- 3 Along with Wiley, Kano and Lethal Bizzle—to name a few—Dizzee Rascal is one of the initiators of th (...)
- 4 “The Mercury Prize promotes the best of UK and Irish music and the artists who produce it. This is (...)
- 5 Relatively mainstream, because even though the shortlisted artists this year included widely recogn (...)
1In 2003, Dizzee Rascal3 was the first Grime artist to win the prestigious Mercury Prize4, awarded to him for his debut album, Boy in da Corner. This event marked a new turn for the emerging musical genre, as it was recognized by a relatively mainstream award5. British rap was heavily influenced by American Hip-Hop after Sugarhill Gang’s hit track, “Rapper’s Delight”, made it to the British charts soon after its release in 1979 (Copsey), but black British music, and Grime in particular, was primarily influenced by African and Caribbean cultures, and Grime thus finds its roots in reggae and electronic dance music such as jungle and garage, sounds characterized by percussive rhythms and the use of samples. Sonically, Grime was unprecedented, characterized by its fast 140bpm (beat per minute) and its use of spatial electronic sounds known as Afrofuturism—defined by British journalist and book writer Dan Hancox as “the African diasporic aesthetic that takes science fiction as a tool for discussing oppression and freedom” (Inner City Pressure 21). Grime also has lyrical specificities: artists use their music to describe the conditions of life in the areas they live in, often in vulgar and violent terms. The lyrics, delivered rapidly to reflect the fast BPM (and, one could further argue, the fast rhythm of life in London’s inner-city) thus explore themes of life in the inner-city and social issues faced by the artists and their communities. After debates about what to name this new genre, debates represented in Grime’s ‘godfather’ Wiley’s hit track, “Wot Do U Call It?” (released in 2004), the term ‘Grime’ was coined by journalists and adopted by MCs in the genre’s early days, as a reflection of East London’s deprivation in which Grime’s creators developed this innovative, gritty, never-heard-before sound. However, Grime was always more than just a different sound, a derivative from previous genres of black British (rap) music. Created in the early 2000s by groups of black British teenagers in East London’s most deprived boroughs (DJ Target), it emerged in and soon became a reflection of the social, economic and cultural conditions of the area.
2However, more than representing the East End’s “underdog mentality marginality, poverty and history of industrial squalor” (Inner City Pressure 16), Grime appealed to more positive aspects of life in this area, as it incarnated mutual aid, localism and community strength, groups of teenagers willing to escape a life in the margins of British society (White). Black music such as jazz, reggae and, of course, Grime, is often a reflection of society, as it intimately combines the sublime and violence in its aesthetics, and “the history of black experience is politicised within its diverse sounds and lyrical content” (Perera 84). As argued by Paul Gilroy, forms of black musical expression have had an almost philosophical doctrine and morality that confronts power with the truth (Gilroy). On the one hand, black music acts as a means of communication as it allows artists to raise their voices about their struggles, and on the other hand, it raises consciousness about these issues. In this way, Grime is both an art form and a subculture, a political and artistic object with distinctive political and social claims. Grime is a music genre that is political in itself, it is a platform for artists to raise their voices about the issues faced by their communities regarding a number of subjects: poverty, violence, racism, police harassment... The very environment that gave birth to Grime, London’s East End, gave the genre a vocation to become a political voice for black British youths that felt marginalised from mainstream politics. Using electronic sounds that are deeply marked by an African diasporic culture (Inner City Pressure), these youths started making the “Grime boroughs” visible from the outside united as a community, bound through their common experience of life in the inner city. Even if artists were not consciously taking a political stand, the very creation of Grime speaks loudly about their conditions of life in a city centre far from the image of London that is shown to tourists, upper and upper-middle classes in Britain, far (although not geographically) from wealth and gentrified neighbourhoods. And the very creation of such a genre gave the African diaspora in London more visibility and legitimacy, which in itself can be considered a political gesture, however involuntarily it may have been. Grime artists stood as observers of the daily life in their environment, thus clearly showing their audience the hard truth about the areas they grew up in. Artists used Grime as a form of resistance to marginalisation (Bramwell), but also as a claim of London’s multicultural nature, that sometimes couldn’t be further from traditional views and representations of the capital. The violence of Grime lyrics has often been decried, but it became a cathartic experience for black British youths to express the daily violence they faced in impoverished neighbourhoods, and to reflect the violence of the government’s social policies that neglected such areas (Lees).
