Notting Hill Carnival: The history behind London's annual celebration of Caribbean culture

This year, for the first time in the event’s 54-year history, Notting Hill Carnival is holding a virtual parade because of the Covid-19 pandemic and restrictions on large crowds, with live music performances and entertainment being made available online throughout the August bank holiday weekend.

The street festival – which is the largest in Europe – is known for its extravagant parade and joyful music, with hundreds of thousands of visitors joining in the celebration of Caribbean culture year after year.

Although the first outdoor festival in Notting Hill took place in 1966, the origins of the carnival can be traced back to the 1950s, when an indoor Caribbean carnival was organised shortly after the racially-motivated 1958 Notting Hill riots.

Here is how Notting Hill Carnival came to be the world-renowned spectacle that it is today, a community event that promotes “unity” and “togetherness” for those who take part.

Following the Second World War, many people from countries in the Caribbean emigrated to the UK. They became known as the “Windrush generation”, named after the Empire Windrush, the ship on which large numbers of West Indian people travelled to the UK in 1948.

Many of these people settled in areas of West London, such as Notting Hill. But, Black Past, a non-profit organisation and online resource, explains that following their arrival a group of young white working class men called the “Teddy Boys” were “openly hostile” towards them.

Despite leaders of the Caribbean community expressing concerns regarding the prejudice they were experiencing, no action was taken by authorities, Black Past states.

In August 1958, following years of prejudice and hostility, the black community in West London experienced a wave of violent attacks by white youths. The violence culminated with the start of the Notting Hill Riots on 30 August, which saw a crowd of approximately 300 to 400 young white people attack the houses of West Indian residents on Bramley Road, West London.

The year after the Notting Hill Riots, which resulted in the arrests of more than 100 people and lasted for around a week, a “Caribbean Carnival” was held in St Pancras Town Hall.

The event was organised by Claudia Jones, a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist who is widely known as the “mother” of Notting Hill Carnival.

Jones spent much of her life in the US, before being deported in 1955. After coming to live in the UK following her deportation, she founded the West Indian Gazette in 1958, said to be the first black weekly newspaper in the UK.

On the website for Notting Hill Carnival, it says that Jones is “widely credited with sowing the seeds for carnival in the UK” with her indoor event.

“An appetite for the indoor Caribbean carnival was fed by Trinidadian husband and wife booking agents Edric and Pearl Connor who along with many partners including the West Indian Gazette began promoting indoor events in halls dotted around 1960s London,” it states.

Seven years after Jones’s indoor “Caribbean Carnival” took place, the first outdoor festival was held in Notting Hill.

The event was the brainchild of Rhaune Laslett, the Notting Hill Carnival website outlines, a Londoner and activist of Native American and Russian descent.

“As an established community activist with a history of addressing and easing inter-cultural tension in the area since the violent race-riots of the 1950s, she set out to include the local West Indian residents in her event,” it states.

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The event was organised for children in the local area, with several musicians, including pan player Russell Henderson and his pan band members Sterling Betancourt, Vernon “Fellows” Williams, Fitzroy Coleman and Ralph Cherry, invited to perform.

The outdoor event set the precedent for Notting Hill Carnival up to the present day.

Notting Hill Carnival today pays strong tribute to its roots, while continuing to grow in popularity and renown on a global scale.

“Whilst Notting Hill Carnival is rooted in Caribbean culture, with its Windrush-generation influence remaining strongly evident, it is at the same time uniquely London – today’s London,” it states on the Carnival website.

According to the organisers of Notting Hill Carnival, it is “second only to Brazil’s Rio Carnival in size”, with crowds typically reaching more than a million people over the August bank holiday weekend.

Sound systems, parade participants and musical performers all feature heavily in the annual celebrations, with past performers including the likes of Lil’ Kim, Busta Rhymes and Jay Z.

When the organisers of Notting Hill Carnival announced this year’s live event had been cancelled, they said the decision was “not easy to make”.

“The reality of the pandemic and the way in which it has unfolded means that this is the only safe option. Everyone’s health has to come first,” the statement read.

“Notting Hill Carnival was founded to bring people together during trying times, and we intend to continue that legacy.”