Notting Hill Carnival: Origins of a London Street Festival

Notting Hill Carnival is an annual Caribbean street festival held in west London over the August bank holiday weekend. Its roots lie in the indoor Caribbean carnival that Claudia Jones organised in 1959 after the Notting Hill race riots, and in the neighbourhood fayre that Rhaune Laslett led in Notting Hill in the summer of 1966. From those small beginnings it grew into one of the largest street festivals in Europe.

Background: Caribbean London and the 1958 riots

After the arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948, tens of thousands of people from the Caribbean settled in Britain, many in run-down, overcrowded parts of west London such as Notting Hill and North Kensington. They faced discrimination in housing and work, and hostility from far-right groups.

In late August and early September 1958 the area saw the Notting Hill race riots, when crowds of white youths attacked Black residents and their homes. The violence shocked Britain and left the Caribbean community feeling exposed and isolated.

Claudia Jones and the 1959 carnival

Claudia Jones, born in Trinidad in 1915, had grown up in New York and become a leading Communist activist there before being deported from the United States in 1955. In London she founded the West Indian Gazette in 1958, one of Britain’s first Black newspapers.

In response to the riots, Jones and her colleagues organised a “Caribbean Carnival” on 30 January 1959 at St Pancras Town Hall. It brought together calypso, steel pan music, dancing and a beauty contest, and parts of it were televised by the BBC. Its souvenir brochure declared that “a people’s art is the genesis of their freedom”. Similar indoor carnivals were held in London venues in the following years. Jones died in December 1964 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, next to the grave of Karl Marx.

These events were held in winter and indoors, but they drew on the tradition of the Trinidad carnival, a pre-Lenten festival shaped by French Catholic, African and later Indian influences and by the celebrations of formerly enslaved people after emancipation in the 1830s.

Rhaune Laslett and the 1966 street fayre

The outdoor carnival had a different origin. Rhaune Laslett, a community worker in North Kensington of Native American and Russian descent, wanted to bring together the area’s many communities, including Caribbean, Irish, Spanish and Portuguese residents, and to give local children some fun. In the summer of 1966 she organised the Notting Hill Fayre, a neighbourhood festival with costumes and music.

She invited Russell Henderson, a Trinidadian musician whose steel band had played at Jones’s indoor carnivals. Henderson’s band set off through the streets, and a growing crowd followed it in an improvised procession, much as revellers follow bands at Trinidad’s carnival. That walk through Notting Hill is often remembered as the birth of the street carnival.

Historians and organisers have long debated how to share the credit. Today both Jones and Laslett are widely recognised as mothers of the carnival, one for creating a Caribbean carnival in London and the other for taking it onto the streets of Notting Hill.

Growth in the 1970s

In the early 1970s the event grew steadily. Leslie Palmer, who became director in 1973, recruited more steel bands and costume bands, brought in reggae sound systems and found sponsorship, and the crowds increased sharply. The carnival became a major expression of Black British identity.

In 1976 heavy policing contributed to clashes between young Black people and officers at the end of the carnival; more than 100 police officers and many carnival-goers were injured. The events led to debates about policing and about whether the carnival should continue, but community organisations defended it and it survived.

Carnival today

Modern Notting Hill Carnival takes place on the Sunday and Monday of the August bank holiday. Its main elements are masquerade bands with elaborate costumes, steel bands, calypso and soca music, and static sound systems playing reggae, dancehall and other genres. The Sunday is a family day with a children’s parade. Crowds are usually estimated at one to two million, and the event is organised with large policing and stewarding operations.

Timeline

• 1958, August–September: Notting Hill race riots in west London.
• 1959, 30 January: Claudia Jones’s Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Town Hall.
• 1964, 24 December: Claudia Jones dies in London.
• 1966, summer: Rhaune Laslett’s Notting Hill Fayre; Russell Henderson’s steel band leads a street procession.
• 1973: Leslie Palmer becomes director and expands the carnival.
• 1976, August: Clashes between youths and police at the end of the carnival.

Why it matters

Notting Hill Carnival turned an area once known for racist violence into the site of a huge celebration of Caribbean culture. Its origins show how migrant communities in post-war Britain used music, art and festival to claim a place in the life of the country.