At last! The truth about carnival of mayhem
FINALLY, the police have come out and said what everyone knows to be true but has never dared admit for fear of being branded racist: the Notting Hill Carnival is no more a celebration of Caribbean culture than Katie Price is a vestal virgin.
Whatever the noble origins of this event, these days it is little more than an excuse for drug dealers, thugs and other assorted criminals to go on the rampage under the banner of ‘community relations’, causing mayhem and bloodshed and posing a serious danger to the public.
That the London Assembly Police And Crime Committee has finally acknowledged this, citing an 86 per cent rise in violent crimes since 2010, pointing to four near-fatal stabbings at last year’s event and warning of a ‘Hillsborough-style disaster’ waiting to happen, is a major step towards a long-overdue outbreak of common sense.
(The fact that London’s Labour Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has already effectively rejected the recommendations by ruling out moving or cancelling the festival, is also an indication of what an empty-headed lightweight he is turning out to be.)
THe carnival was originally born out of a desire to defuse animosity between post-war immigrants from the Caribbean and hostile local working-class communities already living in overcrowded slum conditions, egged on by Oswald Mosley’s revolting ‘Keep Britain White’ campaign.
Whether it achieved that aim is debatable. Part of the problem is that the tensions that gave rise to the carnival have never really gone. Notting Hill remains polarised, only now it’s wealth, rather than race, that mainly divides inhabitants.
Buildings that once housed multiple families are now multi-millionpound residences. Wetherby, the £20,595-a-year pre-prep school where Prince George is reportedly soon to start, is a short stroll from the popular pound shop on the Portobello Road.
The carnival is also a logistical nightmare. Were such a festival to be proposed today — two million people descending on a small network of streets amid a frenzy of parades, dancing, alcohol (and worse) and vehicles — there is no earthly way it would be granted permission.
The only reason it continues to be indulged in the present format is because over the years all opposition has been automatically dismissed as an attack on the Caribbean community, and therefore is down to prejudice. But then isn’t that in many ways the story of race relations in Britain?
By trying to atone for earlier mistakes and attitudes that belong to another era, we end up overcompensating in the other direction and, in so doing, indulging behaviour that has no place in society, regardless of colour or creed.
In the case of the carnival, that means gang violence, drug-taking and dealing and ugly, demeaning scenes of intoxication.
But there are even more disturbing examples, such as the Rotherham child abuse scandal, in which the systematic grooming and abuse of young white girls by Asian men between 1997 and 2013 was routinely covered up because of what Professor Alexis Jay, author of the subsequent inquiry, described as ‘institutionalised political correctness’.
And what about inhuman practices such as female genital mutilation, imported to Britain from east Africa and for years left unchallenged for fear of causing offence?
The same is true of forced marriage, honour killings and the indoctrination of young Muslim boys and girls into a warped and dangerous interpretation of religion.
The fact is, the path of least resistance never leads anywhere good, which is why, after years of middleclass liberal dithering, race relations in many parts of Britain are the same as they have ever been, and in some cases worse.
The truth may be uncomfortable, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And turning a blind eye for fear of ruffling a few feathers won’t make it go away.