Every time a tragedy occurs, you can rely on a wave of commentators chiding any attempt to “politicize” the situation. With today’s Grenfell Tower fire in West London, those voices were prominent immediately. And no wonder: the atrocity was explicitly political.

In the richest borough of one of the wealthiest countries in the world, people in social housing, many on low incomes, were killed and injured in a fire that could have been prevented or contained. Rather than diverting blame from those responsible, or treating it as an act of nature, our responsibility is to ask why it occurred.

Time and again, residents reported serious concerns about the safety of the building to the management organization, the local council, and the member of parliament (recently unseated in the general election). They were met with silence, and several told me on the scene they were convinced it was because they were poor, living in a rich borough that was determined to socially cleanse the area as part of a gentrifying project.