The two million-strong Carnival Occupation Army has just departed the scene of its last battle. I am happy to report that no fatalities occurred; however, one has to report that so far there have been 32 assaults on police, 46 possessions of an offensive weapon,70 arrests for Possession of cannabis and 18 sexual offences. Carnival organisers of this significant cultural event have deemed this year's carnival a success.[1]
The price paid by the residents of RBKC has been high. Three
hundred tons of rubbish have been left in the street. It should be noted that
normally, the dropping of rubbish in the street carries a £200 fine. The smell
of urine and poo still permeated the air because the Carnival army of
freeloaders decided to use the area as one gigantic toilet. It is not all bad
news for the residents who had to stay behind while others paid a lot of money
in hotels to get out. Some sold beer and food from their properties, which is
illegal. Others sold high-priced tickets for the use of their toilet. Other,
more sophisticated residents actually rented their flats and houses out as
two-day brothels. Who says sex and crime do not pay?
The Carnival itself is what it is. It has been producing the
same stuff for decades. You basically have a nice few floats and have over forty
sound systems that blast out mind-numbing music, if you can call it music,
during Monday's extravaganza, the volume managed to loosen the hinges of nearby
windows and made it impossible to sit in the front living room or bedroom. At
one stage, my TV started to vibrate in tune with the base speaker less than 30
metres away.
Not that worried, the crowd who were so high on drugs, such as
the so-called “Hippy Crack”, did not know what day it was. Having experienced
being close to a fifty-foot sound system, one is completely numb and deaf after
only a few seconds. It is also very difficult to appreciate the musical vibes
when you are sky-high after breathing in gallons of nitrous oxide. Thousands of
large gas canisters weighing in total of 4 tonnes have been collected from the
streets. Hospitals expect to have to treat a large number of young people for
nerve damage.
The so-called Hippy Crack, according to Gladstones, “When
inhaled, nitrous oxide produces a short-lived (typically 1 to 5 minutes)
feeling of euphoria and relaxation. The feeling has been described as being
‘happy drunk’. N2O works by interacting with the central nervous system. It
inhibits the action of the NMDA receptors, which produces an analgesic effect
by preventing the transmission of pain signals. It simultaneously stimulates
the release of endogenous opioids (naturally occurring painkillers in the brain
and CNS) and dopamine (the neurotransmitter responsible for pleasure,
satisfaction, and motivation), further enhancing the drug’s analgesic and
euphoric effects. Finally, nitrous oxide also inhibits the brainstem’s
respiratory centre, which increases CO2 blood levels (Gillman and Lichtigfeld)
and contributes to the overall ‘high’.[2]
With thousands of people zonked out on this Hippy Crack, it
was staggering that people were not injured or killed when the crowds
congregated in small areas. The DJ on Monday at one sound system on the corner
of Portobello Rd and Oxford Gardens started to panic because the crowd was
surging towards the front of the speaker system, causing dangerous crushing. In
the end, he told the crowd to go away for their own safety. For an event of
such magnitude, there were little to no safety procedures in place other than people
to bolt and look after themselves. It is only a matter of time before people
are crushed to death at this event. It does not take a genius to figure out
that nearly two million people in such a confined space is wantonly dangerous.
The irony of this year's carnival was that it was saved when
the most Conservative council in the United Kingdom spent a million pounds of local
taxpayers' money to make sure it went ahead. So why is this Carnival of
Vanities allowed to take place?
From a social standpoint, Carnival is useful as a safety
valve for the ruling elite. It is a
useful diversion from the problems of poverty, social inequality and the growth
of fascism. Carnival is also big business. It generates over £100m in revenue
and has cultivated a layer of the black middle class that has done very well
out of Carnival.
Secondly, the police use it as a training ground for the
implementation of crowd control measures such as Facial Recognition, which will
be trialled at this year's Carnival to be used on future social and political
movements.
Like other previous Carnivals, this year's event was non-political.
Carnival organisers and the media routinely issue platitudes and portray the Carnival
as a means to end racial divisions. The BBC ran its usual lip service to the radical
origins of the Carnival.
However, today’s Carnival has nothing to do with its origins.
How many of the people who danced knew that the racist murder of Kelso Cochrane
in 1959, which started the carnival, is still unsolved 66 years or that one of
the founders of the Carnival was a communist? Claudia Jones, whatever her
political limitations, deserves to be remembered as a pioneer of the struggle
against racism and capitalism.[3]
It is hoped that next
year's event is not so generously sponsored by the RBKC, which does not have
money to keep open libraries or youth centres but does for an event that has
become too big for its floats and sound systems..
