How Notting Hill turned the ‘Carnival of Carnage’

When Chrissie glanced out of the window of her basement flat in west London over the bank holiday weekend, the last thing she expected to see was two strangers having sex in her front garden.

‘My two young daughters were horrified and confused,’ Chrissie told the Mail. ‘We’d had confetti and rubbish floating down into our street-side alcove all morning, but this was beyond disgusting.’

And, indeed, it was far from the only outrageous act that Notting Hill residents had a front row seat to as the infamous annual Carnival rolled into town last weekend.

Samantha – not her real name – has lived in a Notting Hill mews for 20 years. During that time, she’s been mugged twice during Carnival. But the worst thing has been the continued use of her mews as a public toilet.

‘During Carnival weekend, men – and women – pee against my neighbour’s front door,’ Samantha told the Mail. ‘By the end of the weekend, there is a pool of urine leaking into his subterranean kitchen. And it flows along the cobbles to my house, too.’

No wonder some locals took matters into their own hands this year, opening up domestic facilities to revellers caught short for £3 a pop. One homeowner even offered a £5 queue-jump for express use of their lavatory.

Last weekend, more than a million people descended on west London for the Notting Hill Carnival. Aboard open-top buses, DJs played everything from reggae to RnB.

Steel drums thundered a relentless beat. And all the while, scantily clad dancers, adorned in sequins and with stunning plumage, thrust their hips and ‘twerked their booty’ down the street.

But, as has become abundantly clear over the past decade, what was once a celebration of community and diversity has – for some – become little more than an excuse to behave with terrifying anarchic abandon.

The long weekend of extreme violence, drug misuse and even a desperate plea for calm from one senior police chief raised the question yet again of whether Notting Hill Carnival – now 58 years old and increasingly challenging to manage – should be relocated.

Writing in the Mail this week, columnist Sarah Vine described the 2024 Carnival as ‘basically a porn set with knives’.

Across the weekend, 349 arrests were made: 72 for possession of an offensive weapon, one for possession of a firearm (though later reports suggest police seized three guns), 13 arrests for sexual offences, 53 for assaults on emergency workers and 49 arrests for possession of drugs.

On top of this, five stabbings were reported – including one involving a corrosive substance – with the most heinous being an alleged attack on a 32-year-old mother who was attending the event with her young child on Sunday, the so-called ‘family day’.

The unnamed woman was stabbed shortly before 6pm on the Golborne Road where she appears to have been caught up in an incident between two groups of men. She remains in hospital in a ‘critical condition’.

On Wednesday morning, the suspect – 20-year-old Shakiel Thibou – appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court charged with her attempted murder, violent disorder and possession of an offensive weapon.

Astonishingly, Thibou’s two brothers – Shaeim, 22, and Sheldon, 24 – were also arrested at Carnival, both charged with, among other things, assaulting an emergency worker.

N o WONDER, then, that on Monday morning, halfway through this supposed community celebration, the senior officer in charge of the Met’s operation felt compelled to release a desperate statement pleading for calm.

‘Yesterday we saw the first day of Carnival marred by unacceptable violence,’ said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Ade Adelekan. ‘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.’

Indeed, Carnival – established in 1966 to bring disparate minority communities together – has become so dangerous and lewd that it has had to be split into a ‘family day’ and an ominously named ‘adult’s day’, which the BBC euphemistically describes as having ‘even more of a party vibe’.

It is one of the Met’s largest annual policing operations with 7,000 officers deployed over the weekend as well as hundreds more monitoring satellite and CCTV imagery from a control centre in Lambeth, south London.

In other words, at a time when police resources are more stretched than ever, and with Labour claiming as recently as June that ’90 per cent of crime is going unsolved’, tens of thousands of police hours are being spent desperately trying to maintain order across a few streets over a single weekend.

Despite all the criminality, Charmain Brenyah, the Met’s commander for uniformed operations, lauded the ‘incredible atmosphere’ at this year’s Carnival, describing policing the event as ‘a privilege’.

One wonders whether the 50 of her uniformed colleagues injured over the weekend – including one who took ‘significant’ blows to the face – felt the same way.

This week, former Scotland Yard chief inspector Mike Neville took a damning swipe at his former employer, describing Carnival as ‘the ultimate in two-tier policing’. ‘You see people openly smoking drugs, abuse of police officers, dancing with female officers to the point of sexual assault,’ he continued. ‘If the behaviour of the Notting Hill Carnival was replicated at football matches or any other event it would be banned.’

Much of the criminality and violence at Carnival has been attributed to the capital’s thriving gang scene. The area around Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove is controlled by a gang formerly known as 1011 (their area of operation being the postcodes W10 and W11) but now known as CGM – ‘Constantly Getting Money’.

However, one gang insider revealed to the Mail that the Notting Hill Carnival is an excuse for rival gangs from other parts of London – particularly south of the Thames – to encroach on CGM’s territory.

Inevitably, said the source under the condition of strict anonymity, this leads to conflict with different gangs trying to sell drugs on the same patch.

