Analysis of Metropolitan Police figures and crowd estimates suggests arrest rates at this year’s Notting Hill Carnival were roughly twice those recorded at the Unite the Kingdom march that brought thousands of right‑wing demonstrators to central London.
The Met recorded 423 arrests over the two days of Notting Hill Carnival last month. By contrast, police detained around two dozen people during the Unite the Kingdom demonstration in central London, with media reports alternately citing 24 and 25 arrests after clashes between protesters and officers. Using the Met’s higher estimate of 150,000 attendees at the Unite march, that equates to about one arrest per 6,250 people (roughly 1.6 per 10,000). For Notting Hill, an often‑cited attendance figure of about one million over two days yields about one arrest per 2,364 people (4.3 per 10,000).
Those calculations, however, depend on disputed crowd estimates. The Unite march organiser, anti‑immigrant activist Stephen Yaxley‑Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson, posted on X that three million people attended; the Met rejected that figure as "impossible," saying its counts are based on real‑time monitoring and that London’s infrastructure could not support such numbers. Notting Hill Carnival is a free, non‑ticketed street festival sprawling across a neighbourhood, and attendance estimates for the two‑day event typically range from one to two million and are also contested.
Police said a large contingent of officers were deployed to manage both events but used different tactics. For the Unite the Kingdom march, the Met said it had 1,000 officers on duty and brought in an additional 500 from other forces. Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist said many people at the march exercised lawful rights to protest but that "there were many who came intent on violence," describing physical and verbal attacks on officers and attempts to breach cordons. The force said at least 26 officers suffered injuries, including broken teeth, a possible broken nose, a concussion, a prolapsed disc and other head injuries, and that bottles, flares and other projectiles were thrown at officers.
At Notting Hill Carnival, police deployed large numbers of uniformed officers to line key routes, erected knife arches at busy entry points and employed live facial recognition technology to identify people on watch lists. The Met said 52 of that festival’s arrests were the result of identifications using live facial recognition. No such technology was reported to have been used at the Unite march.
The methods used, the purposes of arrests and the character of offending at each event differed. The carnival’s most common reasons for arrest in recent years have included cannabis possession, possession of offensive weapons and drug supply. The Met said arrest totals at Notting Hill have trended upward since the early 2000s; the force recorded more than 5,000 arrests at the event across the past two decades (2005–2024). Organisers of Notting Hill Carnival have said they have worked with the police to improve safety measures, while the Mayor of London has emphasised the festival’s economic contribution and cultural significance.
Political leaders condemned the disorder seen at the Unite march while affirming the right to peaceful protest. Labour leader Keir Starmer posted on X that people have a right to peaceful protest but that assaults on police and intimidation on the basis of background or skin colour would not be tolerated. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said those taking part in criminal activity would "face the full force of the law." London Mayor Sadiq Khan thanked officers for their response and called the violence "completely unacceptable." Reform UK leader Nigel Farage described the injuries to officers as "horrendous" and said there was no defence for the violence seen.
The Met indicated the arrests made at the Unite march were only the start of an investigation and said it was identifying those involved in disorder so they could expect "robust police action in the coming days and weeks." The force also pointed to a recent demonstration tied to the proscribed group Palestine Action, at which it made 890 arrests during a Parliament Square protest on Sept. 6, as an example of another recent event that produced large numbers of detentions relative to attendance.
Analysts and officials caution that comparisons of arrest rates across different mass gatherings are sensitive to the underlying attendance estimates and to differences in policing strategies, legal context and the nature of incidents at each event. Notting Hill Carnival is a longstanding, unticketed cultural festival with a broad demographic footprint across a neighbourhood; the Unite march was a single‑route political demonstration that drew activists and counter‑protesters into concentrated clashes in central Westminster.
The Met said it will continue post‑event investigations for the Unite march and for incidents arising at other large public gatherings. Any prosecutions or charging decisions will be handled through the usual criminal justice processes.