Why council flats occupy a very special place in Londoners' hearts, and in Britain's identity: history, photos, facts, OC and an inside perspective. (This took me fuckin' ages and means a lot to me, give it a look... or at least favourite and forget)

"I woke up this morning and as soon as I opened my eyes... I knew something was up. The sky was wrong... it was too thick, it was dark, it was - it was heavy I guess" - my friend's talking to me as we walk together up the famous Portobello Road, headed to the nearest volunteer station, "Maybe on some level I knew what that weird heavy air meant, because I wasn't shocked when I looked out the window and saw the fire... it looked like hell bruv - hand to God." He laughed sadly, "Hell's when the block burns down eh?"

Wednesday morning, the skies of affluent North Kensington (Central London), were stained an ugly, unwelcome ochre. Where the day before there had stood Grenfell Tower, one of London's most iconic housing estates, there was now just a heaving, billowing pillar of rolling smoke and brittle concrete.

Estimated fatalities are between 20 and 150, but that number - sadly - will rise. It's just a matter of hoping for as small a rise as possible. Speculation about the source and ferocity of the fire abound - but the consensus is that a faulty fridge wire started a little flicker in the insulation. In 2012, the building was, for aesthetic reasons only, re-clad with some ghastly and - as it happens - excessively flammable plasticine,
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The local authorities and the government, including our ever-charming Prime Minister, Theresa May - ignored warnings about the material, and dismissed as unfounded the residents' concerns regarding their single-staircase fire escape.

London is dotted with estates like this: designed almost entirely between 1940 and 1960, "the blocks" are an iconic mainstay of urban skylines from Brighton to Bristol, London to Glasgow. The no-frills brutalism has a strange beauty to it, possibly because of the stark contrast they provide against the rest of London's architecture, and possibly because these blocks mean more to us than houses - more to us even than homes. These blocks - like the NHS - represent the very best of British values: inclusivity, community, work ethic and - of course - the Stiff-Upper-Lipped Bulldog Spirit that always carries us through the tough times (especially the bomb-y, plague-y, fire-y ones).

Here's why:

Ya see, Britain used to have this thing called an "Empire". Ours was a big deal - the biggest, the baddest, the gaudiest, the most unjustly acquired: this empire, even by empirical standards, did NOT fuck around. We were very fond of it... or, at least, the wealthy amongst us were. The rest of us (most of us) were just... well... drunk. The growth of the Empire brought Britain incalculable wealth and dominion - so, naturally we Pimped our London.

Seriously - check it out (Pinboard curated by me): https://uk.pinterest.com/walkerpappin/victorian-london-architecture/

'"Holy fuck - ", she gasped, she was astonished to see she just how easily she could take it, 'it's huuge... oh my god, I want it all' The World smirked smuttily back at the flushing Queen Victoria as it rested its drink on the side-table and tensed its equator 'Well then, Queenie - you can have me. Then if I'm *really* bad - I'll let you watch while Belgium hatefucks me."

Anyway, that's enough Geopolitical FanFic... for now. My point is that the empire was big.... then the first bunch of upstarts started getting antsy on the 4th of june or something in 1775 or 1777 or something like that... but it wasn't until, starting in 1947 with Gandhi's Great Passive Aggression, the empire began to dissolve. THIS IS A GOOD THING. Please don't think the Brits "miss" having an empire - we were wealthy, but it turned us into arrogant, eugenicist monsters. We committed atrocities against millions of people all around the world, we pushed drugs and booze on desperate vassal states, we robbed cultures of their histories, languages and dignities... we were horrid. And we're sorry.

Why's my national guilt relevant to the story of a burning apartment building? I'm glad you asked my dearest buddy/pal/mate/compadre... Because national guilt helped to build that apartment building - and hundreds of thousands more just like it.

See, the 40's weren't *just* about getting dumped by our colonies... they were also about getting dumped *on* by some cunt with a stupid moustache. And, of course, dumping all over him and his terrible paintings and ideologies forevermore. In London - this happened:

By "this" I don't just mean "me posting the only known photo of your dad", I mean the Blitz - ol' Fritz's bestest effort to fuck us up forever. I threw together a pinterest board to show you a little more: https://uk.pinterest.com/walkerpappin/london-blitz/

London was decimated. Huge areas were reduced to rubble, death rained from the sky on a daily basis and terror truly reigned - it's difficult to imagine what our grandparents experienced in those dark days, but we can be quietly grateful and cautiously optimistic we'll never see anything like it again. Let's just say, however, that we - as Brits - see The Blitz as the yardstick by which we measure "scary shit" - that's why assholes with trucks and knives don't phase us, nor even do irishmen with petrol-bombs.

