BY ALEX STORY
The August Bank Holiday weekend fills the good people of Notting Hill with dread.
Those who can flee do; those who can’t board themselves up inside their houses.
Their front gardens, if they have one, front doors and outside walls will be used by the throngs as municipal facilities.
A couple of years ago, after two fatalities, eight stabbings and over sixty recorded police injuries, the Metropolitan Police feared dancing with the crowds distracted police on duty.
So “no matter how the beat moves them,” a police source said, they were, henceforth, banned from dancing with revellers.
This year, to help celebrate the Carnival’s 60th anniversary and keep a lid on crime, the Met will deploy seven thousand officers, supported by three thousand organisers, double the usual numbers.
From a law enforcement point of view, the Carnival is a “fantastic” but “serious event“.
From a local’s point of view, it is a nightmare.
In the field of crime, the Carnival has previous.
Indeed, the first recorded fatality took place way back in 1987.
In the last decade, discounting the cancelled COVID years of 2020 and 2021, there were three fatalities, over 40 stabbings and around 3,200 arrests made.
Out of a population of over 2 million attendees, such crime rates might give the impression that it is a relatively civilised do.
They are, at first glance, not that high.
After all, the streets between Harrow Road, Notting Gate, Chepstow Road and Latimer Road are relatively narrow. The density of the multitude, on the other hand, is intense.
Given all that, one might be right.
To those, though, who have experienced it, like forcing an elephant down a hosepipe, the fun stops immediately when one enters the security perimeter.
On a hot day, things become even more unpleasant.
The press, heat, and lack of facilities make life deeply uncomfortable.
Inside the perimeter, it is the flow of the crowd that moves the individual, turning him into flotsam floating on a human tidal wave.
He has no control over the direction of travel.
Fate guides him to an uncertain destination.
The gigantic gap between the Carnival’s reality and its advertised and hoped-for rationale is perhaps to blame.
Data, you see, doesn’t close to reality.
Credulous people come curious; they leave sullied.
Indeed, sane people, having experienced the event’s enormity once, would probably, one assumes, never return, unless to scratch a fetishist itch.
As I don’t have one, I attended only once.
At the time, I lived in Westbourne Park Villas above an épicerie fine called The Store, run by a Greco-Spanish couple, who became fast friends.
Our neighbours were the Westbourne, a lovely pub, and the Brunel Estate, a challenging council estate.
As the Carnival approached, my friends decided to stay open for the Bank Holiday weekend. It would be fun, they thought.
Having never experienced it, I excitedly agreed.
On their shop terrace, usually given to customers to enjoy a combination of “Monmouth Coffee“, at the time arguably the best in the land, and sundry delicatessen, they opened a stall hoping to sell a very small array of food and drinks.
Happiness and celebration were the order of the day.
The Carnival, though, had other ideas.
As the crowds grew, joy bolted.
The August blue sky and sunshine gradually gave way to human darkness.
The stall, built to celebrate, became a useless rampart, disintegrating against the human stream.
The items it carried became a vulture’s feed.
The thefts became increasingly unashamed, until a cry rose up.
The owner was in trouble, pushing the hordes back, resisting as best he could.
In vain.
The Store would be next.
As a predator prepared himself to grab as much as he could, aping other clan members, I intervened.
He looked up, froze for a second and ran down Westbourne Park Villas into the throng, his arms carrying as much as they could.
Into the mire I chased.
Past a sound system, the hordes surrounded me.
Like a stone thrown into the mud, I seemingly disappeared.
Caught in a vice, I tried to move. As I did, I felt repeated thuds against my skull and back, until one of the glass bottles shattered.
And another, and another.
The pain became ever more acute. The crowds circled in ever more tightly.
The thumping beats from the sound system, the scavengers’ half-grins and the downpour of fists and kicks gave the proceeding an antediluvian sacrificial air.
In desperation, I pushed with all my strength towards the light.
Eventually, finding a less crowded area, I looked up to see where I was.
I could see the Store from where I stood.
However, and to my amazement, five yards away, two mounted officers stood, one male, the other female.
Both had seen the whole thing.
In my good fortune, I thought, I approached them, wiping what I thought was sweat from my brow, to report what had happened.
There was nothing to be done, they said.
If I wanted to report the crime, they added, I would have to walk to the Notting Hill Police Station, two miles away. They pointed in the general direction of Westbourne Park Road towards Ladbroke Grove.
That way lay the impenetrable mob.
I would never make it past the crowds, I said, as I then realised it wasn’t sweat but blood that was pouring down my face and head.
My pleas fell on deaf ears.
They were, they said, only there to get involved in “serious crimes”. They left the scene.
Standing there, as the music played, surrounded by the crowd, in pain, I felt an unbearable sense of humiliation.
A tear nearly burst through my eyelids.
However, the next day, the police and organisers boasted that only 245 arrests were made. Only serious crimes, you see, were reported.
Data and facts are two very different things.
The people of Notting Hill flee the “celebration” for an unreported, but real, fact.
Those who celebrate it, do so based on data.
In short, the Notting Hill Carnival is a misnomer.
It is, in fact, a physical act of intimidation.
After all, “whose streets?”
Evidently, theirs, not yours.
Alex Story is an Olympian, entrepreneur and writer on economic and social issues.