Notting Hill Carnival

Childrens Day, Notting Hill – 2004

Childrens Day, Notting Hill Carnival: Sunday 29th August 2004 was Children’s Day at Notting Hill Carnival and back in 2004 I wrote just two short paragraphs to go with a large number of pictures.

“I don’t know whose wallet it was in the hand I caught as it reached into my pocket in Cambridge Gardens, but it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t the time or place to argue much, so I let the youth wriggle away.”

“The 40th Notting Hill Carnival was living up to its reputation, in this and also in the friendliness of most of the participants. This was Children’s Day, so I took my son, and will embarrass him with a couple of pictures of him dancing. But mostly it was what we have come to expect, and a little dull weather and the odd shower didn’t mar the celebrations”

I didn’t take my wallet to Notting Hill, but in a densely-packed crowd found a hand putting an empty one back into my left front trouser pocket. Perhaps he thought he had earlier taken it from that same pocket before removing the contents and was trying to replace it, or did he just want an easy way to get rid of the evidence.

I think I probably went to carnival on around twenty or thirty days over the years, though I’ve not been recently. Apart from this rather odd incident I saw very little criminality apart from the widespread smoking of weed – and I picked up enough secondary smoke some days to make me rather high.

But generally there were many more pickpockets on crowded underground trains and much more violence in the crowds around football stadiums. Press reports always greatly exaggerated the negative sides of the event and I never felt unsafe. When there were reports of trouble it was usually late in the day when I had gone home.

But I did take some simple precautions – taking a couple of notes and some coins rather than my wallet and credit cards, and being more careful than usual with my photo gear. I carried less than usual and kept it in a small ex-military shoulder bag – though in crowds I carried this around my neck and in front of my body.

Attitude is also important. Some photographers seem to me to be rather confrontational but I followed my normal friendly nature, smiling, talking and at times dancing with people. Like most of the others at the event I was there to have a good time. And to have just a can or two of Red Stripe – and some of my free annual malt fix.

You can see more pictures from Childrens Day beginning here on My London Diary.

And I went back on the following day on my own for the carnival proper – pictures begin here.

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All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
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Notting Hill Carnival – 2006

Notting Hill Carnival – On Sunday 27th August 2006 I went to Childrens’ Day of the Notting Hill Carnival, returning on Monday 28th for the main Carnival Day.

By then I’d photographed carnival over more than a dozen years and was getting to feel I had little more to say about the event, though I was still enjoying the atmosphere. I’d had to miss the 2005 event and this year was determined to do my best.

Looking at the pictures I think I concentrated more on the actual parade than in previous years, though I think the black and white images probably show more of those of us following the performers. Below I’ll include – with the usual corrections – what I wrote about the two days back in 2006.

“The big event of August is always Notting Hill Carnival, and I was there both on the Sunday afternoon for Children’s Day and for the main event on the Monday, shooting both black and white film and colour digital (though when I’ll get round to processing the film is anyone’s guess.) [By 2006 I had largely abandoned film and I think a few months later I finally decided rather than process it myself to send it to a lab.]

“Perhaps it’s because I’m getting older, but I didn’t get the same buzz from this year’s event as in previous years, though most of the same things seemed to be around.

“Perhaps there lies the problem; most of them did seem to be the same, two years on from when I last photographed the event.

“Last year I tried to go, dragging myself to the station with a knee injury, but the pain was too much to continue. This year my knee held out, though I was glad to sink into a seat on the Underground at Latimer Road at the end of the day.”

There are many photographers at Carnival, and only a few of these pictures have ever got published. Among those that have is the one apparently showing a well-known football manager (who I didn’t recognise and whose name I’ve forgotten) in a line of women in costume.

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Mare De Gras & Choose Life – 2004

Mare De Gras & Choose Life: On Sunday 10 October 2004 I photographed two very different events on the Streets of London, a carnival in Hackney and and ant-abortion march. Perhaps the only thing they had in common was that both were misnamed.

Hackney Mare de Gras

Dalston, Hackney

Mare de Gras – Fat Tuesday – is a season celebrated in New Orleans as carnival season, from 12th Night at the end of Christmas on January 6 to Fat Tuesday itself, Shrove Tuesday, the day before the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter. In England our celebrations are rather shorter and involve pancakes and pancake races.