3In addition, more than a political platform, Grime became a political tool for some British media, politicians and for the London Metropolitan Police to criminalize this genre, the artists performing it and their audience, as an attempt to justify, or at least hide, the causes of state-led deprivation of London’s East End, for instance the gentrification of several neighbourhoods in London by New Labour policies from 1997. In order to improve the attractiveness of cities, Tony Blair’s government implemented policies to change the inner cities’ image regarding insecurity and urban violence. Urban Regeneration initiatives often came with strategies to implement social control over urban spaces, that resulted in the exclusion of homeless people, the introduction of surveillance devices, the increased presence of police and of private security companies in many buildings. Moreover, the 2000 Urban White Paper used the terms of social diversity as a criteria for urban regeneration and aimed to create ‘mixed communities’, often regarding the diversity of housing. However, only focusing on diversity in types and regimes of housing (council estate, residential neighbourhoods…) didn’t allow mixed communities, as people living in the same areas didn’t mean that they went to the same schools, worked or socialized in the same places. Urban Regeneration and diversity only based on housing created enclaves of wealth and of poverty with council estates and gentrified residential areas next to one another, as in South London (Lees), or in East London’s deprived areas neighboured by luxurious Canary Wharf. Even when promoting diversity in cities, the urban policies didn’t create interactions between the different communities living in renewed neighbourhoods. In the Southeast of England, particularly in London, public policies regarding regeneration clearly led to a more and more important gentrification, pushing people who couldn’t afford the raising prices of housing further and further away from the cities centres, only leaving upper and upper-middle classes into the inner cities (Fée and Nativel). In addition, New Labour’s urban policies didn’t make any remarkable change in employment. In London for instance, the unemployment rate stayed at a pretty stable 7.5% from 1999 to 2005 (Office for National Statistics). This shows that even though it created new jobs in inner London and attracted new classes, it only moved the more deprived and unemployed population to the outer neighbourhoods of the city, and it didn’t solve the unemployment issue, thus creating two separate inner cities within the capital.
- 6 Piers Morgan is an English television personality and journalist. He worked at The Sun, was appoint (...)
4In light of this context, Grime artists, and more generally urban black youths, have come to be represented as dangerous individuals rather than as victims of a system that impoverished their communities (Fatsis, “Policing the Beats”). A striking example of this negative representation can be found in the right-wing political commentator Piers Morgan6, who argued that the “wave of knife crime in London was a ‘black problem’ and that wearing a tracksuit could indicate gang involvement, necessitating increased stop and search by the police” (Perera 88). In a debate on knife crime in London on Good Morning Britain on 14 May 2018, Morgan claimed that “if 90% of the knife crime in this capital city right now is being conducted by young black gang members, what is wrong with stopping and searching young black youths who look like they might be in a gang?”(Good Morning Britain, Episode dated 14 May 2018).
- 7 Sadiq Khan announced the launch of Black on the Square festival in 2022, an event designed to celeb (...)
5Even though a number of local councillors and politicians, such as London Mayor Sadiq Khan, supported youth cultures and Grime in particular—Khan went as far as presenting Skepta with the Best British Male award at the NME Awards in 2017 and referred to the artist as a “role model” (Wynter), and he more recently initiated the festival Black on the Square to promote black culture in London7—the genre was criminalised on a global scale by the British media (O’Connor)(“Popular grime artists”) and especially by police initiatives that openly discriminated against racialised urban youths and Grime culture, such as Form 696 (“Promotion Event Risk Assessment Form 696”). The policing of Grime in London mainly occurred through the launching of this Promotion Event Risk Assessment Form 696 by the London Metropolitan Police in 2008, aiming to “identify and minimise any risk of most serious violent crime happening at the proposed event” (London Metropolitan Police Service 1). Along with other anti-gang initiatives such as Operation Trident and the Metropolitan Police Gangs Matrix (that was called out by Amnesty International for discriminating against Black people)(Amnesty International), Form 696 was accused of unjustly targeting black artists: on its initial eight-page version, it required the promoters to specify if a particular ethnic group would be performing at or attending the event, the form was thus accused of racial profiling. Form 696 broadly prohibited Grime artists from performing at festivals and big venues, as well as other black British artists in parallel scenes like UK garage, jungle and dancehall. In the face of these conditions, Grime artists did not stop with a mere informal political discourse. As the 21st century went on, they began to gain a more official political platform, showing Grime’s ability to engage on a political scene through direct actions.
