n a society shaped by profound inequality, there is a hierarchy of human life. An invisible matrix of social class, nationality and ethnicity determines how much individual lives are worth in Britain. When 72 people died in Grenfell Tower in 2017, the British intellectual and musician Akala declared: “People died because they were poor.” Residents repeatedly warned that the tower, which was covered in cheap, flammable cladding, was unsafe. Those residents were not only disproportionately working class, but also Black and brown; many hailed hailed from other countries. If they had been wealthy, white penthouse-dwellers, their pleas for help might not have been ignored until the moment their homes were ablaze. Even after the deadliest structural fire on British soil in three decades, solemn promises to rehouse survivors went unmet. Time and again, it seems politically permissible to ignore society’s most disfranchised people. Millions of people still languish in homes that are effectively death traps wrapped in dangerous cladding. Though Labour is right to declare this “extraordinary”, these grim facts are unsurprising. According to the party, up to 11 million people live in such potentially unsafe properties, some of whom have been forced to declare bankruptcy after receiving huge bills for remedial works and fire patrols. An Open Democracy investigation revealed that the government has even been accused of an attempted cover-up; the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government reportedly told local authorities that it was “appropriate” to block freedom of information requests about high-rise buildings covered in potentially dangerous aluminium cladding. These are the sharp edges of a much broader housing crisis. Back in 2019, about 3.6 million people lived in overcrowded housing. This predictably affects those on low incomes the most, and often has a severe impact on family relationships and physical and mental health. Children in overcrowded housing are far more likely to contract meningitis and respiratory illness, while research shows that such housing has provided fertile territory for the spread of Covid-19. There are other housing problems which mostly hammer the poor, too, such as dampness, another public health menace. Adults in overcrowded housing are also significantly more likely to suffer from psychological distress, while poor, insecure housing has been linked to clinical depression. The Grenfell disaster should have provoked a national debate about Britain’s housing crisis. That it did not is indicative of a macabre hierarchy that everyone knows exists. After all, those most likely to suffer the consequences of Britain’s social crises are the poor and people of colour. They lack an organised voice in society, and people from such backgrounds are woefully underrepresented in both media circles and in parliament, while voter turnout is lower among society’s poorest. Which brings us back to cladding. If white, affluent middle-class professionals had lived in the flats that went up in flames, urgent action would have been taken. But Grenfell was not a catalyst for drastic and belated change because its victims were condemned to the bottom of Britain’s hierarchy of human worth. And until a society that assigns different amounts of worth to human life is overcome, such horrors risk only being repeated.