- C'mon, come here.
Stay close or you'll go back on your lead.
(piano clinking tunelessly)
Tony, get over here.
Come on, let's go and get some black bags, come on.
(piano clinking tunelessly)
There's a sense of if you needed something,
or you were in trouble in any way,
there's a lot more people willing to help people than,
you know, just to go that extra bit, than there was before.
It was just because they never mixed.
- It needs a serious amount of tender, loving care
to bring it back up to scratch.
- I don't care whether somebody's got
three million pound or three pound, it don't bother me.
Everyone is the same, no matter who you are.
Livingstone, I don't want these sofas pulled out.
I don't want these sofas pulled back out.
There's a hell of a lot of different working class people
in these flats: teachers, nurses,
social workers, road sweepers, you know.
The way it was put in the media and everything else
that it was subsidised housing, mainly unemployed
and everything else. It ain't that sort of area.
(footsteps)
(piano)
Apparently when these tower blocks were built,
they were built for a 20-year lifespan.
This is 50 years old now, they do need work done on them.
I mean, they need new lifts,
the plumbing isn't the greatest.
I think there's debris in the pipework and everything else
that means it blocks up slowly.
It's the same as any other place, you make it the way it is.
It's your home.
(straining strings music)
- I was quite lucky when it happened.
I kept waking up during the night
but I didn't actually get up.
It was only when I got up about half past six
that I went to the kitchen and my kitchen window was open,
so I obviously heard a lot more noise,
and I saw the helicopter already.
And I look out, and I scream.
So, most mornings when I get up and I go to the kitchen,
that's my first thought again.
- If you look sideways there, you'll see it.
I think it started just after one.
And they phone me up, and of course I came in here
and I look, oh my God.
It was like a box of matches going up together, you know.
The evening before Grenfell in June,
I looked out of the window at sunset time
and that is 24 hours later, from my kitchen window again.
- When you put gas pipes through the staircase
in a tower block, you know, you should be shot for that.
That is the point, you what I mean?
- There's people that you meet and you talk to
and you didn't realise they came out of Grenfell.
You just know I'm from around the area, so.
I mean, I live in Whitstable where I guess
there's people that don't know where I live,
you know, they just see me walking the dog.
I knew quite a few families in there.
I know some that got out and I know some that didn't.
- This is Dixon House, that's Whitstable House over there,
that's Markland House, and that's Frinstead House.
That is always looming over us.
We're less than 200 metres from the tower.
We didn't just see it, we heard it,
we felt it, we smelled it, you know,
and it's just, everybody's been affected.
It's basically a tomb in the sky.
And that's what I call dystopia,
because that kind of thing doesn't happen.
Not in 21st century in England.
In London.
In the Borough of Kensington, you know.
That tower was there for 40 years, nothing happened to it.
As soon as they got their hands on it,
to make it look nice for their friends,
that happened.
(straining strings music)
- [Newscaster] Peaky, hello, I gather you witnessed
much of what happened last night.
- These fires have never happened.
I've lived here my entire life.
My mom's lived here a very long time,
and these kind of things have never,
ever happened in this area, like I'm not really fucking
with the government right now--
- [Newscaster] Hey, I'm gonna apologise for the language.
I'm gonna apologise for the language.
- Just everyone wants to tell me their Grenfell experience,
because they know my face due to that,
so they might have thought that I'm the guy
to talk to or something, and then I'm just absorbing
everyone's experience of it and then I'm just thinking
about it more, and more, and more, and more, and more.
It's just not healthy.
Obviously now, there's a massive patch
that you've gotta try not to look at.
I wouldn't call myself a victim, just because I know--
Like, how can I do it?
I see this every day that I can't call myself
a victim in it, though.
I can't say I'm probably not affected,
but I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm a victim in it.
(straining strings music)
(train whirring)
- I was born here.
I was born across the road in a place called
Aldermaston Street, but because of Westway
the houses were pulled down and we moved into Dixon House.
I moved there with my parents and then I was
eighteen when I got the flat here.
If I had the choice, I would sell and buy a house,
if it wasn't for the fact that I'm looking after my parents.
Basically, they helped me when I was a single parent,
so it's just payback time.
(traffic whirring)
- Before they put all this up here,
this was all houses and shops, all along here.
- They have agreed to re-house,
they've agreed to acquire the houses
and re-house the people.
We were told last Thursday that it might take
as long as 18 months, and this of course, is not acceptable.
- [Joe's Father] We were on the flyover protesting
about the houses coming down.
There was a big crowd of us that day.
- [Interviewer] What's it been like, living here?
- Well, it has frankly been Hell.
(door creaks)
(lock clicks)
They're not bad flats on the inside,
when you come in, you know.
That's Joe when he was young. Yeah, very young.
He was only a baby then.
He was an altar boy.
(straining strings music)
(door clanks and creaks open)
- I was quite scared when I first came, I have to say.
Especially when I looked down the window.
I thought, "Oh, my God. I'm all the way up here."
I come from the seaside, so for me the thing
that relaxes me is more being at sea level.
Sometimes you come in the lift, and someone new comes,
say, "Oh, where are you going?"
And you tell them, "To 19th Floor."
"Oh, you go all the way there."
When I first came to my balcony
and my daughter was very young,
and my balcony was up to here,
so I put the netting up to make it safe.
I was quite worried that she would fall over.
I remember hearing something about a young boy that,
yeah, he had basically falling out of the window.