But in Hackney it was the name adopted for the carnival which began there when some residents decided it would be a good thing for them to have a carnival like Notting Hill, and since the main street is Mare Street it seemed a good name, even though it took place in September.

It wasn’t the first carnival in Hackney – there is a tradition of English carnivals dating back mainly to the late 19th century, held in many towns and villages across the country, though most have now died out. Two of my friends got Arts Council money to document some of them – and I showed work from Notting Hill with them in a show, English Carnival, in 2008. Others are still going strong particularly in the West Country. Hackney had its carnivals way back around the 1900s but I don’t think they lasted too long.

Those traditional carnivals had one thing in common – “they received no core public funding. Many were almost entirely organised by volunteers; most also raised money for charities.”

For the show I wrote: “Carnival in England has been enlivened over the last forty or so years by the Caribbean influence, and West-Indian style carnivals have received considerable funding and become a popular celebration of our multi-cultural society within the larger metropolitan areas of the country, joined in recent years by Latin American, Asian and Central European communities.”

The revival of carnival in Hackney is thought to have started as the Street Carnival Theatre in De Beauvoir, organised by Centerprise, in 1973. Later came a new Hackney Carnival – Mare De Gras – bringing together many of the carnival groups that had their roots in Caribbean culture and had begun in the 1970s, 80s and 90s taking part in the Notting Hill Carnival.

In 2004, Mare De Gras in late September was cancelled after 16-year old A level student Robert Levy was killed on Mare Street, stabbed after he had tried to keep the peace in a fight between boys close to his home, and the event was rearranged for the 10th October.

Hackney Carnival continued in later years, though the name Mare De Gras was dropped soon after 2005. In 2024 there was a parade, but for 2025 there were only a number of activities and no real carnival.

More pictures from Mare De Gras.

Choose Life March

Westminster to Lambeth

I left the carnival in Hackney soon after the parade began to photograph a much more somber event, the Chose Life March opposing abortion. Again its name seems misleading to me – opposition to abortion is not about choosing life, and as I commented in 2004, “the misuse of language in using slogans such as ‘Choose Life’ disturbs me greatly, as an attempt to preempt rational thought.“

*One of the few parts of the march that did not seem lacking in life*

I also wrote “Nature is profligate, full of false starts, and life cannot sensibly be considered to begin at conception” which I suspect is a quote but cannot find the source.

Many other Christians and other religions do not accept the Catholic teaching on abortion but take more sensible and more scientifically bases views. But “this doesn’t mean we should take abortion lightly or allow scientists to play as they like with human genetic material. ” And of course our laws do have important safeguards on abortion and the use of human material in research.

More pictures, including a couple of Brian Haw and one of the River Thames as the march passed them on My London Diary.

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Notting Hill Carnival – Children’s Day – 2012

Notting Hill Carnival – Children’s Day: Lurid and largely untrue media reports had put me off from attending carnival until 1990, but after I had gone and seen for myself the two days at August Bank Holiday each year became one of my unmissable events of the year.

Each year from then on I went to photograph the revels, trying to capture the spirit of the event in my pictures, and I had some success, with publications and some small exhibitions of the work.

I saw and experience little of the criminality reports of which still often dominate press coverage, with many still trying to get carnival banned or to emasculate it as a static event in Hyde Park or something similar. Opposition to carnival, a great community event, seems at least in part driven by the same kind of racist and classist attitudes that led to Grenfell. I only once in over 20 years came close to it when I caught a pickpocket with his hand in one of my trouser pockets in a densely packed crowd. I grabbed it and pulled it out, to find it clutching an empty wallet – not mine.

Of course I took some sensible precautions, taking only the equipment I needed and keeping a close eye and hold on it. I used a small bag which in crowded areas at least was always around my neck and in front of me rather than on my shoulder, and left my wallet and credit cards at home, carrying enough cash for travel, food and drink in a zipped pocket.

Most of what mayhem there was – and given the huge number of people in the area there was relatively little of it – took place later in the day, after a day of dancing and drinking and after I had gone home, always before the light began to fade.

While I was there the streets were full of people having a good time and happy to be photographed while they were doing so. Mostly they were Londoners, and particularly black Londoners, though some people came from far away for the event. When we were in St Denis at the north of Paris one year I photographed posters advertising trips for the event.

