The Notting Hill Criminal Amnesty 

If you didn’t know better, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Notting Hill Carnival was a scene from a Richard Curtis film where Hugh Grant rubs shoulders with Hollywood luminaries, and it’s all a bit twee. The reality of what played out on London’s most affluent streets last weekend (as it does every year), is quite different. Begun in 1966 as an homage to the Caribbean culture that Britain imported during the Windrush years, the carnival welcomes in excess of one million visitors, and is considered the largest street event in Europe. It is also a feather in the cap of those who promote London as a global hub of successful integration. 

Chief among them, unsurprisingly, is Mayor Sadiq Khan, who boasts “Notting Hill Carnival has turned a community-led celebration of London’s Caribbean history and culture into one of the world’s biggest and best street festivals. It’s part of the fabric of our city.” That may well be true, but whatever vibrant diversity the festival brings to the capital, it’s unquestionably one the locals prefer to avoid. Indeed, nine out of ten residents of Kensington and Chelsea flee during the three-day extravaganza. Elderly residents are given a free trip to the seaside to escape the ‘hustle and bustle’ of the event.  

While such indifference to cultural diversity could be (and no doubt is) dismissed as racism on the part of the well-heeled metropolitans who vacate the area, the identical response of businesses is a little harder to overlook. Business is business after all, and the tendency to look a pound note in the mouth is a rare one, particularly during the cost of living crisis. Nonetheless, this year’s carnival, much like the last one, bears witness to countless businesses boarded up as a prophylactic measure against the million potential customers they’d rather not see darken their doors. The companies who provide such security services have even reported a doubling in the demand for their services over the past decade. What could explain such commercial irrationality?  

Carnival of crime

Well, far from a colourful festival of culture, a brief exploration of social media might lead you to the conclusion that the Notting Hill Carnival is more a celebration of degeneracy. Businesses and residents try to spare themselves the disorder, violence, wanton urination, and defecation in front gardens, licentious sexual displays, criminal damage, and general debauchery which appears par for the course.  

Where are the police? They are around, certainly. In fact, over a third of the MET Police’s entire constabulary attended this year’s event (12,500 officers), such an enormous number that the MET actually took to Twitter to instruct general members of the public not to call 999 over the bank holiday: 

The carnival’s history is deeply rooted in riots and conflict with the police. While the force has been given extra powers to implement stop and search, it’s clear that attending officers are loathe to implement them. It’s a sentence you will almost never hear me utter, but in this instance your heart goes out to the Bobbies and Bobbettes on the beat; do their job or turn a blind eye, they’re damned whatever they do. This sentiment is clearly widespread amongst the force; ex-Scotland Yard Chief Roy Ramm confirmed that officers dread attending the celebrations.

One obvious reason is that the police are so hopelessly outnumbered. Here, for instance, is one of the milder sex acts taking place, which, were the roles reversed would be considered sexual assault: 

While here, the police are being openly provoked: 

Naturally, this year’s criminal tally is still being counted, but the results in thus far are: 308 arrests, 75 assaults on police (including kicking, punching, spitting, biting, head-butting, urinating on, and sexual assaults). This is alongside the usual drug, theft, and assault free-for-all, topped off by 8 stabbings, one of which is critical.  

The expressed indifference to the crime from those in authority is shocking. “Most people had a fantastic time at Notting Hill carnival,” says Met police chief, Sir Mark Rowley, which is a bit like saying most attendees of Ariana Grande’s Manchester concert came away with the same number of limbs they went in with. Sadiq Khan meanwhile has not uttered a word about the event’s concomitant violence, which is surprising when you consider his zero-tolerance attitude to ‘toxic masculinity,’ ‘transphobia,’ and ‘toxic air.’ 

Beyond reproach

The issue at the heart of the Notting Hill Carnival is that any criticism of the festival (no matter how grounded in observable fact) is considered a direct attack on the black population itself, rather than legitimate concerns about safety. ‘Diversity’ is now the grievance-mongers’ favoured code word for non-white, ergo beyond reproach, and has been used mercilessly to quash any meaningful dissent of the event’s suitability. Take, for instance, London mayoral candidate Susan Hall’s eminently reasonable observation that the event should be moved to an alternative venue, such as Hyde Park to facilitate policing, and that there are “problems with crime” in the black community (an observation made frequently by the community itself). Many left-wing politicians were frothing at the mouth, but it was David Lammy whose bingo card first screamed “racist!”:

In London, we’re proud of our diversity and it’s something we celebrate and see as a strength, not a weakness. London has been shaped in many ways by black and Caribbean culture and heritage, and there is no greater celebration of this than Notting Hill carnival, which is famous around the world.

For someone running to be mayor of London to express these offensive views about Notting Hill carnival and London’s black communities is astonishing. But it’s just another example of how the Tory candidate is a hard-right politician who is out of touch, does not share London’s values.

It’s also deeply worrying that someone running to be mayor of a city as diverse as London has spoken out so aggressively against those campaigning for greater racial justice. Her views make her totally unfit to be mayor.

Clearly Lammy would prefer to score a cheap political point, rather than reflect that the guarantee of multiple attempted murders might not be the best advert for a ‘carnival.’ 

One has to ask, how much crime would it take to be too much? Apologists for the carnival invariably point to the Glastonbury Festival’s similar arrest numbers, but this is a fatuous generalisation. For a start, Glastonbury arrests are almost entirely drug related. There are no stabbings or murders. A tenth of the police presence is required, most of which the organisers pay for themselves, and as far as I am aware, there are no signs that farmers board up their land to protect themselves from hippie revellers.  

The reality of the Notting Hill Carnival is that it is a criminal amnesty in all but name. One illustration of this is the tendency of young men to run around wielding zombie knives in broad daylight, without the slightest concern of capture. Certainly, it gives them a better stab at getting on the front pages of the broadsheets and making viral social media posts, but it does suggest that the law is anything but heavy-handed during the carnival: 

Another sign of the tacit acceptance of criminal activity is the fact that the zombie knives always seem to feature most heavily on the final day—a binge reaction to the impending reinstallation of the rule of law.  

Every year, there are calls to relocate the carnival, but the harsh reality of the matter is that it should be disbanded entirely. If not that, it should be marketed for what it truly is: a criminal free-for-all that law-abiding citizens should be protected from. 

So by all means move the carnival to Hyde Park, but instigate a few changes: board the park up, rather than residences; replace the police with zombie knife retailers, blow the whistle, and let them get stuck into each other for three days. Not only would the taxpayer save a fortune on policing and future benefits payments, but perhaps we could televise the vibrant diversity and market it as a new sport in which London would almost certainly reign supreme.