6Grime developed in the early 21st century to become—more than a music genre—an entire subculture (expressed through music but also clothing, a specific slang inspired by Jamaican and Pidgin—a version of Nigerian and Ghanaian English), the members of which took it upon themselves to challenge established visions of life in London’s inner city, by merely playing the role of observers and story-tellers, to depict the violence of their urban environment. In this, Grime artists began to engage on a political level as early as the creation of the new genre. However, the resurgence of Grime in the mid 2010s and its rise to a mainstream and worldwide audience (Wiley; DJ Target; Stormzy) gave these artists a new voice and platform on which to express themselves and become involved politically through more traditional and direct channels (Charles; Perera). In 2017, a number of Grime artists got together to support the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in his run up to the general election, and organised various events aimed at convincing urban youths to register to vote (for Labour).
7This article is dedicated to explaining the events of 2017, that is to say the #grime4Corbyn campaign and later, the #grime4Grenfell movement—that developed after the tragic fire of Grenfell Tower in East London—to analyse the changing relation between black communities and the Labour Party on the one hand, and the increasing political involvement of Grime artists in favour of their communities, on the other hand.
8After the Labour defeat at the 2015 general elections, Jeremy Corbyn was elected at the head of the party. However, his leadership was rapidly challenged within the Parliamentary Labour Party, leading to a new leadership election in 2016 which Corbyn won with a larger share of the vote than the previous election (Stewart and Mason). With Corbyn at its head, the Labour Party’s policy shifted to the left and back to traditional labour values, marking the end of New Labour and its neo-liberal policies (Roe-Crines). In 2017, the conservative Prime Minister Theresa May called for a snap election to secure her majority in Parliament in the tense context of securing a Brexit deal with the European Union. Black and working-class communities that had until then been left out of the successive labour and conservative policies rallied to the head of the Labour Party, and a popular phenomenon developed around Corbyn. Grime artists took it upon themselves to gather a strong support for Corbyn, through the #grime4Corbyn campaign. I am focusing on Grime artists’ involvement in the campaign, but it is important to note that the organisers of the #grime4Corbyn movement were not only artists, but young people (under 45 years old) mobilised to raise awareness regarding voter registration, and the #grime4Corbyn events were not only dedicated to Grime. The movement was thus larger than the music genre and encapsulated larger beliefs and activism.
If the election proved anything, it was that Grime was certainly more than music. Grime has come to encapsulate a generational identity. (Perera 83)
9Grime artists were mostly at the margins of the music industry until they found a way to touch a mainstream audience whilst preserving their integrity, thus becoming important voices of their communities and gaining credibility and ability to be heard. According to cultural sociologist Monique Charles, “artists in the Grime scene should be understood as organic intellectuals—as intellectuals who are organically linked to their class, and take on roles to represent them, theorise their position and offer them a means of political intervention” (Charles 45). This notion of ‘organic intellectuals’ emphasizes the artists’ role, almost duty, of representing their communities, thus operating an interesting link between identity (through the part community and class play in Grime) and political action (this belonging leading to a duty of representation once the artists gained a voice that could be heard in the name of their communities). Thus, even before actively taking part in political events or movements, Grime artists are political, in the sense that in their songs, they tell the story of deprived communities, describe their everyday life and dream about brighter conditions. One smashing example of this is Dizzee Rascal’s “Sittin’ Here” (Boy in da Corner), where the artist stands as an observer of daily life in East London: “’Cause it’s the same old story, shutters, runners, cats and money stacks / It’s the same old story, ninja bikes, gun fights and scary nights / It’s the same old story, window tints and gloves for fingerprints / It’s the same old story, police investigate, now the area’s bait.” In describing his surroundings, he shows how Grime provides a platform for social engagement by merely providing an account of everyday life in his area. Dizzee highlights a number of issues facing his community whilst distancing himself from the criminality and violence he describes as he is only “sittin’ here”. Kano’s “How We Livin’” is yet another example of Grime’s social essence. The track is a mere description of life as Kano knows and lives it. It is marked by violence, selling drugs, going to jail and going out only to keep selling drugs: “Sinning, ’cause that’s the only way we think we’re winning / Killing, ’cause that’s the only language people listen to / Slinging, ’cause that’s all you can manage when you’ve been into prison” (Kano). Again, Kano doesn’t claim to be engaged either socially or politically in this track, but his words are still striking to the audience, as they provide a resigned vision of a violent day-to-day life of which the only way for the artist to escape is to work twice as hard and to only rely on himself and his ambition, as he depicts an environment left out of social policies and government interest.