In particular, Yardies – Jamaican gangsters, akin to those glamorised in the 2018 Idris Elba film of the same name – are thought to bring mischief to Carnival. Along with areas of Brixton and Tottenham, Yardies control swathes of Harlesden, the impoverished west London borough a stone’s throw from Notting Hill.

Kensington and Chelsea Council, which controls Notting Hill, revealed that a staggering 6,000 canisters of nitrous oxide (laughing gas) weighing an estimated six tonnes, were collected during the post-Carnival clean-up.

Possession of laughing gas with the intent to get ‘high’ is a criminal offence punishable with up to two years in jail. And yet, the Met reported a miserly four arrests for its possession over the weekend, despite its obvious ubiquity.

Carnival’s organisers have argued that the event brings in ‘£369 million’ to the local economy. Does this include the many millions swapping hands in exchange for illegal drugs?

Overall, a 200-strong clean-up crew, armed with 30 dustbin trucks, collected 300 tonnes of rubbish, including thousands of bottles, food containers and clothing. Just 30 per cent of the trash is expected to be recycled with over 200 tonnes destined for landfill.

But as the clean-up ends, local businesses are left counting the cost of the disruption.

Milton manages popular Taqueria, a restaurant on Westbourne Grove – a main thoroughfare for Carnival’s bus-top parade – that serves Mexican fare.

‘I had to close for three days,’ he told the Mail. ‘I have to think about the safety of my young waiting staff. Last year, I tried to open on Saturday [a day before Carnival begins] but by Saturday morning people were already drunk.’

This year, Milton paid £2,000 to have his restaurant boarded up. He hid the alcohol in the office behind the kitchens, in case anyone managed to break in.

When Milton returned to his property on Tuesday morning, he found the pavement in front of his restaurant vandalised with graffiti, which he has had to pay to have removed with a jet washer.

‘I’ve probably lost about £20,000 through shutting over the bank holiday,’ he tells me. ‘And that’s before factoring in the cost of closing and securing the restaurant.’

Ahmad, who runs West Grove Cafe, is still trying to stomach the £1,200 he paid to have his property boarded up. ‘There are lots of tourists here on the weekends and we missed out on a lot of trade,’ he told the Mail. ‘Here’s the thing, if you run for councillor and say you’ll stop Carnival, everyone here will vote for you.’ He adds with a grin: ‘Trust me, you’ll win!’

While most local businesses closed during Carnival, a majority of residents also left town. A chairman of one of the communal garden associations in the area – who did not wish to be named but has lived in the area for 32 years – told the Mail: ‘Most people on my street go away for the weekend.

‘We have private security from 6pm to 6am, but during Carnival it was extended to be 24/7,’ they added. ‘And around a third of the street boarded up their homes.’

Such security doesn’t come cheap. Although most households on the road pay into a community fund for security, it still costs around £2,300 each for the year.

‘Over Carnival, the security was incredibly helpful in moving people on who were loitering on our doorsteps and preventing people from peeing in the basement wells in front of our properties.’

Claire Fergusson, a homeowner in her 60s, also moved out. ‘I had to move my car too,’ she told the Mail as she scrubbed away at graffiti left on her garden wall.

‘Generally, I think Carnival is a good thing,’ she added, bearing no obvious ill-will to the thugs who vandalised her property.

So, might Claire be tempted to join in the celebrations next year – and try out the Caribbean dance craze of twerking that took over her street at the weekend? ‘That’s what they do, that’s part of West Indian culture. I can’t do it,’ she laughed, ‘so good luck to them!’

Of course, London mayor Sadiq Khan appears oblivious to concerns. The politician, in his tone-deaf appraisal of this year’s tragically violent event, said on Sunday: ‘Fantastic scenes at Notting Hill Carnival today celebrating London’s Caribbean communities. Carnival is part of the very fabric of our city and an amazing way to bring communities together.’

His rival in last year’s London Mayoral race, Conservative Susan Hall, shot back at Khan, telling the Mail: ‘He’s quick to criticise the far-Right riots – which of course are wrong – but when it comes to stabbings, possession of firearms and drug-taking on his doorstep, he’s embarrassingly quiet.’

Hall doesn’t mince her words. However, perhaps the predominant issue with the Notting Hill Carnival is not civil disobedience, but the police’s inability to tackle it.

‘Carnival is a victim of its own success,’ Hall admitted. ‘The roads can’t support the event. It’s too difficult to police as a street carnival and I’ve long supported it being moved to a public space.’

It has been suggested that Carnival should become a ticketed event held in Hyde Park, which would allow controlled entry.

‘Carnival was a wonderful tradition but it has become unmanageable,’ says a mother whose family live on Chepstow Road, which sits along the route of the main parade. ‘Yet it is politically unacceptable to suggest it be moved to a more appropriate venue which can accommodate the numbers.’

Until politicians and stakeholders are brave enough to take action and move this festival to a more sensible location, we will sadly continue to see violence, drug-misuse and extreme instances of civil disorder.

The question is: for how much longer will the fear of offending minority communities outweigh the need to protect public safety?