Notting Hill Carnival is a joyous, communal event unfairly judged by myths, with an arrest rate comparable to Glastonbury, argues Emma Loffhagen. In a personal essay, she reflects on the event's cultural significance and challenges the negative narratives that surround it.
The myth versus the reality
Emma Loffhagen recalls a house party encounter where a man dismissed Carnival as "absolutely depraved" without ever having attended. She argues this reflects a mythology that portrays the event as synonymous with disorder, projecting wider anxieties about multiculturalism onto it.
In 2025, there were 423 arrests and two stabbings among an estimated two million attendees at Carnival: an arrest rate of roughly 21 per 100,000 people. Glastonbury, which attracts around 210,000 people, recorded 31 arrests in 2025, a rate almost as much as Carnival. Reading, Leeds and Boomtown have also recorded dozens of reported crimes, including sexual assaults, in recent years.
A cultural cornerstone
Having grown up in west London, Loffhagen has attended Carnival almost every year for over a decade. She describes it as her favourite day of the year, a time for dressing up, watching floats, eating plantain, and connecting with her British-Nigerian identity.
Carnival began in the 1950s as an anti-racist protest, and has historically provided a place for the black community to gather in the face of hardship, including after Grenfell and the recent death of Jason Arday. Loffhagen notes the pain and joy in the story of black Britain.
The call to move Carnival
The insistence that Carnival should be moved, backed last year by Nigel Farage, is seen by Loffhagen as a thinly veiled desire to rid the area of one of the last visible remnants of the black community that made it what it is. She concludes by reflecting on the joy that critics rob themselves of by mistaking the mythology for the reality.
