Nicholas Burton: ‘I only want to get to the truth about the Grenfell Tower fire’

Nicholas Burton, 52, is a survivor of the Grenfell Tower fire. He and his wife, Pily, were rescued from their 19th-floor flat on 14 June 2017, but she never really recovered and, following a stroke seven months later, became the last of 72 people to die as a result of the disaster.

“I’ll fight with everything I’ve got” to get justice for the Grenfell victims, says Burton in a documentary film, Push, about the global housing crisis, released this week in the UK. In it, he talks about being proud to have grown up in North Kensington among a community of all faiths and colours. “But as it became trendy, wealthy people bought up properties as a fantastic investment and the area changed,” he says.

Burton is one of the people around the world who Leilani Farha, the United Nations special rapporteur on housing, meets in the film, as she grapples with the commodification of housing. Grenfell features because, as Farha says, it represents “the displacement of marginalised communities”. The film’s Swedish director, Fredrik Gertten, wanted to highlight this conflict between people and profit, and the film’s title refers to residents pushed out of neighbourhoods to make way for luxury developments. It is a phenomenon that Farha witnesses in cities across the world from Harlem to Seoul, Toronto to Chile, Berlin to Barcelona, and Stockholm to London.

Speaking ahead of Push’s UK release, Burton talks of life in Grenfell. “I was aware we were being marginalised. The upkeep of the estate was terrible, they were running down all the services,” he says. “Lots of us knew each other in the tower because we’d congregate to help people up the stairs with their shopping as the lifts were mainly broken.” In contrast, he says the council wanted to knock down the Lancaster West estate and replace it with big mansions and other high-end properties. Farha’s travels in the film are mirrored by Burton’s own nine-month journey to 23 countries last year while the Grenfell inquiry took a break after the end of phase one. “I needed to get away for my own mental health,” he says. “And I wanted to gain an awareness of the global aspect of Grenfell. A “Grenfell Forever in Our Hearts” banner accompanied Burton on his travels. In New York, he unfurled it outside the offices of Arconic, the cladding manufacturer whose panels the first phase of the Grenfell inquiry established were the main cause of the fire’s spread. Not surprisingly, security quickly moved him on.

Related: Push review – a whirlwind tour of rocketing rents and personal tragedy

Wherever he went, he’d find the nearest fire station and ask if he could take a photo. Then he’d tell them he was caught up in a fire in central London in 2017. And in every single place, even, to his surprise, Addis Ababa and Ho Chi Minh city, they had heard of the Grenfell disaster.

“I just felt I needed to ask them about tower blocks, what they’d seen about Grenfell, and if they’d had training or conversations about tower-block fires,” he explains. “They all had.”

In New Zealand, he was interviewed about Grenfell on breakfast TV. In the US, he spoke to some housing advocacy groups as a Grenfell survivor and went on a march in Inglewood, Los Angeles, where residents had been given 60 days’ notice to get out of their homes. Like other Grenfell survivors, Burton had been campaigning with tenants in tower blocks in Salford, Plymouth and Portsmouth whose safety concerns were being ignored.

The second phase of the inquiry is due to start next week, after delays while the new attorney general, Suella Braverman, decided whether witnesses would be protected from incriminating themselves while giving evidence. It will examine the lead-up to the disaster, and Burton, who owned his flat in Grenfell for 33 years, believes it “is going to be more explosive”. “There are so many documents showing failings, after failings, after failings, and the arrogance of professionals and what they thought about our community.” The leaseholders’ association, of which he was a member, has evidence that shows it repeatedly raised safety concerns with the tenant management organisation, royal borough of Kensington & Chelsea, and others, over seven years. “Trying to find out any information was very difficult,” says Burton.

For him, justice is not about sending people to prison. “I don’t think you can point the finger at one individual,” he says. “I only want to get to the truth. I want people to be able to put up their hands and say we failed and this is why and this is how we can learn from this. But if they hide and we’re not going to get answers, the whole inquiry has been a waste of time.”

Related: Grenfell Tower public inquiry delayed due to witnesses' demands

A former hospital catering manager, Burton had given up work months before the fire to care full-time for his wife, 72, who had dementia. He is still traumatised by the fire and subsequent events. Initially, he was put up on the 14th floor of the Holiday Inn, which he left after having a panic attack. Burton finally received enough compensation from the council to buy a flat 10 minutes’ walk from Grenfell. “They didn’t make it easy, but we stood our ground,” he says of the many meetings he had with the council.

He suffers from insomnia, has had heart surgery, and still attends weekly NHS counselling sessions provided for survivors and the community.

Burton was a founding member of Grenfell United, the organisation set up to get justice for survivors and families (although he’s no longer on the committee), and is still active in the community. He recently had input into discussions for a fitting memorial for the disaster and says he has learned so much about battling for residents’ rights that he would like to use the experience to help more people.

The first mission of Grenfell United –“If you stay dignified, no one can touch you” – still holds true, he says. “If we can get to the truth, we can put in place precautions to make people safe.”

• Push is released on 28 February. Nicholas Burton is speaking on a Q&A panel with Leilani Farha following a special Guardian screening in central London on 1 March

Curriculum vitae

Age: 52.

Family: Widower.

Lives: North Kensington, London.

Education: Holland Park comprehensive, London.

Career: 2016-17: full-time carer for his wife with dementia; 2015-16: catering manager, BMI; 2012-15: catering manager, Charing Cross hospital, Fulham, London; 2007-12: patient catering manager, St Mary’s hospital, Paddington, London; 2005-07: hotel services manager, St Mary’s ; 1986-2004: worked in the wine trade, including manager for various retailers, such as Oddbins and Threshers.

Public life: Involved in Grenfell United.

Interests: Travel.