- 8 Novelist and JME belong to the first wave of Grime, and are still active to this day. Stormzy and A (...)
10However, various Grime artists, such as AJ Tracey, Novelist, Stormzy or JME8, went beyond a mere description of their surroundings as political commitment and mobilised in 2016 and 2017 in support of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, under the hashtag #grime4Corbyn.
11The primary goal of this movement—that started on social media and then took shape through various events in London—was to engage urban youths and convince them to register to vote at the 2017 general election. The Instagram account of the campaign shared information for live grime events in British cities (London, Brighton, Birmingham)9. Numerous artists from the British Grime and hip-hop scene were involved in the campaign and called their audience to vote for Corbyn, who they considered truly incarnated the Labour slogan “For the many, not the few”. The black and working-class British communities were still scarred by their relationship with New Labour and its attacks against ethnic minorities and lower social classes, notably in London with the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 which introduced anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs), a crime legislation that allowed the authorities to criminalize a variety of ‘undesirable’ behaviours. The #grime4Corbyn campaign rallied these populations not around the party, but rather around the character of Corbyn, who promised to put an end to the neo-liberal policies of his predecessors. The candidate ran on a socialist and anti-austerity platform and opposed British military involvement in Syria in 2015 as well as vividly criticising the Iraq war of 2003 (Roe-Crines). The massive use of social media, filmed interviews, pictures, shows, and the involvement of several celebrities such as Stormzy and JME gave credibility to Corbyn among urban youths and had an appreciable impact on the interest of these populations in politics. The #grime4Corbyn campaign thus allows to testify of the radical shift of the party towards the left, and consequently the growing involvement of popular youths, popular classes and ethnic minorities to support the candidate. The #grime4Corbyn campaign was exceptional in that it succeeded in gathering youths around the Labour Party and the personality of Jeremy Corbyn and made them think of themselves as a political group capable of making change happen rather than as individuals passively observing political decisions being made, thus disrupting the political ruling class (Perera). Between 2015 and 2017, Labour Party membership went from less than 200 000 to almost 600 000 (“Membership of Political Parties in Great Britain”), although these new members were not particularly young. However, people aged from 18 to 24 constituted more than 60% of Labour vote in the 2017 election (Curtis) compared to 36% in the 2015 election (Neundorf and Scotto). Of course, this surge in youth vote for Labour was not exclusively due to the #grime4Corbyn campaign: the Labour social media campaign played an important role in gathering youths around the Labour Manifesto and the social movement it incarnated (Therrien). Moreover, the Manifesto pledged to scrap tuition fees for university students, to end zero-hour contracts and unpaid internships (The Labour Manifesto 2017), very convincing arguments for working-class youths. However, an extensive Ticketmaster report on Grime published a few months after the elections showed that 58% of Grime fans had voted for the Labour candidate of their constituency, and 24% had done so under the direct influence of the #grime4Corbyn campaign (Ticketmaster).
- 10 Tony Blair sought the support of bands from the Britpop movement, a musical movement pioneered by t (...)
12Unlike the Blair/Britpop relationship (“The Britpop Years”)10, the #grime4Corbyn campaign was not a PR move from the Corbyn campaign. It was launched and developed by the artists themselves, following a bottom-up approach. The lived experiences of the MCs gave them the credibility to raise their voices about the various issues their communities faced in London and allowed them to touch a broad audience among popular youths (Charles). In 2017, Grime artist JME appeared on Jeremy Corbyn’s Snapchat, calling the candidate’s followers to register to vote. He also interviewed Corbyn, explaining his goal of convincing people to vote and inform them about Corbyn’s and Labour’s Manifesto to allow his audience to make their own choice. He thus gave Corbyn the opportunity to explain his vision of life in rundown neighbourhoods, developing two major aspects of his programme: housing and access to education. The candidate blamed private housing that increasingly made the prices rise, on the one hand, and created a phenomenon of gentrification that forced the most impoverished populations out of city centres, on the other hand. A direct consequence of this phenomenon was the poor access to higher education by these populations, due to expensive housing prices (that forced young people to give up on their studies and find a job), and to the even more expensive university fees. This interview, filmed by media i-D and posted on Corbyn’s campaign’s website, testifies to the direct involvement of JME and of his will to inform his audience of Corbyn’s vision, as the video was released before the Labour Manifesto (Ivin).
