Marxist, Feminist, Revolutionary: Remembering Notting Hill Carnival Founder Claudia Jones

BY SAGAL MOHAMMED 25 JULY 2020

Notting Hill Carnival is a monumental event, attracting millions of revellers to West London every year to celebrate the city’s Caribbean community in all its glory. But what is now hailed as a beautiful symbol of multiculturalism (and the second largest street party in the world) was once a humble attempt at unifying a community violently torn apart by racism and xenophobia at the visionary hands of its founding mother, Claudia Jones.

Born in Trinidad in 1915, Jones dedicated her life to the fight against intolerance, inequality and oppression. She migrated to Harlem, New York, at the age of eight with her family, where she would grow up to become a political activist and pioneering journalist, giving a voice to the voiceless.

As a child, Jones had always been academically bright, but her education was cut short when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis during her teens – a disease that would plague her throughout her life. After graduating from high school, she worked various retail jobs before discovering her passion for writing, eventually landing an editorial role at a local newspaper. While on staff, she began to engage more and more in politics and activism – spurred on by the injustices of Jim Crow segregation and widespread poverty in African-American communities.

In 1936, at the age of 18, she joined the Young Communist League USA – a working-class youth organisation devoted to Marxism and Leninism – which later became the American Youth for Democracy during the Second World War. She would later become a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored people (NAACP) as well as the Communist Party USA.

As one of the most important Black feminists in history, Jones championed Black women and made no secret of her lifelong mantra: no peace can be obtained if any women, especially those who are oppressed and impoverished, are left out of the conversation. Her most prominent piece of work, an essay titled “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!”, was published in 1949, and helped to establish the foundations of intersectional feminism. She urged others to recognise the unique oppression faced by Black women specifically in order to create a more nuanced comprehension of the oppression of the race overall.

Nevertheless, Jones’s fight for freedom was far from smooth. She often found herself on the wrong side of the law. At the height of the McCarthy era, she was arrested several times for her activism and ties to communist organisations. In 1948, she was found guilty of violating the McCarran Act for being a non-US citizen who had joined the American Communist Party – and, as a result, served prison time at Ellis Island. She was then later convicted for what was described as “un-American activities” in a separate trial in 1955 and served an eight month sentence at the Federal Reformatory for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, before being deported to the UK in December of that year, when British colonial governor, Hubert Rance, denied her entry to Trinidad.

Jones settled in London at the height of post-war immigration, which included the arrival of the Windrush generation. Once again, she witnessed racial tension and anti-immigration rhetoric at its peak as chants of “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” became a common anthem in Britain. She quickly took on the role of protector and advocate for the 100,000 strong Caribbean community in the capital.

Jones believed that “people without a voice were lambs to the slaughter”, so made it her mission to create a platform for her people to be heard. In 1958, she founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s very first Black newspaper. However, that summer, Oswald Mosley’s White Defence League and racist gangs began attacking the Black community, brewing even more tension. Violent riots broke out on the streets of both Notting Hill and Nottingham in August, lasting for five nights over the bank holiday weekend. Jones’s unconventional response to the events of that summer became the birth of what we know today as Notting Hill Carnival.

A firm believer that “a people’s art is the genesis of their freedom”, she utilised the opportunity to uplift the community by celebrating its culture and heritage with the launch of a special showcase for Afro-Caribbean talent. Originally dubbed Claudia’s Caribbean Carnival, the first event took place at St Pancras Town Hall on 30 January 1959 and was televised by the BBC. The following six years would see the annual celebration staged in local town halls and community centres, where people would get together for a comparatively low-key version of the street extravaganza we indulge in today.

Artists, activists, writers and community leaders would fill the crowd alongside locals to display peace, friendship and fraternity. They’d gather to watch West Indian cabaret, Carnival Queen contests (a special Caribbean beauty pageant) judged by the likes of novelists Samuel Selvon and George Lamming, and even witnessed the Mighty Terror singing the calypso “Carnival at St Pancras”. Bonding over their love for the West Indies through authentic experiences, music and cuisine, Claudia’s Caribbean Carnival grew to become an event not only binding Londoners together but attracting tourists from across the world.

“Our Carnival [symbolises] the unity of our people resident here and of all our many friends who love the West Indies,” Jones wrote in a souvenir brochure. Today, that message rings true to the millions who fill the streets of Notting Hill to immerse themselves in the vibrant spectacle that is Carnival. Jones died aged 49 in 1964 as her struggle with tuberculosis reached its peak, but her legacy as a force for change and instrumental role in liberating Britain’s Black community lives on eternally.