Translate

Friday 18 November 2016

Crime Carnival

This year's Notting Hill's carnival saw spectacular costumes, sound systems and revellers dancing in the streets of west London. Thousands of revellers turned out for the second and final day of the annual street party in west London. This annual celebration of Caribbean culture began in 1964.

The roots of the Notting Hill Carnival that took shape in the mid-1960s came from two separate, but connected strands. A "Caribbean Carnival" was held on 30 January 1959 in St Pancras Town Hall with initial police involvement in these early gatherings aimed at preventing it taking place at all, which resulted in regular confrontation and riots.

How We Are Supposed To Think Of The Nottinghill Carnival
How We Are Supposed To Think Of The Carnival

Even by as late as 1970, the newly named Notting Hill Carnival, only consisted of 2 music bands, the Russell Henderson Combo and Selwyn Baptiste’s Notting Hill Adventure Playground Steelband and just 500 dancing spectators.

However the bit of  Caribbean culture which stands out as being celebrated the most, is the annual crime spree and carnage of violence, which accompanies it .... for instance this year over 400 people were arrested at the Notting Hill Carnival over the bank holiday weekend, and three teenagers were among five people who were stabbed. 

Violence Is How many See The Nottinghill Carnival
This Is How Many See It .....

As of 7pm on Monday, Scotland Yard said they had arrested 284 people during the second day of the event. It came after 156 arrests were made on Sunday. In all 454 were detained and five stabbed ...  The majority of arrests were for weapon offences or drug possession, while 25 people were detained on suspicion of assaulting police officers.

This repeats a regular Cycle of Arrests:
  • In 2007, two teenagers were shot just outside the carnival area. 
  • The 2008 Carnival was marred by rioting right at the very end of the weekend, involving large numbers of youths and injuries to police. Some media outlets captured footage of the violence; and approximately 500 youths were arrested.
  • In 2011 five people were arrested for a stabbing at Ladbroke Grove. The victim was one of 86 people who were taken to hospital. In total 245 people were detained by police over the two days of the carnival.

Murders

Since its inception there have been a number deaths associated to violence at the Notting Hill Carnival: current policing, while conciliatory, has led to police deployment in large numbers — upwards of 11,000 - this has acted to simply displace crime associated with the carnival to the periphery.
  • 30 August 1987 - Michael Augustine Galvin, 23, stall holder - stabbed.
  • 26 August 1991 - Nicholas John Hanscomb, 38, bled to death after being stabbed in the thigh.
  • 28 August 2000 - Greg Fitzgerald Watson, 21, stabbed to death after an argument over food.
  • 28 August 2000 - Abdul Munam Bhatti, the police treated this as racially motivated by a gang of mainly black males. Nine men were sentenced for violent disorder in 2002.
  • 30 August 2004 - Lee Christopher Surbaran, 27, shot by a gang using a Machine Pistol for "showing disrespect".

For some reason, the new campaigning organisation ‘Black Lives Matter UK’ has not yet called for this crime carnival to be banned .... this despite it being the source of more black criminal deaths than the police in the UK.

But the the thing about this that irks me the most, is that we spend millions of taxpayers pounds, policing and hosting this annual community event. Money that we don't spend on other more self sufficient communities local events, because the Afro-Caribbean community apparently can't self finance, organise, and police any events themselves, without the rest of us having to pay for it, and police it.

2 comments:

  1. In a previous post I advocated that football clubs contribute for the policing of their events when the crowds spill out onto the streets and I agree with you that the Notting Hill carnival should do the same.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sadly the Afro-Caribbean community won't do that, just like they don't get sponsorship to pay for the whole thing. Mind you who would want to sponsor an event so closely associated to outbreaks of violence?

      Delete

All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.

Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.

Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.

Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.

Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.

Followers

Blog Archive

Its a Pucking World

Its a Pucking World
Dreamberry Wine Cover

About Me

My photo
A middle aged orange male ... So 'un' PC it's not true....