- 11 Ruff Sqwad was one of the first Grime Crews, formed in 2001 (even before the term ‘Grime’ was used (...)
13JME wasn’t the only rapper engaged in the #grime4Corbyn campaign. As a matter of fact, even though Grime artists had a political voice from the beginning of the 21st century, the approach of the 2017 general election marked the first time when they voiced their opinions on British politics through another channel than their music. As Grime grew to reach a mainstream status, so did the political positions of its performers, and Jeremy Corbyn incarnated this new wave of involvement, knowing London’s inner city, understanding poverty and marginality, and listening to ordinary people’s problems (Inner City Pressure). Grime collective Ruff Sqwad’s Slix11 even explained his reasons for voting for Corbyn, saying that “I know people who Corbyn has personally intervened to help, writing supporting letters to help with housing, immigration and other legal matters” (Inner City Pressure 283).
- 12 Plastician and Logan Sama are Grime DJs, and Big Zuu is a Grime artist belonging to the second wave (...)
- 13 Professor Green is a Grime artist from the early days of the genre.
- 14 Not technically a Grime artist, Akala is a British rapper famous not only for his music but by his (...)
- 15 Posted on Jeremy Corbyn’s Facebook account, 2 June 2017. https://www.facebook.com/JeremyCorbynMP/vi (...)
14Various artists followed the lead of JME and Slix, such as Plastician, Logan Sama and Big Zuu12, who called their audiences to vote for Labour; Professor Green13 explained to his 700, 000 Instagram followers how to register to vote; and rapper Akala14 wrote a piece for The Guardian (Akala), reminding Corbyn’s anti-apartheid, anti-war, anti-racist positions, breaking with Labour’s history of condoning British imperialism. AJ Tracey went as far as directing and making an official Labour campaign video15 praising Corbyn’s vision for the NHS and education. This involvement in British politics was very interesting and even surprising, given the fact that Grime artists were not politicians trying to convince people to vote for a candidate, but they were part of the communities that had previously been forgotten—or worse, consciously left out—by previous governments. It really spoke to their will to take matters into their own hands and support the first candidate they thought would change the life of thousands of people in Britain’s most deprived areas.
15After a few weeks of officially supporting Corbyn, Grime artists took a step back because of the consequential media interest in their campaign, unwanted attention that could affect the trajectory of Corbyn’s campaign. But their job was already done: Grime fans and young political activists took the matter in their own hands, reusing the hashtag #grime4Corbyn on Twitter, that went more viral than the #LabourManifesto hashtag (Duggins), and launching a new website, Grime4corbyn.com, that showed a compilation of Corbyn speeches on Grime beats, ‘Corbyn Riddim’. The website also promised free tickets to a secret Grime show for anyone registering to vote (Inner City Pressure). Unofficial ‘Vote Labour’ posters, made by #grime4Corbyn supporters, appeared on the streets, along with pictures of MCs who had supported Corbyn, and Grime fans thus generated their own headlines, showing an exceptional political engagement of urban youths. Iman Amrani, journalist for The Guardian, filmed a video in which she interviewed Grime fans at a #grime4Corbyn event in Tottenham (Amrani and Bradley). She asked various young people their opinion on the election to come, and the reasons that made them take part in the popular movement. Answers varied, but all testimonies agreed on the fact that Corbyn was not Labour’s usual candidate. They recognized that he directed his campaign towards disadvantaged communities, students put forward Corbyn’s education policy, going as far as saying that it made them consider going to university for the first time. Several interviewees claimed that it would be their first time voting, because Corbyn had succeeded in voicing their concerns and transforming them into a long-term project to include popular classes, youths and ethnic minorities into British politics (Amrani and Bradley). When the results of the 2017 election came out, the initial forecast of a large conservative victory—which was the reason that Theresa May had called for a snap election—proved to be completely mistaken. At the start of the campaign, Labour was expected to trail by 24 percentage points but only lost by 2, securing 32 more seats than in 2015, and thus preventing the Conservatives from securing a parliamentary majority, as the Prime Minister’s party lost 13 seats (“General Election 2017: full results and analysis”). During the 2015 general election, 43% of 18-24-year-olds had voted, compared to a 66% turnout nationally. In 2017, Labour gained 47% of 18-19-year-old voters and 40% of the 20-24-year-olds compared to the conservatives (Charles), 54% of 18-24-year-olds voted for Labour (Perera). This was the best result for the Labour Party since 2001. Grime had succeeded in involving inner-city youths in politics, and the national infatuation for the #grime4Corbyn campaign had proven to gain exceptional support in favour of the Labour candidate, even though he did not win the election.