The only real problem I had over the years was with my ears. At carnival you don’t just hear the music, you feel it as the tarmac on the streets vibrates and your internal organs jump around to the beat. For several days afterwards my ears would hurt , my hearing would be dull and my head would still be ringing. Some years when carnival came late in the month I was back teaching within a couple of days and it was hard.

Professional media crews covering the event mainly wear ear protectors, and I did try using earplugs, but found it unsatisfactory. They stopped me experiencing carnival fully and made communication with those I was photographing difficult. It was like eating wearing boxing gloves. So I just put up with being deafened and taking a day or to for recovery.

But by 2012 things were different for me. As I wrote then: “But either I’m getting too old for it, or perhaps carnival is changing, and this year I found it a little difficult. So I went on the Sunday, stayed around three hours and didn’t really want to return for the big day. So I didn’t.“

And this was the last time I went to Carnival. The next year I was away from London and in years since then I’ve thought about it, but not gone. I feel I’ve taken enough pictures of it.

You can see more of the pictures from the 1990s in two albums – Notting Hill Carnivals and Panoramas on Flickr though I’ve still to add some from later years. Many of those from this century are on My London Diary, including many more from 2012 at Notting Hill – Children’s Day.

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Childrens’ Day at Notting Hlll – 2010

Childrens’ Day at Notting Hlll: Sunday 29th August 2010 was the first day of the two day festival though it’s called Childrens’ Day there are also plenty of adults there and sometimes having some rather adult fun. You will fine rather more pictures of children in the collection on My London Diary than in this post.

It does have the advantage of being just a little less crowded than the main Monday of carnival, when even though I try to avoid the most crowded places where it’s hard to move let along take photographs, but there is perhaps just a little less excitement and mayhem.

But by 2010, the carnival had begun to lose its charm for me and was no longer one of those dates entered into my calendar at the beginning of the year, and I had decided only to go on the slightly quieter (it’s relative) day of the year.

The sound is always a vital part of carnival, but can be a threat to health. When the beat makes your internal organs jump up and down and you can see the tarmac vibrating you know its really a bit too loud. And it could take several days for the pain in my ears to dissipate and normal – or at least near-normal – hearing return.

When I was young I seemed to recover but I think now the changes could well be permanent. My hearing isn’t perfect and some of those high notes are long gone, but its good enough to get by most of the time and I don’t want to risk it more.

I used to laugh a bit at the TV crews at carnival wearing ear protectors and think they were missing the spirit of it, but at least they were sensible. But I don’t think I could have produced the work I did wearing them.

2010 wasn’t the final carnival I attended – and one year I might just go again though I’ve not done so since 2011. But if I do I think I’d probably only stay long enough to drink a can or two of Red Stripe and probably take few pictures.

As I commented on My London Diary I took only one DSLR camera – the Exif Data remings me it was a Nikon D700 – and one lens, a Sigma 24.0-70.0mm f/2.8 and I worked all the time in full-frame Raw mode. The great majority of the pictures were made within 1-2 metres from the subject so people were very aware a photographer was pointing a large camera and lens at them, though many were too engaged in what they were doing to act up for the camera.

I was pleased with the pictures, but the small versions on My London Diary don’t really do them justice. So I’ve included a large one at the top of the post. Like some of the other pictures it was taken in a heavy shower that sent many of those watching rushing for cover but the carnival continued. If you double click on the top image it should open at a larger size on its own page in your browser.

More on My London Diary at Notting Hill Carnival.

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Notting Hill Carnival – Monday 25 August, 2008

Notting Hill Carnival: Here with some minor alterations is the piece I wrote for My London Diary about Carnival in 2008, with a few of the pictures. You can see many more pictures from the day on My London Diary.

There isn’t a great deal more to say about Notting Hill, although it did seem to be significantly less crowded than in recent years (some sources estimate attendance yesterday as three quarters of a million), and I walked easily through a number of areas that have usually been filled with seething masses. There did also seem to be fewer lorries and groups on the circuit than in previous years, but the big mas bands at the core of the event were out in force as usual.

Perhaps there are just too many other events on over the weekend and people were tired. Perhaps with the difficult economic times there is less funding for groups and less commercial interest (though Unison were still behind South Connections.) The weather wasn’t great either, though it didn’t rain.

