A RESIDENT'S VIEW (Notting Hill Carnival)

Member Name: Parsley

Product:	Notting Hill Carnival
Date:	23/08/01 (169 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great party if you are a visitor

Disadvantages: Mess, disruption to your everyday life as a resident

Before I start, I realise that this may not be a very popular opinion, but I hope that you will hear me out! (Please don’t just NU me simply because you disagree!) I am a resident of Notting Hill, London and this opinion is written from a resident’s point of view!

Every year 1-2 million people descend on a tiny area of Notting Hill to celebrate the Notting Hill Carnival. The Carnival itself is one huge street party mainly involving participation by the local Afro-Caribbean community. They put on huge exotic floats with people wearing amazing outfits. The idea is to have a peaceful celebration of culture where everyone has a good time.
The costumes are fantastic and the music is great (although sometimes very very loud!) Generally, the daytime atmosphere is great.
The nearest tubes to get to the carnival are Notting Hill Gate & Westbourne Park (Ladbroke Grove – although at the centre is only a small station and is closed for safety reasons.) Bus routes are severely disrupted so I can’t tell you about them! The Notting Hill Carnival is the largest street party in Europe and people come from all over to celebrate. However, over the years the carnival has grown and grown until it is huge and far too big for the area where it is held. Bearing in mind that the total population of London is 6-7 million people spread over a wide area - the number of people who descend on the streets of Notting Hill is 1-2 million over a few streets. This concentration of people is far too high to be completely safe.
If you don’t live in the area, then you won’t realise the full scale of the problem, but I have the misfortune to live in the area, fortunately not on the actual streets involved in the carnival but in a street very close.

From a resident’s point of view there is a huge amount of disruption to your everyday life. Not everyone wants to be involved in the carnival every year, but as a resident you have no choi
ce, it’s on your doorstep and there isn’t anything you can do about it. Most of the residents who can leave London do so each August Bank holiday to escape from it all! This is our usual course of action, unfortunately this year we have to stay which I am very unhappy about. Each year on the streets involved, large wooden boarding goes up over glass and fencing to protect people’s property in case of trouble this starts about 2 weeks before the carnival. Then the police dig out large numbers of removable fencing barriers and everywhere slowly becomes fenced off.

When the party itself starts (which lasts 2 days) all the streets are all fenced off and policemen guard the entrance to each street in order to contain the party in one area. The problem with this is that if you are a resident and you want to get home after visiting the carnival or whatever, the police refuse to let you have access to your own street!!!! You feel virtually imprisoned in your own home if you have to stay in the area. You can’t go anywhere or do anything as you are fenced in and you can’t get anywhere as all the buses are cancelled or re-routed miles away and the local underground station is closed and if you do go out – you can’t get back because the police refuse to believe that you live there! It’s really not a nice way to spend the August bank holiday weekend! If you wonder why the residents don’t join in, well some do, but if you are elderly, have children or are heavily pregnant, disabled, etc. the last thing you want is to be involved in is a huge crush of people.

The number of people concentrated in such a small area is too high, it isn’t safe, even the Metropolitan police have asked people to stay away because they are worried about not being able to cope with the sheer number of people of attending.

Trouble - Unfortunately each year there is trouble at the carnival – it is a sad fact that al
though the majority of people attending are good people who just want to have a fun time, there are a number of people who just go to cause trouble and steal (this happens at nearly every large event). Each year there has been at least one murder and there are a lot of minor scuffles and theft.
People have often drunk far too much. Alcohol brings out the worst in people who can be already hot & tired by the end of the day. I am not a fan of drinking too much as alcohol generally makes people “punchy” and can spark violence. I am not advocating teetotalism, but too much alcohol is freely available at the carnival and a lot of people go silly. The year I went I saw many casualties of alcohol - people lying in the gutter, being sick and generally in a bad way. I am sure that they weren’t enjoying the experience either. Misunderstandings also arise easily when you have a huge crowd of very inebriated people squashed into a small space.

Then – the aftermath. Once the party is over, there is a huge amount of rubbish,which the residents get left to see for a week or two afterwards! Last year the council (Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea) was very slow in tidying up. The streets are filthy dirty, you have to see how dirty they are to believe it! This only clears when it rains! Even though many toilets are provided (they get disgusting by the second day!) people take to peeing where they feel like it which is not nice if it happens to be your front garden (yes it is true – it happens!) At the top of our road there is a very popular spot and until it rains you are almost physically sick every time you pass it because the smell is so overpowering!

I have nothing against the carnival itself, but it has clearly outgrown the spot where it originated from. It is time that it was moved from Notting Hill and put elsewhere such as Wormwood Scrubs park or at least rotated round different streets. Why should the residents of Nott
ing Hill put up with this every year? No-one wants to spoil or cancel the party, but some consideration should be given to those of us who seem to have no choice but to live through it each year.

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