The 411 Magazine The 411 Magazine issue 4 July/Aug 2017 | Page 70

Since the carnival did not have local authority
permission, initial police involvement was aimed at
preventing it taking place at all, which resulted in
regular confrontation and riots. One notable time when
this occurred was in 1976; police had been expecting
hostility due to what they deemed as trouble the year
before. Consequently, after discovering pickpockets in
the crowd, police took a heavy-handed approach
against the large congregation.
The 1600 strong police force violently broke up the
carnival, resulting in the arrest of 60 people. In the
aftermath of the event, the carnival was portrayed in a
very pointed way. A change of policy came after a
confrontation in 1987, which saw a change to allowing
the Carnival to take place with police taking a more
conciliatory approach. During the 2000 Carnival, 2 men
were murdered and future policing, while conciliatory,
has led to police deployment in large numbers —
upwards of 11,000.
The review in 2000 by participants (but not local
residents) resisted calls from the Mayor of London to
relocate the event to Hyde Park, but led to the parades
taking a circular rather than linear route.
In recent years, the event has been much freer from
serious trouble and is generally viewed very positively
by the Authorities as a dynamic celebration of London's
multicultural di versity, though dominated by the
Caribbean culture.
However, there has been controversy over the public
safety aspects of holding such a well attended event in
narrow streets in a small area of London. With the
number of recent attacks on London and around the
world, rumblings of safety have again arisen. We asked
you, our readers would these events put you off
attending an event like Nottinghill Carnival and the
results were as follows:
86%
10%
4%
Are attending as normal.
Are not attending.
Haven't thought about it.