Of course there are still many people who won’t go to carnival because they are scared of possible crime and violence. Police have reported that they had over 300 crimes reported to them at carnival on Monday and made around 150 arrests – considerably up on last year. With a reported 11,000 officers on duty it was still probably the safest place in the country, although I saw no sign of the metal detectors that were intended to prevent knifes being carried. In around five hours I only saw one brief incident as a young man was escorted away. The only knives I saw were plastic.

Of course carnival did go through troubled times. Its genesis was as a black response to the race riots in Notting Hill fifty years ago, although it only became a parade around the streets in 1965. In 1976 there was serious fighting when 3000 police attempted to take over and control the event and had to withdraw. Since then there have been various attempts to control and even stop carnival in Notting Hill, including the organising of alternative events elsewhere. And carnival itself has become much more managed and along with this, much safer to attend

I first went to carnival and took pictures around 20 years ago and have returned every year except one when a knee injury made it impossible (I made an effort, limping from home to our local station where I collapsed, unable to climb the footbridge, and decided I really wasn’t up to it.)

In October 2008 I took part in a show in the Shoreditch Gallery at the Juggler (now long close) in Hoxton Market, confusingly half a mile away from the site in Hoxton St where Hoxton Market is held and I was photographing Sunday’s ‘1948 Street Party‘. Hoxton Market is immediately to the north of the Holiday Inn on Old Street. The show, still online, was called ‘English Carnival’ and was a part of the East London Photomonth 2008.

The other 3 photographers, Paul Baldesare, Dave Trainer and Bob Watkins, showed pictures from ‘traditional’ English carnivals – like the Hayling Island one at the beginning of this month (August 2008), but my pictures were from Notting Hill – which now with other carnivals drawing their main inspiration from the Caribbean and elsewhere around the world is very much a part of the English carnival scene.

The work I chose for this show was a black and white portfolio of 20 images which had been previously published in ‘Visual Anthropology Review‘, where it accompanied a scholarly essay on carnival by distinguished academic, George Mentore along with his perceptive comments on my pictures.

You can see many more of my pictures from Notting Hill Carnival in two albums, Notting Hill Carnival – the 1990s and Notting Hill Panoramas -1992 and from later years on the August pages of My London Diary.

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Hong Kong, Fur, Brixton & Carnaby – 2019

Hong Kong, Fur, Brixton & Carnaby – There were five events listed in my diary for Saturday 23rd November 2019, but I only photographed two of them, the Stand With Hong Kong march and rally and the annual March Against Fur, though I missed the others. But I did take a couple of short walks. I can’t remember now why I went to Brixton, but my trip to Carnaby Street was to see a small exhibition in a shop I had three pictures in.

Stand With Hong Kong – Westminster

Sadly the idea that the British Government could in 2019 have any real influence on China over the breaches of Sino-British Joint Declaration agreed in 1984 when Margaret Thatcher was in power was always an illusion.

In 2014 the Chinese government had said it regarded the agreement had already met its objectives following the handover in 1997 and they regarded it as now having no legal effect. The British government disagree but have no possibility of doing anything to change Chinese minds or actions.

So while I had great sympathy with people of Hong Kong who had been protesting there as well as their supporters in foreign countries including UK, it was clear that these protests would not change policies in Hong Kong.

Finally the British government had to admit this and it led to the setting up of the Hong Kong British National (Overseas) visa scheme in 2021, which allowed Hong Kong British National (Overseas) citizens (BNOs) and their close family members to move the the UK for five years after which they can apply for leave to remain and, after a further year for British citizenship.

Perhaps protests such as these did influence the government in how the scheme was set up, with a fairly generous interpretation of the rules governing family members, although the route to becoming a British citizen seems unnecessarily long and complicated.

BNO status was set up by an Act of Parliament following the 1984 declaration for Hong Kong residents who wished to retain a connection with the UK after the handover to China and had to be claimed before that too place in 1997. About a third of Hong Kong residents had BNO status and the scheme would also allow a similar number of their families to get visas.

Although the total number of people eligible to come to the UK was thought to be over 5 million, the number expected to take up the offer was expected to be around 320,000 and so far is only roughly half this. Although much cheaper than other visa schemes it remains quite expensive as a health charge is also applied and for a family with one child the total costs over the period to obtain British citizenship is around £20,000.

