Radical: Free or Token? Darren McGarvey (2022) The Social Distance Between Us. London: Ebury Press, hardback, 400 pp., ISBN 9781529104080

Abstract

Introduction
Few other recent events encapsulate the gulf between the ruling class and disenfranchised more fully than the Grenfell Fire of 2017. Tantamount to social murder rather than disaster, the litany is now well known: a rentier class fat on public contracts and cost-cutting on basic safety measures, with the full knowledge of a Chelsea and Kensington Council more concerned with generating commercial income from the sale of public assets, and a Prime Minister unwilling or afraid to console survivors. Even the Editorial Board (2017) of the New York Times saw that a British state “infatuated with austerity and deregulation” had “gone too far in shedding its fundamental duties to protect public health and safety”.