Politicians too cowardly to confess Notting Hill Carnival MUST be banned

They say the definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the attitude of politicians and the authorities towards the Notting Hill Carnival, which took place, like every year, over the August bank holiday weekend.

Each year we are told to look forward to a joyous celebration of London’s multicultural identity; and each year we get two days of utter carnage instead.

Knives, guns, drugs, gang violence, vandalism, sexual assaults, half-naked people rutting in the street and stairwells – you name it, it happens at ‘Carni’.

It’s basically a porn set with knives: a real-life Grand Theft Auto.

Shops and homes boarded up, busloads of police drafted in, metal detectors everywhere, piles of rubbish, ‘nos’ (nitrous oxide) canisters, bottles of ‘lean’ (made by mixing prescription cough medicine and antihistamines), human faeces.

Gangs of masked ‘roadmen’ chasing each other down with machetes, scattering frotting revellers like confetti. It’s a bonanza for London drug dealers, supplying anything from crystal meth to skunk to Xanax.

This year was no exception. On Sunday – so-called ‘Family Day’ – a young mother was stabbed in front of her child. She remains in hospital in a critical condition.

Sadly, she’s not alone. Two other stab victims are on the critical list. The final tally of knifings this year is eight.

That’s not counting the multiple slash wounds, the acid attacks and other ‘minor’ offences. There were 72 arrests for possession of an offensive weapon, one for possession of a firearm, 13 arrests for sexual offences, 53 for assaults on emergency workers, 35 officers injured – and a total of 349 arrests.

Oh, and the expense: £12million in policing costs alone, not counting the huge clean-up bill and the cost to local businesses of having to barricade their shops shut.

In any normal world, you might expect those numbers to be some cause for concern. But no.

‘Fantastic scenes at Notting Hill Carnival today celebrating London’s Caribbean communities,’ gushed London’s Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan on Sunday. ‘Carnival is part of the very fabric of our city and an amazing way to bring communities together.’

‘Bring communities together’? What kind of pea-brained nonsense is the man talking? How is a young mother getting stabbed in front of her child any sort of ‘celebration’? As Mayor, Khan is ultimately responsible for the safety of all Londoners. Is he seriously going to keep pretending that nothing is wrong here?

This year’s carnage is not a one-off. It happens year after year. Each time the police deploy more officers to ‘keep the peace’, and each time it’s the same story. The problem, of course, is not the idea of the carnival: it’s what it has become, and the way it has effectively been appropriated by all the wrong people.

The Notting Hill Carnival began in the early 1960s as a series of street fairs and community events designed to heal tensions following the 1958 race riots.

The aim was to foster ties between the many immigrant nationalities – West Indian, Irish, African – who had settled in the area, build some sense of belonging and maybe have a bit of fun.

The first proper street festival took place in 1966, predominately as an event for local children. From there the Carnival grew into an extravagant display of West Indian culture, a slice of Caribbean sunshine to liven up a soggy English summer.

For almost two decades I lived in that part of London, along one of the main entrance routes.

One of my neighbours, the actor Colin Salmon, used to take a leading role in the preparations. As a local born and bred, he championed the Carnival, as did so many families who had put down roots in the area. My own children grew up around the event; indeed, my son went this year with his friends, as he always does.

But even he returned home on Sunday night taken aback by the violence and the palpable tension in the air, not to mention the astonishing degree of nudity. When a 19-year-old boy says he’s seen too many nipples, then you know something’s not right.

Last year one of his friends from secondary school was chased down and stabbed by a group of boys his age.

That’s partly why my daughter doesn’t go any more – she says there are just too many people who turn up to cause trouble, the vast majority not from the area. And that, really, is the problem. It’s not a community event any longer.

In fact, most residents – whether from the wealthier parts of Notting Hill, where houses can cost many millions, to the cheaper seats and social housing in the north of the borough and around the site of Grenfell Tower – either lock their doors or ship out for the weekend.

Instead of being a warmly anticipated annual celebration, it’s become a source of dread. Residents are sick of people throwing up in their front gardens or having sex in their porches; sick of the dealers that descend from every corner of the capital, of the gangs that swagger through the crowds and prey on their children.

None of what goes on at Carnival these days is of any benefit whatsoever to ‘the community’ – it’s just very loud, very crowded and rather frightening.

And the fact that people like Khan are too cowardly, too intent on spouting the same old platitudes, to admit to any kind of a problem is a big part of it.

Just because something has the labels ‘cultural’ or ‘community’ attached to it does not make it beyond reproach. Football hooliganism is arguably a cultural phenomenon, and yet we don’t put up with people hurling racist abuse or brawling in the stands.

Antisocial and criminal behaviour is antisocial and criminal behaviour, regardless of the cultural context. And it should be treated as such.

That’s why you’ve got to hand it to Met Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan, born in the UK to parents originally from Nigeria, who this weekend said: ‘We are tired of saying the same words every year. We are tired of telling families that their loved ones are seriously injured, or worse. We are tired of seeing crime scenes at Carnival.

‘It is the responsibility of all who value this event, who want to see it as the celebration it should be, to speak out and speak up about the violence that continues to overshadow it.’

Finally, someone with the courage to tell it as it is. The Notting Hill Carnival can’t go on like this.

The problem is that as long as it remains an open street event, there is little the police can do to control it.

At least with festivals such as Leeds or Reading – which are also rife with drugs and sexual assaults, if not with gangland stabbings – you can control access to an extent and, therefore, ensure some standards of behaviour. But with Carnival, it’s almost impossible.

Any other event of this nature that regularly resulted in multiple stabbings and arrests would simply not be tolerated; under Keir Starmer, we don’t even tolerate people saying stupid things on social media platform X. And yet somehow it’s OK for gangs to be running around the streets of West London openly brandishing knives?

It’s hard to see how this can carry on. Perhaps a good compromise would be to have it somewhere like Hyde Park, which frequently hosts music festivals and has the necessary infrastructure to keep people safe.

I know supporters will argue that would be a long way from the original street spirit of the carnival; and they would be right.

But perhaps something like the original event simply can’t survive in a world of gangs and knives. Perhaps people no longer have the moral standards or upbringing to enjoy themselves without behaving like louts. If so, that’s very sad. But it is what it is.

Until someone can find a solution that doesn’t leave devastated mothers weeping next to hospital beds and children witnessing things that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, I fail to see what other choice remains.

Either move it, or ban it altogether.