It was quite sad, really.
These blocks, they need a lot of work,
but to regenerate, to make this look better,
they're gonna have to spend a lot of money, you know.
I know that because they haven't done anything for years.
You know, if you don't look after something
on a yearly basis, obviously you leave it for 20 years,
for 30 years, then it's going to be very expensive,
whatever you want to do to it.
I can see that there's things in here.
They will have to be fixed, this is all loose already.
(traffic whirring)
- I was lucky to get a ground floor flat, I was very lucky.
It's light, you hardly hear your neighbours.
It's spacey, they're built to a decent standard.
The problem is, they let it go.
I mean, this is 20 years, what they've been doing
to these buildings, it's criminal, basically.
It's a shame that they let it go like that,
so we have to live in a slum.
That's why I do that work around here to remind people,
you know, there's more to it than what they offer us,
we have to make the best of what we got.
(door creaks)
(birds chirping)
- It's like an oasis of calm.
Even the air changes, the smell changes, everything.
All you can hear is the wind in the trees and the birds.
We're sort of in a limbo at the moment.
In nature, regeneration is rebirth and renewal of something
that's died, or damaged, or something like that.
But if something is alive and very much growing,
how can you justify killing it in order to regenerate it?
That's not regeneration, that's degeneration.
- They did regeneration last year to that building
that they're talking about doing to all of these buildings,
they did it to that building only,
ten million pounds they're talking about,
and put these shoddy plastic things on there
that set up alight because they want
more reasons to knock these blocks down.
I feel like, in these time, such uncertain times,
everyone's just lost.
We're in a world where people look for an opinion first,
they don't look for information to educate themselves first.
This whole madness happened, and then my interview
with the BBC went viral.
I got offered a couple other interviews
and it was a lot of pressure.
People complain about the serious issues,
like elevators being broken, windows being smashed.
A window killed a 10 year old child in that building.
A 10 year old child fell to his death
from the 18th Floor of that building,
and it didn't even touch the news, they just covered it up
and they didn't even fix the windows.
- The windows have got catches on them
that you can release them, so they'll swing round.
But after time, them catches get broke.
Now I don't know whether the catches were broke,
or what happened, but he was looking out of his window
and apparently shouted to one of his friends,
and the next thing, he fell down.
I was out with my son and we were just coming
round the corner when it happened.
We actually turned the corner as he hit the ground.
Which is something you won't forget.
The same as Grenfell, you won't forget it,
but I think it was a failing, again, from the Council.
They don't come round and check the windows,
or anything else, so it could happen again.
To see a body shaking, I think it took about an hour.
To be truthful, I was the one that had to go
and get buckets of water and bleach
because it was in front of our doorway,
and they didn't do anything about the blood.
I was there for about three hours bleaching
that pavement afterwards, just so that
you didn't have to walk through it.
You woulda thought they would have sent a cleaner round,
you know what I mean, or something, but--
That was a Saturday afternoon,
when all the kids were playing down there.
I've had rows where I got stabbed here before,
but you still get over it, I was still going
back to work the next day, so you know.
It's one of these areas, you gotta stand your ground.
If you don't stand your ground people will walk over you.
You stand your ground, they'll respect you
and they'll leave you alone.
I'd rather stand my ground and lose,
than not stand my ground at all, let's put it that way.
(shutter clanking)
It was bankrupt when we took it.
It was, yeah.
- Debts galore.
Robbed Peter to pay Paul this week.
- Well they did, they came and took the furniture away,
the bailiffs, yeah.
- Twice.
Yeah, 'twas bad.
- If somebody hadn't taken over, then it would be knocked
down and you'd never get another place round here like it.
We just took the gamble, paid the debts off,
and carried on running it.
It used to be all white, and you'd get rude messages
written on there.
So we paid for a graffiti artist to come in and do it.
He's put every nationality in there, you see.
(crowd singing "Happy Birthday")
The Maxilla represents the community.
Colour, religion, or anything else doesn't come into it.
It's for everybody.
It's not run as a business to make a profit,
it's run so that I'll break even,
but that everybody can afford the place.
People see it as somewhere where they can hold a party,
where they can hold a meeting.
And, not being funny, not be ripped off either.
'Cause it's so expensive in this area.
It's the only place the community have got left.
(slow strings and piano)
(door creaks)
- It's a hundred days since the Grenfell fire,
so I just saw people down there
so I'm just gonna go down and see.
(door clangs)
(spokes click)
- [Lina] Basketball?
- Yeah.
- [Lina] How long you play for?
- From about six til ten.
- [Lina] Wow.
- [Young Man] So, quite a lot, yeah.
But I've been playing it all my life, really.
- Yeah I know, I've seen you all the time with that ball.
- Since I was little-- - I know.
- Well, maybe a different ball than that.
(Lina laughs)
Perhaps you'll be playing for NBA one day.
- It's really good in here, I've never had
any problems with our neighbours.
You know, you get to talk to most people.
I mean, some people, they don't speak much English,
so it can be a bit difficult.
But everybody kind of says hello.
(echoing piano chords)
I don't think, you know, I'm suffering from trauma, as such.
But it's in my mind.
Everyday I see in there, until it goes.
And even when it goes, it's going to be in there.
(piano music)
After what happened in Grenfell,
I think the community has come together even more now.
We are working class, but doesn't mean that we are poor.
(bittersweet piano music)