Our Kraut friends ensured that Scaring London requires *at least* 350 heavy German bombers, dropping thousands of tonnes of high explosives on civilian targets every single night for 11 weeks, claiming 32,000 lives (and 82,000 further injuries)... and destroying a third of the capital city's infrastructure. After all that, London stood - to quote a rather excellent gentleman - "Bloody but unbowed"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2243951/The-astonishing-interactive-map-EVERY-bomb-dropped-London-Blitz.html

Every dot there is a bomb. Not a stabbing, not a gunshot, not a grenade - a Massive Twatting German Sprengbombe Cylindrisch 250... each one contained 130 kg (290 lb) of a mixture of amatol and TNT, and later TNT with additives including wax, woodmeal, aluminium powder, naphthalene and ammonium nitrate: enough to fuck up your day.

So, when that bloody war finally finished, The UK found itself at a crossroads. The Fascists were defeated - but it had cost us more than we could possibly have dreamt. Financially speaking, the damage is close to incalculable... but aside from that we lost 383,700 young men and women PLUS centuries of historic architecture and cultural landmarks.

Then... the colonies started to leave. That is to say, they started asking for their independence and we started giving it. Some requests were... stickier... than others (sorry, India), but vassal state by vassal state they started lowering the Union Jack and regaining their human rights to self governance.

A part of that meant that we, over here on this little Island in butthole of the Atlantic, had to be prepared to take in as many former commonwealth citizens as was needed. They were all welcome here - we owed them that much

So we built these. Loads of them. Hundreds of thousands of them. They were built everywhere where a German SC-250 had been kind enough to dig foundations for them: they all followed almost identical blueprints; maximum natural insulation, minimal use of glass... very utilitarian, very simple, very small, very cheap.... but their existence changed everything: they physically forced the wealthy white English to live next to the first generation Jamaican immigrants.

This meant that areas such as Notting Hill - affluent, predominantly white, privileged and ethnically/culturally European - suddenly found themselves with Jamaican and East African communities in Labroke Grove to the north and Bayswater to the East... Blocks, like Grenfell Tower or the more famous Trellick Tower, filled up with hardworking, patriotic immigrants who brought with them their foods, their music, their culture, their clothing and their attitudes. And what we got was this:

That's a shot from Notting Hill Carnival - the largest street party in the world outside of Carnival in Rio. Every year it takes over half of West London, and the Caribbean, African and Asian people of London (especially the Jamaicans) party with us whiteys and show us how to season the fuck out of our chicken. Mobiles stages roam the streets on the back of trucks, ganja is - for the weekend - decriminalised, the police use it as an opportunity to interact with their communities... Yeah, some people get stabbed, and you probably will hear a drunk white dude get carried away and drop the N-Bomb without thinking - but Carnival is the perfect illustration of what Blocks like Grenfell have done for the UK.

They're more than just big ugly towers: they're enclaves of authenticity in a sea of homogeny and gentrification. They stick out like sore thumbs... the proudest sore thumbs on Earth: The Block is a symbol of British cohesion and community, of the sharing of cultures and ideas, of cooperation in times of crisis and solidarity in times of fear. The first council house was built in 1900 - and since then its inhabitants have lived stacked neatly on top of one another through the Blitz, through The Troubles, through the "war on terror" - these big ugly Copy/Pasted heaps of concrete are everything that's right about Britain.

They're the stiff upper lips that still know how to smile.

That's why they're so important to us - so ingrained in our culture. We love these things - so for as long as I live, I'll never feel quite so sad as when I crested Portobello and saw the smoke on the horizon... nor as proud as when I arrived at the town hall to help organise donations to help the families affected by the blaze... this fire will leave a scar on the face of London, but it'll heal and it'll heal fast - because that's what we do here.

God fuckin' bless London, and thank you for reading if you've read this far

Trellick Tower - Ladbroke Grove, London
Easily London's most iconic block.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nrVrWkq_dc