AFTER two years, since the Covid crisis stopped much mass activity, the Notting Hill Carnival will be back this weekend.

For decades, this event has brought millions of people from Britain and all over the world to celebrate unity, solidarity with those struggling for freedom and anti-racism.

Over many years there has been discussion and even disagreement as to its origins. Claudia Jones is often mentioned as the founder but prior to her death in 1964, there was not an annual street carnival in that area of London.

However, she was certainly the leading person to stage events under the name of Caribbean Carnival in 1959 and from then onwards which eventually evolved into the Notting Hill Carnival.

In 1958, the fascist Oswald Mosley began to hold hate rallies and street meetings in Notting Hill.

This was deliberate on his part as there was a growing community of Caribbean people there and just like his anti-semitic attacks and marches in largely Jewish areas of east London in the 1930s, his street meetings were an attempt to attack black families on the streets and in their homes and cause racist feelings among white people.

He successfully recruited numbers of young white men who joined in these attacks, but others in the area, like the late Eddie Adams appalled by Mosely’s racism, and the murder of Antiguan Kelso Cochrane, became politicised and joined the Young Communist League.

The Caribbean men and women did not put up with these attacks and seeing the police doing very little and even arresting some black men, they defended themselves and many, mainly Jamaicans, travelled up from Brixton in south London in solidarity with their Caribbean brothers and sisters.

This was very important as they now saw themselves not as Trinidadians, Barbadians, Jamaicans, or others but as West Indians united in the fight against racism.

Jones, a member of the Communist Party with 20 years’ experience as a leading Communist in the US before she was imprisoned and then deported to Britain in 1955, was more aware than most about unity among all black people.

She served on both the West Indian and international committees of her party until her death but the Communist Party leadership of the time failed to utilise her outstanding skills as newspaper editor, writer and speaker.

So while remaining an active communist she realised the need for a newspaper and in 1958, created the West Indian Gazette which was produced from rooms above a record shop in Brixton with the aid of willing young volunteers.

The Gazette featured articles against racism, supported national liberation struggles throughout the world, regular news about the Caribbean and supported the Soviet Union and China.

Realising the impact of the self defence of black people in Notting Hill, she worked with a number of outstanding Caribbean women like Amy Ashwood Garvey, Pearl Prescod, Pearl Connor, Nadia Cattouse and Corrinne Skinner Carter — wife of fellow communist Trevor Carter – to develop ways of promoting Caribbean culture, pride and unity.

Trinidadian Jones was familiar with street carnivals and the fact that it was an expression of freedom from slavery and a celebration of black identity.

At the same time a number of young black men arrested during the “Notting Hill Riots” faced legal costs as they were being brought before courts.

So there was a two-fold reason for her next plan — to raise money for court costs, and stage an event to celebrate unity and pride which led to the first “Caribbean Carnival” staged indoors at St Pancras Town Hall on Friday January 30 1959.

Sponsored by the West Indian Gazette, it featured leading Caribbean and Black British musicians , singers and dancers. There was a Caribbean Carnival Queen contest and it ended with a grand finale “jump up.”

Part of the event was televised by the BBC but unfortunately tapes of this no longer exist.

Buoyed by its success, Jones staged two carnivals in 1960 – one at Seymour Hall and the second at Kensington Town Hall.

The third took place in 1961 at the Lyceum Ballroom in the Strand. In 1962 it returned to the Seymour Hall and went on tour to the Manchester Free Trade Hall with the world’s foremost calypsonian the Mighty Sparrow (Slinger Francisco) as a special guest.

In following years, Jones was so occupied editing West Indian Gazette, speaking at countless meetings against racism and colonialism as well as visiting the Soviet Union and China that there were no more Caribbean Carnivals.

She died aged just 49 in December 1964. She had suffered extreme poverty as a youngster in Harlem including a year in a sanatorium with tuberculosis, harsh imprisonment in the US but spent her whole adult life as a communist dedicated to the liberation of humanity from capitalism, racism, women’s oppression, colonialism and imperialism.

The Communist Party is proud that a black working class communist woman sowed the seeds of her Caribbean Carnival that led to community leaders and activists in the late 1960s reviving her idea, leading to the annual Notting Hill Carnival we celebrate this weekend.

For more information on Claudia Jones check out The Political Life and Times of Claudia Jones published by Manifesto Press, £4.99.