- 16 Skepta is one of Grime’s most famous artists. He greatly contributed in exporting the genre on the (...)
- 17 A genre popularised in Nigeria in the early 2000s, mixing West-African sounds like highlife and Ame (...)
- 18 UK Drill appeared in South London around 2010 and is directly influenced by Grime and Chicago Drill (...)
16The #grime4Corbyn campaign of 2017 was very symbolic as it marked the renewal of Labour’s relationship with ethnic minorities and black artists. However, after Corbyn’s defeat, the movement slowly began to lose momentum, and various artists considered that the Labour Party went back to forgetting about them (Bakare). Grime artists who had been the most vocal in their support of the candidate did not take part in his run up to the 2019 election: JME gave no comment regarding the campaign, and AJ Tracey went as far as saying he would not be voting for Corbyn this time, and that he only supported him in 2017 because he was the “best of a bad bunch” (Hutchinson). JME’s older brother, Skepta16, vividly criticized Corbyn, saying that as soon as the campaign was over, politicians “don’t give a f*** about us again” (Trendell). Moreover, the tense relationship between Corbyn and his own party paved the way for concerns over whether the party would be able to come back to power with Corbyn at its head (Virk). Consequently, Grime artists and popular youths turned away from backing Corbyn and became involved in the “FCK Boris” movement (illustrated by Stormzy’s “Vossi Bop” where the rapper boldly states “Fuck the government and fuck Boris”) and took Grime back to its role as an oppositional force to political elites rather than a supporter of any party, as many considered Tories and Labour alike would not act in their best interest. FCK Boris took the form of a street party with dance music at its core, and planned a variety of events in London, but also in Barnet, Glasgow, Leeds, Birmingham, Bristol, Hendon and Kensington. Adam Cooper, one of the organisers of the #grime4Corbyn campaign, took part in this new movement and interestingly noted that the shift of focus from Corbyn to Johnson, and the step back from an official political campaign was only natural for Grime, as the genre was relatively losing popularity in favour of Afrobeats17 and UK Drill music18. In his sense, the FCK Boris movement made sense for Grime, as it represented the energy of the genre as a counterculture and a vision clashing with traditional politics rather than supporting them (Bakare). However, backing down from campaigning for Corbyn did not mean that Grime artists were stopping their political involvement. On a local scale, many rappers and producers, such as Lethal Bizzle, continued to do less high-profile work to help improve life in their communities, such as going to youth clubs, colleges, and running and organizing workshops in their neighbourhoods (Bakare).
17On another occasion, Grime artists took it upon themselves to act on a political scene and raised their voices to defend disadvantaged local communities in London. On 14 June 2017, at 1 a.m., a devastating fire started at Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey, 1970s tower block in West London containing 120 flats. The fire spread at an unusual speed due to external cladding applied the year before, and went on for almost 24 hours, necessitating more than 200 firemen at its peak. People living on the lower flats were rapidly evacuated but there was little solution to evacuate the upper levels. The police believed 71 people had died and 223 had managed to escape (Inner City Pressure). The Grenfell disaster, more than a ‘local’ tragedy, revealed a greater issue of safe housing in England. I will start this part by analysing the underlying causes of the Grenfell fire and the responses to the disaster, before discussing Grime’s role after the tragedy, as it proved to be yet another example of artists engaging in a political discourse to criticize the policies that made such an event possible.
18Ida Danewid argued that “neoliberal ideology and decades of privatisation, cuts, gentrification and deregulation thus formed the context in which the fire had been made possible. The neo liberalisation of the British housing market had created a dangerous climate in which local authorities were incentivised to neglect the needs of the less well-off residents and chose to put costs and profits before health and safety” (Danewid 290). Indeed, after the fire, local residents and British media started searching for answers as to why the fire had happened, the most common of which were ‘class’ and ‘neoliberalism’. The Grenfell tower was owned by the local council, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but still lacked smoke alarms, sprinkler systems and escape routes. Residents had previously complained about the building’s “dangerous living conditions and neglect of health and safety legislation” (Grenfell Action Group), but these concerns had been ignored. Instead, the council had decided on a refurbishment project earlier in 2017, covering the building with cheap and highly combustible cladding that did not even meet its manufacturer’s safety standards and was forbidden in the United States and in a number of European countries. The council nevertheless found this cladding to be more pleasing for the wealthier residents of the neighbourhood (Griffin). This was found to be the cause of such a rapid spread of the fire.
