and, again and again, showed how the usual cries of “never again” and pledges to “learn lessons” were forgotten almost as soon as they fell from the lips of those supposed to be doing the learning and protecting.

There were five of these precursors to Grenfell, and, in fact, they were often precursors to each other, the lessons stubbornly and consistently ignored as the decades wore on. The fire at Summerland on the Isle of Man in 1973 should probably have been the last of its kind. It was, at the time, the worst loss of life from fire on land in the British Isles since the Second World War – 50 killed and 80 seriously injured.

Desperately trying to compete with the growing trend of holidaymakers to head to Spain, Summerland was designed to create “sunshine indoors” though the use of “Oroglas”, a kind of acrylic window that gave everything in this vast atrium an orangey hue. It made, as one of the firemen from the time ruefully observed, for an excellent, intense firelighter.

After Summerland, recommendations were made to tighten building regulations across the UK. But the rules were streamlined in the mid-1980s, as part of some misplaced mission to deregulate the economy, leaving them confused, and then actually weakened further in 2006, and with entirely predictable results: fires at Knowsley Heights, Liverpool (1991); Garnock Court, Irvine, North Ayrshire (1999); Harrow Court , Stevenage, Hertfordshire (2005); Lakanal House, London; and then Grenfell. Mostly out of good fortune, the loss of life was relatively modest – but all were near misses, wake-up calls, warnings, whatever you’d like to call them. They were not acted upon.

If this documentary has a fault it was that it was reluctant to name names and lay blame. Maybe this was for legal reasons, but I would like to have known which ministers or officials had been responsible for failures of omission and commission of policy and administration – and, in fact, to hear their side of the story. It would have been illuminating and useful. A couple of names get a mention – John (now Lord) Prescott and Eric (now Lord) Pickles, for example – but those people didn’t appear.

Maybe we will learn much more about the historical backdrop from the public inquiry into the Grenfell tragedy. The lesson of this BBC documentary is that we really don’t have to wait for that to know what’s wrong, and to do something about it. Before Grenfell happens again.