Every year, without fail, the Metropolitan Police Service spends millions of taxpayer pounds policing an event at which people are stabbed, attacked, and sexually assaulted. Drug-taking runs rampant, and many local businesses board up their shopfronts in order to avoid looting. Stories of residents fleeing the area during the Carnival period are ten-a-penny.

The cold, hard data backs up these distressing anecdotes. Between 2017 and 2023, the Met Police recorded 47 stabbings at Notting Hill Carnival, an average of 9 a year. In 2023 alone, the Met Police spent £11.7 million in taxpayer cash on policing the Carnival, while 75 officers were injured in the process of doing so. Readers might be interested to note that, by comparison, 53 police officers were injured during riots in Southport towards the end of last month.

Every year the same problems are raised, and every year things continue in much the same fashion

And it’s not as if every event receives the same forgiving treatment. Back in July, the Met Police enforced an exclusion zone in central London, citing fears that drunken football fans might cause disruption during England’s European Championship final match against Spain. Thousands of fans were denied the opportunity to eat, drink, and make merry in their own city, on the mere presumption that they might cause disorder.

To those who say that other festivals, such as Glastonbury or Creamfields, are worthy of the same concern, it’s worth reflecting on a number of the key differences between Notting Hill Carnival and its peers. The criminal offences associated with those events are largely drug-taking and petty-theft — disorderly to be sure, but a little less severe than machete attacks. Glastonbury, to take just one example, typically runs for five days, and sees a far larger turnover of attendees than Notting Hill — attendance statistics for the latter are widely regarded to be inflated, founded on ill-sourced estimates and questionable projections. Also relevant is the fact that attendees at festivals such as Glastonbury will often stay overnight, bringing luggage with them. Can you imagine what Notting Hill Carnival’s crime statistics would look like if revellers stayed overnight in tents? 

Every year the same problems are raised, and every year things continue in much the same fashion — yet talk about the realities of policing Notting Hill Carnival, and you’ll soon find yourself subject to accusations of racism. Susan Hall, the former Conservative candidate for Mayor of London, was branded “offensive” by David Lammy after citing problems with crime at the Carnival. 

So why is Notting Hill Carnival in particular so difficult to criticise publicly? As the event’s proponents will insist on telling you, Notting Hill Carnival is “a wonderful community-led celebration of Caribbean history and culture” — that’s according to London’s much-maligned mayor, Sadiq Khan. Indeed, the event’s pedigree stretches back to the mid-1960s, emerging as the one of the earliest visible manifestations of London’s nascent Caribbean community. Though marred by rioting throughout the 1970s, the event continued to grow in popularity over the decades, attracting interest from an expanded Caribbean-origin community and, eventually, the broader public. 

In recent years, the Carnival has been elevated to a hallowed position in the pantheon of events promoted by the political mainstream in an attempt to inculcate a “unified”, “civic”, and “diverse” British identity. Alongside Windrush Day (invented out of thin air in 2018), Notting Hill Carnival has become an unassailable part of the British establishment’s liberationist myth-making about our shared national history. Like clockwork, feckless libertine commentators will defend the event as an important expression of Black British identity and anti-racist activism. In the minds of many, to criticise Notting Hill Carnival is to attack Britain’s commitment to diversity itself. 

It’s high time that we acknowledged the problem as it really is — our treatment of Notting Hill Carnival is the ultimate example of two-tier policing. All too often, politicians and police chiefs shy away from treating the Carnival like they would treat a rowdy football match for fear of being branded racist. Somehow, I doubt that, say, a Welsh Eisteddfod which resulted in 9 stabbings a year would be given the same wide berth. 

The sad fact is that, in Britain today, policing decisions are not being made with a clear-headed view to upholding public order. Instead, police forces take a firm line on the largely law-abiding majority, while shying away from confrontation with groups likely to cause them a public relations headache. Where police chiefs anticipate a backlash from vocal, organised minorities, they steer clear of applying the same rules that they would apply under normal circumstances. Logical as this instinct may be, given how poorly-resourced and poorly-supported our police often are, the end result is a two-tier system of justice that disproportionately punishes law-abiding citizens. 

Fear of backlash from a vocal minority is preventing police and politicians alike from telling the truth about Notting Hill Carnival — if this were any other event, it would have been restricted, censured, or banned long ago. If nothing else, it would certainly have been forced to clean up its act, as The Critic’s own Sebastian Milbank recognised in this august forum last year. No group, community, or public celebration should be immune from our rules around public order. It’s time to start telling the truth about Notting Hill Carnival.