Three held for attempted murder during carnival

DANCERS dolled up in feathers, flamboyant performers and elaborate floats filed through west London yesterday as the Notting Hill carnival — Europe’s biggest street party — pumped up the volume on its Caribbean rhythms.

Sunny weather and a public holiday drew hundreds of thousands of people to the free event, which celebrates West Indian culture.

This year’s theme was Set All Free, marking the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade in the British Empire.

The carnival has been marred by violence in previous years. Two men were murdered in 2000, and memories of riots in 1976 still linger.

London’s Metropolitan Police deployed about 11,000 officers this year, and were using metal detectors at underground railway stations to net knives and guns.

At least 19 people suspected of planning to engage in violence at the carnival were arrested over alleged offences including robbery ahead of the event, police said Saturday. By 4pm yesterday there had been 98 arrests over the carnival period, whereas last year there were 168 arrests on the Monday alone.

Three people arrested on Sunday on suspicion of attempted murder after a stabbing on Ladbroke Grove are still in custody but have not been charged as yet.

There had been 124 reported crimes during the street festival by 2pm yesterday. The figure at the same point last year was 161. Officers from the Specialist Firearms Unit arrested three men on suspicion of possession of firearms at 3.20pm yesterday on Bayswater Road after their vehicle was identified by automatic number plate recognition technology.

Seventy people were arrested on Sunday, down on the previous year’s figure of 109 Sunday arrests.

The festival was launched in 1959 by post-World War II immigrants from what were then Britain’s Caribbean colonies, as a community act of defiance following ugly race riots the year before.