FIVE days on and we already know what Grenfell Tower means for us as a nation. We feel it every time we look at photographs of the inferno, or at pictures of the building's blackened husk. We are stirred when we learn that, while Grenfell is located in one of London's wealthiest and least affordable boroughs, the immediate locale is within the most deprived 10 per cent of society. We know that whatever comes of the excruciating inquiry that is set to follow, this horror will, always and forever, speak strongly of inequality.

The Grenfell fire became a symbol of this almost from the moment it first reached our television screens and we saw those flames devouring a building that we instantly knew housed the less wealthy of London. The survivors who emerged from the building were often newly arrived immigrants or established working-class, as were those who are now dead or missing: a Syrian refugee, young Italian architecture graduates, a 65-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s, a five-year-old who, as his family attempted to escape, slipped a neighbour’s grasp and was lost in the thick, black smoke.

There are events in the world that become politicised. Different sides try to shape and interpret them to score their own points. But Grenfell is already political in that it shows us the results of our politics. It is one of those scars that tells of what lies beneath. We react to it, with not just horror and empathy, but also anger, because we know it reveals some truth.

We all want someone to blame. And of course, now is not the time, as allegations fly, for pointing the finger at any individual or institution. But it’s hard not to look at the many factors that may or may not have exacerbated the fire, and turned a smaller tragedy into the most devastating fire in a generation, or to see, at every turn, evidence of the way that the poor are ignored and dismissed, and the rich, in their arrogance, ignore their duties to protect their fellow citizens, in favour of cost-cutting, profit, or the politics of deregulation.

Even if it emerges that, as some reports suggest, the cladding on the exterior of the building was to blame, the question remains who on the chain that led to its fitting is culpable. Is it the millionaire subcontractor, the millionaire contractor, the manufacturer of the panels, the tenant management organisation (TMO) that was the landlord, or the Government which has failed, following the inquest to a similar fire at Lakanal House, to produce a review of building regulations?

And if the lack of sprinklers was, as many claim, also a factor – who do we blame then? The council? The housing minister who in 2014 rejected calls to force construction companies to fit sprinklers, on the grounds that it would be contrary to deregulation principles and might discourage house-building?

Particularly chilling over the past few days has been to read the posts by the Grenfell Action Group, which warned long before of the dangers of fire, and predicted that “only a catastrophic event” would “bring an end to the dangerous living conditions”. Residents asked for an investigation 18 months beforehand but no-one listened. As Tanya Gold wrote in the New Statesman: “They got the inquiry yesterday, having paid in lives.”

In a way none of these issues is any surprise. We know that the poor, all too often, are not listened to. We know that tenants’ voices go unheard. We know that under austerity, corners have had to be cut. Some, of course, do not want to see Grenfell politicised. They are the wealthy who do not like to think their comfort could possibly be founded on the suffering of others, those in love with recent policies of deregulation, those who see only, in Grenfell, another disaster – as if this were just some freak wave to hit the shore, not something in which there were human mistakes and societal negligence.

Grenfell is a wake-up call. It is an incitement to change, to finally tackle the inequality that can no longer be ignored. When mistakes are made, most frequently it’s the poor that suffer. When there is neglect, it’s not the rich who feel the pain – indeed, all too often they feel the profit.

Some may go to prison for this. Certainly that’s what many are calling for. But the desire to see individuals punished for this awful tragedy shows how often we still miss the point. This is not a crime of particular individuals, but of our flawed society. As such it demands a furious call for wider change. A howl of anger. Not just on behalf of the residents of Grenfell, but for an entire section of society to be heard.

Enough of the political rhetoric. Enough of the gestural talk about listening to the voiceless, or embracing the left-behind. Grenfell has caused a shudder through British society – and that, at least, cannot go unheard.