19In addition to this neglect of safety legislation and measures that could have prevented the fire, this tragedy is intrinsically linked to years of neoliberal urbanism and racialised gentrification. The link between these two phenomena has rarely been made by scholarly analysis and media retransmission of the event, but they proved to be deep-rooted causes of such a disaster, as argued by Danewid: “The making of global cities goes hand in hand with racialised policies and practices designed to ‘clean up the streets’ through revitalisation programmes and plans to displace actually existing inhabitants, which are cast as deviant, criminal, violent and out of place” (Danewid 291).
20As I previously argued, local authorities and national policies have systematically disadvantaged ethnic minorities in London—and in England—through processes of ‘soft’ displacement such as gentrification—that pushed the less well-off communities (thus, factually, ethnic minorities) out of the city centres; or through unjust policing, arguably racist legislation (Form 696, Anti-Social Behaviour Orders...), poor access to education, health, employment and housing. Consequently, the majority of people living in London council estates were—and still are—from ethnic minorities, and Grenfell Tower wasn’t an exception. Grenfell Tower is located in one of London’s wealthiest boroughs, an enclave of poverty in Kensington, and was mostly inhabited by people with an ethnic minority background, thus the victims of the fire were mostly from these communities, whose concerns about the safety of the building had been ignored only to please the wealthier residents of the borough. Thus, the Grenfell fire was considered a ‘local’ tragedy, but it actually shed light on deep rooted violent policies of neoliberal urbanisation that had disadvantaged popular classes and mostly ethnic minorities for decades, and that made this tragedy possible.
21Grenfell’s Aftermath: Government responses
22In a 2017 article about the Grenfell fire, journalist Jonathan Schifferes argues that “a good measure of society should be how it rebuilds after a disaster” (Schifferes 36). It is thus important to analyse the responses of local and national authorities after an entire tower caught on fire in the capital, responses that were largely inadequate in this case, such so that a few days after the disaster, local residents stormed the town hall to demand action, answers and justice (Schifferes).
23In 2017, 3.5 million homes in England were estimated to have serious health or safety risks, and there were serious fire risks in 130 000 homes (Schifferes). Despite the poor safety measures at Grenfell, when the fire broke out, the residents of the tower were advised to stay put in their flats as long as the fire had not affected it. This was standard procedure in case of fire in a high tower, but in this case, the safety measures did not allow to implement such a procedure successfully. A few hours after the fire started at around 4 in the morning, this ‘stay put’ policy changed, and the residents were advised to evacuate the building immediately. The local council’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire was greatly criticised for its neglect of the residents and its attempts to only consider the borough’s wealthy residents. Edward Daffam, of the Grenfell Action Group, argued that “they didn’t give a stuff about us. We were the carcass and they were the vultures. North Kensington was like a goldmine, only they didn’t have to dig for the gold. All they had to do was to marginalise the people who were living here, and that’s what they were doing” (Gentleman). Theresa May was also criticised, as she visited the Grenfell Tower the day after the fire to speak with members of the emergency services but did not meet with the residents or the survivors of the fire (Kuenssberg). The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan characterized the government’s response to the tragedy as ‘utterly shameful’ in a press release where he criticized the lack of solution to such hazards, two years after Grenfell. In 2019, seventeen households that had lived in the Grenfell Tower were still in emergency and temporary accommodation, being ignored and neglected, as well as thousands of households in the entire country still living in homes that had the same unsafe type of cladding. According to Khan, housing regulations were left largely unchanged after the fire.