Stand With Hong Kong

March Against Fur 2019

After a rally in Leicester Square the march set off through central London.

The march went along the pavement along Charing Cross Road, which was extremely crowded.

Though it spilled out onto the road.

Although the main focus of the many posters was against fur and the ending of the fur trade, the main banner called for an end to all forms of animal oppression and many on the march were vegans.

I left the march as it turned down Shaftesbury Avenue for a tour of the West End and stores selling fur products, calling for an end not just to using fur in clothing but against all exploitation of animals of all species, whether for meat, dairy, wool, leather or other products.

More pictures at March Against Fur 2019

Brixton & Carnaby Street

First Child by Raymond Watson, a memorial to 116 children murdered by the Afrikaner police force in Soweto in 1976 was the first public sculpture by a Black artist in the UK, commissioned in 1998 by the 198 Gallery.

Bon Marché, Britains first purpose built department store, was opened in 1877. Its founder went bankrupt but the store continued in business with various owners until 1975. Since then it has been refurbished with almost all ground floor detail lost.

I paid a brief visit to Carnaby Street where 3 of my pictures were in the window of a shop called Size? in a temporary display celebrating the apparently iconic Nike Air Max 90 introduced in 1990. I took the three rather maroon images in this picture of the window and the one at the right, taken at Notting Hill Carnival in 1990 shows a man in rather long shorts wearing those trainers. There were ten panels in the display, the other nine using later pictures taken by other photographers.

Brixton
Carnaby Street Show

More Carnival – Children’s Day 2009

More Carnival – Children’s Day: On Sunday 30th August 2009 I spent a few hours in Notting Hill and took a lot of pictures – here are just a few of those I liked. I can’t remember why I didn’t get around to putting them on line in 2009, but I only remembered them again in 2014 when August bank holiday was so wet I stayed home and didn’t go to carnival.

I thought again this year about going to Notting Hill for Children’s Day when it is a little less crowded than the Monday. But there was engineering work on the railway with no trains from my station for over a week, only rail replacement buses.

It would still have been possible to make the journey, or to take a bus and then the Underground, but having to do so on both the outward and homeward journey would add considerably to my journey times. I decided my trip to Notting Hill wasn’t essential.

I’ve taken enough pictures of Carnival over the years since 1990 to satisfy me for my lifetime, and it’s hard to find anything really new.

Though I do regret having been put off from going to Notting Hill before 1990 by the media coverage which concentrated on the few violent incidents and painted a picture of street violence and mayhem. It’s really more of a huge outbreak of celebration.

*There was a huge tightly packed crowd dancing to Sancho Panza*

And I did photograph some children, though its clear my mind was largely on other things.

Many more pictures at Notting Hill – Children’s Day.

Notting Hill Carnival 2006

Notting Hill Carnival 2006: On Monday 28th Aug 2006 I went to photograph Notting Hill Carnival, working with both black and white film and digital colour. In most of my carnival pictures I’ve concentrated on the people attending the event rather than the costumes and I did so on this occasion with the black and white, but for the colour I decided to mainly photograph those taking part in the carnival as the pictures here show.

Rather unusually my August 2006 page only starts on Friday 25th, when I went to Greenhithe & Swanscombe Marsh. I’d been away from London most of the month, holidaying with friends in Kent, visiting Paris and staying with family in Beeston and decided it wasn’t appropriate to post pictures from these locations on My London Diary.

In 2006 I went on both Sunday 17th, the Children’s Day and the main carnival event on the Monday, but the pictures here are all from the Monday. You can see those from Children’s Day on a link from the August Page of My London Diary.

I’ve always had a fairly elastic definition of London, and it stretched some way out along the River Thames both upstream and down, and also taking in the London Loop, a section of which I walked with family the following day.

Sunday had been a busy day too. Notting Hill only really gets going after lunch, so I had time to go to East Ham in the morning for the Sri Mahalakshmi Temple Chariot Festival and then call in at Bromley-by-Bow and walk to Stratford and photograph again the Bow Back Rivers before going to Children’s Day.

So I think I was probably fairly tired by the time Monday came around, having done rather a lot of cycling and walking over the past three days, as well as taking a great many pictures.

