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A carnival of criminality

Who really knows how much crime goes on at the Notting Hill Carnival?

Rod Liddle

Wednesday, 29th August 2007

No one gives straight answers about crime at Notting Hill

But as I say, it is difficult to have much faith in any of the figures or the official pronouncements. The then boss of the Police Federation, the excellent Glen Smyth, said at the time: ‘The level of reported crime is far below that which really happens.’ He added that the police were instructed to ignore non-violent crimes. So who really knows how bad this year’s carnival was? One of the truly iconic things about the Notting Hill Carnival is the level of chicanery adopted by the police and local politicians: you never get a straight answer to any question. The carnival organisers tell you that the whole event ‘always embodied peace and harmony’ and this patently stupid platitude is dutifully trotted out by the authorities, year after year. Ken Livingstone’s considered view seems to be that the only problems associated with the carnival are caused by its immense popularity and success.

Seven years ago, the police reported that the carnival had cost a total of £3 million. I don’t know how much it cost this year. Last year the carnival utilised a total of 11,000 police shifts. It was presumably about the same this year, if not more. You, meanwhile, are paying for it — even if you didn’t take up the opportunity to groove to some bangin’ choons and stab a couple of Asians, just for a laugh, afterwards. There is no other event in Britain which causes such mayhem and violence and which is waved through, on the nod, every year, with the taxpayer expected to pick up the tab. Nobody has been killed as a result of football hooliganism in Britain for a good few years, thank the Lord — but the football clubs nonetheless pay for every penny incurred through the cost of policing and when a difficult fixture crops up the Old Bill have the power to insist it’s played at some godforsaken time so that nobody can get to it.

It is time to make the organisers of the Notting Hill Carnival behave likewise: it might, you know, concentrate the minds a

little. Pay for the police and do as they say. It would certainly cheer up the Notting Hill residents who have for years complained that their views are utterly ignored. Back in 2000, the residents’ committee attempted to put their worries to organisers but found that ‘all organisations shrugged off responsibility’. Nor were the residents invited to join the committees charged with the task of reviewing the carnival arrangements. It’s time for the Notting Hill Carnival to become a little more diverse in its concerns, I reckon.

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