I saw a PBS program on the events this song was written about. The song was mentioned in the program. Towers were very cheaply built to house the working poor and get them out of the downtown districts of London. They were criticized as being ugly and soulless and it took no time at all before that atmosphere soaked into the people and the towers degraded. Despite warnings that the towers were unsound, they were not declared unfit for habitation and were not fixed up. Then one morning, the roof gave in on one of them. The roof fell into the top floor which brought that floor down onto the next which in turn took out the one below it like falling dominoes. Everyone in the tower at the time was killed, no survivors. "By the bourgeois clerks who bear no guilt." Even though a tragedy could be predicted, nobody was willing to take responsibility for it, and as always, the workers pay for it.
I saw a PBS program on the events this song was written about. The song was mentioned in the program. Towers were very cheaply built to house the working poor and get them out of the downtown districts of London. They were criticized as being ugly and soulless and it took no time at all before that atmosphere soaked into the people and the towers degraded. Despite warnings that the towers were unsound, they were not declared unfit for habitation and were not fixed up. Then one morning, the roof gave in on one of them. The roof fell into the top floor which brought that floor down onto the next which in turn took out the one below it like falling dominoes. Everyone in the tower at the time was killed, no survivors. "By the bourgeois clerks who bear no guilt." Even though a tragedy could be predicted, nobody was willing to take responsibility for it, and as always, the workers pay for it.