The liars laying in to the Notting Hill Carnival are going to have to try again next year. The usual suspects were out in force even earlier than normal to claim the annual British-Caribbean jamboree – celebrating its 60th birthday this year – was a war zone waiting to happen.
If you’ve never been, ignore them and put it in your diary for next August. Saturday is generally the good-natured face-off day between the steel bands, Sunday is a designated family and children’s day and Monday is the main parade day.
Social media was awash with the tired old fibs, suggesting you were taking your life into your own hands if you went out to West London to get involved. Tell that to the people who’d been there, done that, and have posted the fun footage online to prove it.
Carnival’s biggest danger used to be the racists attacking Black and Brown people in the area. Now it is sections of the commentator class clutching their pearls and trying to divide us. They must be seething over their laptops that most sane, sensible people reject them.
It sits only marginally above the UK’s other big festival, Glastonbury. Two million people attended last year’s carnival. There were 528 arrests. Percentage? 0.0264.
And that was a spike from previous years because of an effective, proactive policing strategy which included live facial recognition technology to identify troublemakers and suspects on watchlists. If anything, the tactics to keep people safe at the carnival are actually working.
Creamfields in Daresbury has a history of large groups of gatecrashers trying to overcome their lack of tickets by breaking through the perimeter fencing.
Cheshire Police also deals with remarkable levels of planning by drugs gangs and dealers. This year they dug up massive stashes of ketamine and nitrous oxide canisters that had been buried months in advance to bypass security.
Freedom of Information data reveals at least 24 rapes were reported at Leeds Festival between 2018 and 2024 – with eight rapes or penetration offences reported during the 2024 bank holiday weekend alone.
Have there been serious incidents at Notting Hill Carnival? Yes. Four people were stabbed last year. Down from eight, the year before. All of them were serious incidents, let’s not hide away from that. Our thoughts are with all of the victims.
But the critics rejecting Notting Hill’s annual celebration of cultural unity hate it when solid evidence puts even those numbers into perspective.
They hate it when you look at the detail and not just the professional agitators. They hate it when police officers see the negativity for what it is and positively engage with revellers, singing, dancing and being human.
Last year, officers were actually ordered by London’s Met Police NOT to dance with people at the carnival. Seven years ago they were even threatened with a “dancing ban”.
How on earth are the critics going to worry the life out of potential attendees when law enforcement show the fear-mongering up to be a load of old nonsense?
And yet still the facts remain that Notting Hill is among the safest of the UK’s carnivals. You’ll struggle to find a large-scale outdoor festival anywhere that doesn’t have a minority of troublemakers who want to spoil it for everyone else.
But carnival continues, time and again, to capture the spirit of camaraderie that we need more than ever across the country.
