The Notting Hill Carnival in West London has been a celebration of Caribbean culture for over 60 years, with hundreds of thousands of people congregating to fill the streets and watch colourful parades.
While just 1,000 people attended the first outdoor carnival in 1966, this year’s festival, which finishes Thursday, has drawn an estimated two million visitors.
Photos demonstrate the resemblance between celebratory scenes from the 1970s and 1980s and those from yesterday and Saturday, despite the significant increase in its popularity.
One photo from the 1977 carnival shows a crowded Ladbroke Grove neighbourhood in Notting Hill.
With the exception of the wooden barricades that this time around had been placed on The Elgin pub’s windows, the situation on Sunday was much the same.
Similar to how it was yesterday, the area surrounding the characteristic concrete staircase of the Lowerwood Court apartment building in Ladbroke Grove was crowded with people in 1976, the year of violent confrontations with the police.
At the carnival, dancing in the streets has long been a regular sight; photographs from 1976 and today demonstrate how little has changed.
The Metropolitan Police have made 38 arrests during this year’s carnival, the first in three years, as opposed to 353 in 2019, 74 in 2018, 313 in 2017, and 454 in 2016.
Although the two-day celebration has been held outside since 1966, its origins may be found in an inside festival put on by Trinidadian socialist Claudia Jones, who is often referred to as the “mother of the Notting Hill Carnival.”
In reaction to tense racial relations at the wake of the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, Jones organised the Caribbean Carnival, which was hosted in St. Pancras Town Hall in 1959 and then annually until 1966.
These demonstrations took place when the “Windrush” generation began to arrive in England.
Between 1948 and 1971, millions of people from Caribbean nations immigrated to Britain; some of them were treated with hatred.
The indoor gathering was organised by Jones in the hopes of uniting the communities after spending 30 years in the US advocating for racial justice before being deported to Britain in 1955 after being labelled “un-American.”
It included dance, music, and a beauty competition and was broadcast by the BBC. Beautiful images capture Jones having a good time at the event together with hundreds of others.
The black, Antiguan-born, aspirant lawyer Kelso Cochrane died after being assaulted by bigots in Notting Hill four months after the inaugural Caribbean Carnival.
His unsolved murder inspired another activist, Rhaune Laslett, to organise a children’s street fair in 1966, which turned into the first outdoor carnival when the well-known Russ Henderson Steel Band participated.
Throughout the 1970s, the carnival’s popularity grew steadily. By 1976, there were 150,000 people attending.
The numbers increased as a result of Leslie Palmer’s efforts, who organised the carnival from 1973 to 1975.
He organised sponsorship, added additional musicians, constructed several static sound systems, which have remained a highlight aspect of the festival, and organised sponsorship.
Significant altercations with police did occur throughout the 1970s, most notably in 1976, when the Daily Mail headlined: “Battle at the Carnival.”
Numerous people were detained as rocks, beer cans, and bottles were thrown at the police. To supplement the 1,000 cops who had been assigned to the shift, hundreds more had to be brought in.
According to the report at the time, 120 cops were hurt overall. According to reports, the police were trying to apprehend a pickpocket when the rioting started.
According to the Metropolitan Police, it cost £8.6 million to police the most recent carnival in 2019.
However, the event does generate an estimated £120 million for the economy and attract hundreds of thousands of people to London.
The official Notting Hill Carnival procession was started yesterday by members of the Emancipated Run Crew, who were wearing green as a symbol of respect for the Grenfell victims.