50 years after Ronan Point, we still don't seem to care about the people who live in tower blocks

Compared to the immolated husk of Grenfell Tower that looms over West London, a reminder, to both ends of the socio-economic spectrum, of the horror that occurred within, the damage to Ronan Point appeared relatively minor.

50 years ago in May 1968, a small gas explosion in the kitchen on the eighteenth floor of a Canning Town tower block set off a ripple of destruction, which tore down the corner of the building, taking four lives. An inquiry into the disaster concluded that the fireball—created by a leaky brass nut—“was not of exceptional violence,” but that it blew through a load-bearing wall, precipitating the collapse of several floors of the building. “The behaviour of the building following the initial structural damage caused by the explosion was inherent in its design... it was not the result of any fault in workmanship,” concluded the report.

It was proven by subsequent investigations that the overall design and execution of Ronan Point was, in fact, substandard. Issues were found with the fire doors, brackets, windows, and concrete, all of which led to what ought to have been a minor incident turning

into a national tragedy. Architects and lobby groups carried the torch for decades, until, in 1986, the supposedly strengthened reincarnation of Ronan Point was demolished for good.

The repercussions of the Ronan Point disaster are still being felt acutely. Debates about the housing crisis rage on both sides of the political divide, and though the actual questions and issues are quite diverse, one thing is fairly universally accepted: production of social and affordable housing has slowed to the point where the gulf between the haves and have-nots can only widen.

More recently, in the wake of Grenfell, we have experienced a recurrence of the tower block scepticism that engulfed the country in the late 60s, with legitimate concerns about safety and quality mingled with a paranoia that has always accompanied the idea of living our lives stacked upwards, rather than sideways. It’s a fear reinforced by dystopian visions of future urban slums (though, in reality, slums are associated with sprawl) that plays on the claustrophobic fears of people who grew up in the classic two-bed suburbia that bubbles out from city to town to country.

In the housing crisis of the 1940s and 50s, caused by damage sustained during the war, the most practical solution was apartment living. One in three British homes had been damaged during the war, with more than 250,000 left totally uninhabitable, so in 1945 the caretaker government estimated that 750,000 homes would be needed to provide for the public and the boomer lifestyle. Radical solutions were required.

Even Patrick Abercrombie, whose eponymous plan drove the imaginative restructuring of metropolitanism in the post-war period, was amenable to the prospect, travelling to Sweden with a Ministry of Housing delegation. They were thoroughly seduced by Scandinavian style apartment living, whilst European architectural aesthetics—led by Le Corbusier’s concrete and the ‘streets in the sky’ mentality—were coalescing to support tower block construction.

And yet, after Ronan Point, the focus turned away from apartment living. It took the best part of 20 years to reveal the depth of the inadequacies in the construction of the blocks on the Freemasons Estate and plattenbau—a concrete prefab that could have revolutionised housing construction in Britain, as it did in East Germany—buildings in general. Across the country in the late-80s, other blocks with similar designs were pulled down, our building ambitions becoming ever more earthbound. All the Canning Town blocks constructed in the same style, comprising some 770 flats, were demolished along with Ronan Point.

Today, at the place where Ronan Point stood between Butchers Road and Freemasons Road, you’ll find rows of identikit Barratt housing. This sort of low-density, aspirational housing was a la mode in the late-80s, with Margaret Thatcher famously purchasing a Barratt new-build in Dulwich in 1986, the same year that Ronan Point was cleared for middle-class sprawl. Speculation was rife that Thatcher was doing her chum, Sir Lawrie Barratt, a favour by driving up the social value of his homes, but, either way, it fitted with her focus on private, toytown building; bringing Grantham to the East End. There is no tribute there to Ronan Point, no reminder of what stood on that land or how it shaped the landscape of the capital. Just rows and rows of dated housing that now pass hands for £300,000.

According to John Knapton, a structural engineer at Newcastle University, the regulations on fire safety brought in in 1971 as a direct response to Ronan Point saved Grenfell Tower from collapsing. “Had Ronan Point not happened, Grenfell Tower would have collapsed by now,” he said.

But whilst regulation was taking a step forward, building was also taking a step back. Just as with Ronan Point, the tragedy of Grenfell Tower was codified into the shoddy, cost cutting design and workmanship of the building.

The balance to be struck is always between ensuring the safety of tower block residents and not closing the door to innovations that could ease the pressure on our housing system. The movement against tower blocks begins in our collective imagination, our fear that the ultimate trajectory of humanity is to live like sardines in a tin.

Disasters like Ronan Point and Grenfell Tower reinforce that, but rather than turn against towers, we should interrogate why these innovations in affordable housing are pushed into dangerous cheapness. There is no such anxiety on the top floors of The Shard, The Gherkin, or the new 52-storey skyscraper springing up at the foot of Blackfriars bridge, which is being pushed as ‘The Vase’ but looks more like ‘The Coffin’ to me.

Whilst bankers and lawyers and accountants get top-of-the-line structural engineering, the poor get cheap. The fault is not with tower block living—it was, and remains, an ambitious solution to one of the great problems of our time—but with those people who, unaffected themselves, weaponise tragedy for political aims.