Notting Hill Carnival: A Black British Tradition Under Watch

During Notting Hill Carnival, the signs are everywhere, quite literally. Shops are boarded up, homes covered with panels of plywood. Some of the boards are painted over with bright graffiti or well-meaning messages, but the subtext is harder to ignore. This isn’t just preparation; it’s precaution. As if what’s coming is danger, not culture. As if the people who are about to gather, to dance, to celebrate, are something to be wary of. That before the music even starts, someone’s already expecting violence.

Carnival is one of the few times in the year when Black people take up space in this country in full colour. It’s loud, unapologetic, and rooted in Caribbean culture, but it’s also become a wider meeting point for the diaspora. People come with Jamaican flags, Bajan flags, Trinidadian, Nigerian, Ghanaian,  St Lucian, Grenadian. You can’t really separate the sound from the politics. You hear soca and bashment, but also UK drill, afrobeats, amapiano. That mix didn’t happen by accident, it’s the sound of diasporic movement, of generations raised here but connected to elsewhere.

But with that visibility comes tension. Every year, the same headlines return. The same footage. The same heavy police presence. The same narratives that seem to shadow Black joy, even in its freest form. You don’t need a media studies degree to notice how differently Carnival is reported compared to Glastonbury, Wimbledon, or a football final. And the policing reflects that difference.

In 2023, over 2,500 Metropolitan Police officers were deployed each day of Carnival, more than at any of the above events. Officially, it’s about safety. But lived experience and data say otherwise. A 2023 report by Liberty Investigates and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that police stop and search rates spike dramatically over the Carnival weekend, with Black people disproportionately targeted. In 2022, 90% of stop and search incidents involved Black individuals, this in one of London’s most racially diverse boroughs.

That’s not just policing, it’s surveillance. It sends a message. And we feel it. You can be dancing with your people one minute, and the next, reminded that you’re being watched. That even in joy, you’re being managed. That your celebration comes with a side of suspicion.

And yet,  Carnival goes on. That matters. Because it’s not just about tradition. It’s about presence. Every sound system, every food stall, every speaker dragged through West London is a refusal to shrink. Carnival creates a space that doesn’t ask for inclusion. It just exists. On its own terms.

Carnival is joy and pressure at once. It’s culture in motion,  raw, public, and uncontainable. But more than anything, it’s people. Real people doing what we do best. Showing up. Dressing loud. Dancing hard. Eating well. You’ll see friends you haven’t seen in a year. You’ll end up dancing with strangers like you’ve known them all your life, because in that moment, the music connects everything.

Carnival will always be layered,  political, joyful, complicated. But more than anything, it’s ours. And even with everything it carries, for one weekend, we make the streets make sense.

Written by Vanessa Twerefou