A history of resistance It was ever thus. The Establishment has been trying to clip or even ban the revels right from 1959, when they first started on a small scale. During the August holiday weekend in 1958, a major riot broke out in Notting Hill. Teddy boys went “n***** baiting” and joined “keep Britain white” mobs. They violently attacked men and women of colour, who fought back.
It was only in 2002 that confidential files revealed how racists were behind the civil unrest. In response, Caribbean, Ukrainian, Irish and African immigrants got together to dance and sing in public spaces. In the mid-60s, the carnival became an annual fixture. Claudia Jones, a communist and black rights activist, and Rhaune Laslett, part native American and part Russian, were the originators. Frank Crichlow, a Trinidadian who died in 2010, was part of the core group, as was the late Darcus Howe, that towering intellectual who wrote essays about prejudiced, discriminatory policing.
Crichlow knew Christine Keeler, John Profumo, Nina Simone, Vanessa Redgrave, and other counter-culture figures. This amazing man (and my dear friend) was unfairly hounded by the police all his life. They invaded his club, then his restaurant, framed him, and eventually had to pay him compensation. The last time I saw Frank, he was lost and finally beaten down: “They got me,” he said. “But they won’t ever stop black people or the carnival. We got the force in our blood”.
‘Carnival is our way of laughing and crying’
People living near Grenfell have that resilience. One of them told me: “Carnival is our way of laughing and crying, to say we suffer but we will survive. Miss Borwick and her sort live such small lives. The world frightens them. Immigrants frighten them. Dark skin frightens them. When we dance and sing they think it is a revolution come”. This was a woman whose best friend, she says, “vanished” in Grenfell’s flames.
Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/opinion/notting-hill-carnival-symbol-freedom-no-wonder-establishment-hates/
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