As I pointed out, it was “two years on from when I last photographed the event.” The previous year I had “tried to go, dragging myself to the station with a knee injury, but the pain was too much to continue. This year my knee held out, though I was glad to sink into a seat on the Underground at Latimer Road at the end of the day.“

I also wrote “when I’ll get round to processing the film is anyone’s guess” and the answer was not for a very long time – and then I sent it away for processing rather than do it myself. By 2006 I had almost completely committed to digital for its many advantages and this was one of my final flings with film. The “more pictures soon” with which the piece ends was an aspiration never fulfilled online and I’ve yet to print any of the black and white pictures.

Perhaps the reason for this – and why I probably won’t get to Carnival this afternoon – is “because I’m getting older … I didn’t get the same buzz from this year’s event as in previous years, though most of the same things seemed to be around. perhaps there lies the problem; most of them did seem to be the same.”

But Notting Hill Carnival is still one of London’s great spectacles – and a great fashion show on the street. If you’ve never been it’s very much worth attending.

More pictures on My London Diary.

Notting Hill Carnival 2004

If you live in or near London there is a fairly good chance that you will be among the millions on the streets of Notting Hill today, although people sometimes come long distances for London’ and possibly Europe’s biggest festival. Many years ago I remember being a little surprised to see a poster advertising the event in St Denis on a visit to Paris, though post-Brexit it may be a little more difficult to travel here.

Although I’ve lived in the London area for most of the years carnival has been running, it was only around 1990 that I first went and experienced it. I’d probably been put off by the bad press it usually got, with the media making much of the crimes and battles with the police that occasionally took place.

But given the number of people attending and the relatively high level of policing the number of arrests at least in recent years is relatively low – and as a Huffington Post investigation into police figures shows, fairly similar to Glastonbury taking into account the number of people attending. In 2019 the number of arrests was dominated by those for drug offences, two thirds of the total, and relatively few for violent incidents, some of which were almost certainly simply reactions to heavy-handed policing. 23 years after the Macpherson report our police are still institutionally racist and certainly Cressida Dick did little to change that – we can only hope Sir Mark Rowley will do a better job, but my hopes are not high.

I’m not sure how many days I’ve spent at carnival over the years, but it is probably around 30, and I’ve yet to see any violence. Of course I’ve been offered drugs, though probably rather less frequently than in some other streets in London, and there was an almost omnipresent reek in any of the crouds announcing that what some were smoking wasn’t just tobacco. And although personally I kept to Red Stripe, I think by the end of some days I was experiencing something of a high from secondary inhalation.

I did one year encounter a rather incompetent pick-pocket. In 2004 I was standing still with some difficulty in a tightly packed crowd moving to the beat of a giant sound system and trying to take pictures when I suddenly became aware of a hand in my left trouser pocket. It wasn’t mine and I grabbed the wrist with both hands and slowly pulled it out to find it holding a wallet. But that wasn’t mine either and it was empty.

The main after-effect of carnival was always on my ears, which sometimes took several days to recover and for me to lose a ringing sound. In years when the bank holiday came of the 31st of August, this often meant I was back at work the following day, and it was difficult when I couldn’t hear properly. Sound at Notting Hill is phenomenal in places, with the ground and every organ inside your boddy vibrating, you feel it rather than hear it.

Of course there were some years I was away from London for various reasons – often because it wasn’t me who booked the holiday. In 2005 I was suffering badly from a knee injury but was still determined to go. I got ready and slowly limped my way to the station, where I had to climb a footbridge. A few steps up I collapsed in pain, pulled myself up and then came to my senses and realised I wasn’t going to be dancing on Ladbroke Grove that year, sat down and rested for a while before making my slow way home.

But I’ve not now been since 2012. I went on the Sunday, Children’s Day, stayed around three hours taking pictures and didn’t really want to return for the big day. So I didn’t. I’m not sure if its that I’ve changed – getting old – or if carnival has. But since then I’ve often been away from London but even when I’ve been here I’ve decided to go on a quiet country walk with family instead. So I don’t think I’ll be there today, but I might change my mind.

The pictures in this post were all taken in 2004, when I went on both Childrens Day which was the 29th August and the Carnival proper on the 30th, taking my son – then in his twenties – with me on Sunday. He didn’t want to go back the following day.