24After the tragedy, the public opinion, British media and politicians were not the only ones to criticize the government and the underlying causes that made such an event possible. Grime artists, once again, came together to call out the government’s lack of sufficient anticipation and response to the fire. Only a few days after the fire, Stormzy wrote and performed the introduction of Artists for Grenfell’s cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, directed by Simon Cowell (Artists for Grenfell). This song, released for charity purposes (to support the survivors of the fire), reached the top of the UK charts only two days after its release and became the second-fastest-selling single of the year (Charlton). Stormzy claims in his introduction that “I refuse to forget you / I refuse to be silenced / I refuse to neglect you” (Artists for Grenfell), referring to the policies mentioned above that knowingly put aside the interests of the residents of Grenfell Tower. A few weeks later, Stormzy performed at the Glastonbury festival, and used his scene to pay a tribute to the victims of Grenfell and called out the government to demand answers (“#glastonbury2017 Stormzy demands justice for Grenfell Tower”). This event was not only important in the context of the fire, but it also marked a turn for Grime as a mainstream genre, being the first time a Grime artist headlined one of the biggest music festivals in the United Kingdom. It shows the importance of Grime as a culture and the platform gained by its performers, allowing Stormzy’s voice and opinions to be heard by tens of thousands of people thus raising awareness about what happened in underprivileged neighbourhoods. This is an example of artists’ continued involvement in British politics, not via official routes but through what they knew best: music.
- 19 Active since Grime’s early days, Lowkey has been of the most politically active Grime artists to th (...)
25In parallel, a collective of Grime artists was set up to organize a fundraising event for the survivors, and it took the name of #grime4Grenfell. The event was organized by music platforms New Grime Order and Burnout London on June 15th. All proceeds of the Grime set went to local charities supporting the victims of the fire. Local Grime artist Piki Saku and British rapper Akala used live broadcasting to call out the government, providing a “social analysis as to why the fire took place” and questioning “how it was handled by the authorities, while highlighting the community spirit of the area” (Charles 47). Again, Grime artists came together to get involved on a political – and, of course, social – scene, and used their voice and stage to try and get deprived populations justice and reforms. Grime artist Lowkey19 also got involved in the aftermath of the tragedy. He filmed an interview of his friend Cristos, a survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire for him to express himself and account for the tragedy (MalContents). He also publicly stated that “this has to be the death knell of the Theresa May government. Neoliberalism is discredited, austerity is discredited, it doesn’t have to be this way and it is a matter of life or death”. The artist, along with others such as AJ Tracey, thus emphasized the cost of neoliberal policies that affected the lives of poor and racialised communities above all else, and raised the issue of accountability, stating that “we should really look at people going to prison for this, because this is criminal”. He strongly criticized the inadequate responses of the qualified authorities after the disaster regarding rehousing, calling for justice and political mobilisation. Two months after the fire, Lowkey released a song in tribute to the victims of the fire, the “Ghosts of Grenfell” (Lowkey ft. Khalil), showing local residents in the music videos and calling the names of the dead and missing, highlighting the troubling truth that most victims were from ethnic minorities.
26The Grenfell Tower fire was thus a deeper tragedy than “only” the 72 victims—and hundreds of survivors, some of which still struggled years after the fire to find long-term accommodation and justice. It also revealed deep-rooted institutional issues linked to decades of neoliberal policies that left the poorest populations in England, and especially the racialised communities, neglected and poorly represented. Once again, the Grime generation as a whole used the genre’s shift to mainstream—and thus the large platform and audience that came with national and international success—to call out politicians that did nothing to solve these problems.
27In 2015, when Jeremy Corbyn was elected at the head of the Labour Party, the shift to the left of the party and its going back to more traditional labour values marked the end of promoting neoliberal social policies, and led to an exceptional engagement of popular classes to support the labour candidate during the 2017 campaign for the general election. Grime artists developed a role as ‘organic intellectuals’ and took it upon themselves to represent their class to “offer them a means of political intervention” (Charles 45). They spontaneously came together and organized events, public speaking and interviews to voice their opinion about the candidate, and above all to convince popular urban youths to register to vote in order to make their own voices heard. The fact that Grime MCs stood together to support a politician is striking regarding the previous relations popular classes had with political elites. It shows the shift of the Labour Party on the one hand, but it also testifies to the fact that artists realised they had a platform on which to express themselves and influence decisions, and they had a right and credibility to voice their opinions about such matters. The Grime generation reiterated its involvement on the political scene a few weeks after Corbyn’s defeat (with still unexpectedly high results, partly thanks to the engagement of Grime artists and British youths), when the Grenfell Tower caught on fire. Artists took this ‘opportunity’ to voice their concerns and vividly criticize the institutional neglect that had allowed such a disaster to happen. They denounced the neoliberal urbanisation and racialised policies that privileged the wealthiest while deliberately putting in danger the poorest communities of the capital, and of the country. Thus, after developing a genre that was political in itself, without the need of a direct and traditional political involvement, Grime artists still used their voices to take action and try to implement change in their communities, following a long history of African diasporic music as a voice for the oppressed (Gilroy).