AIBU to feel angry about Notting Hill Carnival behaviour?

[ProudBlackMomma]

Any other London folk mortified by the Notting Hill carnival? Hundreds of arrests, lewd behaviour, vulgarity and litter. It does not represent my culture. It’s an embarrassment.

There is graffiti all over houses and bus stops near where I live in Notting Hill. Sometimes even when they graffiti the hoarding they aren’t careful and it still goes on peoples walls around the edges. And who do you think pays for the hoarding? It’s not the council so locals have to pay for it themselves (£3k per house) or if you can’t afford it you have the worry of if your house will be vandalised.

I agree the location is important but the event has changed hugely since the 1959 and then the 60s-70s era. Sound systems were not originally a thing, and it was much smaller. Knife crime was not the same danger, partly as the crowds were far smaller.

Personally I think it should be run a lot more like the Carnivals in Carribbean countries. Why not have a limited number procession through Notting Hill (similar to the original carnival) and have the much larger events in a different location?

Yes, this is completely unacceptable. If the procession were about 500 or so as it originally was it would be different, but if people are having the board up their houses & old people hustled away to the seaside, it's clearly hugely unfair.

Yes, Venice, New Orleans, Brazil and a lot of the Carribbean also seem to be able to control their Carnivals far better than the UK.

I asked Claude again to compare Rio and Notting Hill carnival crime specifically and while I need to fact check in more detail, I think it brought up some interesting points. Apologies for the big bold letters :

1. Different weapon-violence baseline entirely

UK knife crime is a specific phenomenon: bladed weapons carried mainly by young people, heavily tied to gang territoriality and drug-supply networks ("county lines"), with carrying itself often defensive as much as offensive — a self-perpetuating arms-race dynamic among teenagers. Brazil's serious violence, by contrast, is predominantly firearms-based and organized-crime-driven, rooted in favela drug-trafficking factions clashing with each other or police — a different weapon, different actors, and critically, geographically segregated from where blocos actually happen (hence the standard advice to simply avoid favela areas). Notting Hill Carnival runs directly through the same urban fabric its youth-gang tension exists in so doesn't have a segregated "avoid this district" option the way Rio effectively does.

2. Dispersal vs. concentration (structural, from last message)

This is probably the single biggest factor for the specific nuisances you named. Hundreds of blocos spread across a huge city over weeks means no one street, no one set of residents, absorbs the full brunt repeatedly. Notting Hill compresses ~2 million people into one 3.5-mile residential corridor over 48 hours — the same front doors, the same gardens, the same pavements, hit at maximum intensity, every single year.

3. Enforcement culture and actual penalties

Rio genuinely fines public urination as an enforced offense. Notting Hill's council response to the equivalent behavior is softer and more remedial — garden-clearance services, a noise complaints line, post-event cleanup — reactive and compensatory rather than punitive and preventive.

4. Residential zoning around the biggest parties

Some Rio blocos run through quiet residential neighborhoods, but they're explicitly marketed as the calmer, family-friendly tier — the truly massive "megablocos" concentrate in downtown, commercial, or beachfront zones, not primarily along people's front doors.

Absolutely. It’s a miracle there hasn’t been a mass fatality from crushing due to street overcrowding. ( and that’s not to mention the public disturbance/ public urination/ littering / cost of policing / petty theft/ violence/ sexual assault/ drug taking / and murder )

I lived there for years. I used to love it. I was on a street right in the middle of it.

People know when it's coming and they can leave the area if needs be. It's no more or less entitled than living near a football stadium.

In fact, I've only ever had trouble by people who were drunk and visited from outside of the area for miles. I get the impression that some people just cause trouble whatever the situation.

It’s an accident waiting to happen- far too many people squeezed into a few narrow streets. Impossible to police properly.

So was Hillsborough. We should try and make it safer, not just scrap it.

The only way to make it safer is to move it to a more open location that is easier to police and less likely to have dangerous bottlenecks .

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1Dh4BoAdgo/?mibextid=wwXIfr

What would you do to make this situation safer?

Yes, but there would be a great deal of resistance to this. Probably an unofficial carnival would happen and that would perhaps be even more lawless.

The police are in a no-win situation. If one year a major crush does happen, they will no doubt get the blame, which would be totally unfair.

The police already have systems in place to stop dangerous bottle necks etc. They have large numbers of police on duty often blocking of roads etc in a way which looks kind of random on the ground but is really a form of crowd control. It means if a part of the carnival is getting overcrowded they can block any more people from going that way etc. There is a technique to getting large crowd control right (it went horribly wrong at Hillsborough) and a large part of that is communication and monitoring of what is going on.
That doesn't mean it doesn't feel very crowded at times. But there is a reason there have been no crushing events etc. The Met police aren't great at lots of things. But they do know how to do that.

The police find it a very difficult event to manage. They do their best. They would prefer it to be at a more open location ( park etc ) so that there was less risk .

metfed.org.uk/news/metropolitan-police-officers-have-their-say-on-notting-hill-carnival-safety

Thanks for posting. That confirms what I'd heard, that police don't like being on duty at NHC. However doing anything about it, the crime, noise levels and crush risk, would probably cause a hostile reaction and more problems. So the police take the line of least resistance, don't blame them for that. No-win situation for them.

Then their superiors trot out the line that it was 'overwhelmingly peaceful' which is just gaslighting but also understandable as they are trying to placate the situation as well. Meanwhile the public pick up the tab for having 7,000 orricers on duty.

There were over 500 arrests! This is not normal.

Yes, reading the responses in the police survey posted above is pretty shocking. 89% of police officers said they felt unsafe. 29% had been assaulted by carnival-goers. How can anyone say the event is safe when the majority of police attending say they themselves feel unsafe?

But nobody dares to call it out and demand that the location be changed or some other big changes made. Unfortunately if or when a crushing or trampling event takes place, it's the police who will be blamed.

I don't feel surprised that the Police don't like being on duty for NHC. I'm not sure what mass people event they would like to be on duty for. The amount of coordination, unpredictability and sheer scale of people must be really difficult. But also not unique to NHC. I wonder how many Police officers enjoy being on duty for football matches, protests, concerts etc?

There's definitely a conversation to be had about where NHC is located. With over 2m people attending it's too big for such a contained area but it feels disingenuous to call NHC out as THE event Police don't want to be on duty for when I'm sure, if they were asked, they could name plenty of other events.

I think you need to have a look at the police survey posted above and the comments from police officers before jumping to platitudes and minimising their experiences. Being spat at, sexually assaulted, pushed and shoved, all while feeling unable to respond robustly, are not everyday occurances at other festivals and events or even football matches.

Trouble is NHC gets a free pass because everyone feels nervous about calling out the bad behaviour so it just carries on and when the inevitable happens, the police will get the blame.

I haven't made any platitudes or minimised the experience of the Police Officers on duty at the event.

Where do you gather your insight on occurrences at other events? An absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

And I don't feel nervous calling out the bad behaviour. Some people who attend carnival behave appallingly. I'm disappointed in the number of arrests but glad troublemakers were arrested.

The walls of houses post carnival

That’s horrendous. I feel terribly for those living there who have to put up with it.

Yes, the fact that houses, shops and businesses have to be boarded up for the carnival says it all really. I've been to festivals in other urban locations and there was no boarding up of local properties and none of the nasty nonsense that goes on at NHC.

I hope if or when a crush /trampling event occurs, that the people who keep saying it's no different to any other large event, will reflect in their actions.