Claudia Jones: Looking back on the life of the ‘mother’ of Notting Hill Carnival

The activist’s indoor Caribbean Carnival took place seven years before the first outdoor street festival in Notting Hill, Sabrina Barr writes

Communist leader Claudia Jones at the National Communist Headquarters in New York, 26th January 1948 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Today, Notting Hill Carnival is one of the largest street parties in the world, with more than two million people heading to West London each year to join in the festivities, making it the biggest event of its kind in Europe.

This year will mark the first time the carnival has taken place online in its 54-year history - the event could not go ahead in its typical fashion in light of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Notting Hill Carnival is a celebration of Caribbean culture, with the event boasting an array of talented street performers, delicious food and music throughout the August bank holiday weekend.

Although the first outdoor festival took place in Notting Hill in 1966, the origins of the event can be traced back seven years prior, to an indoor event set up by journalist and activist Claudia Jones.

Widely regarded as the “mother” of Notting Hill Carnival, Jones’s legacy lives on more than half a century after her death.

From being born in Trinidad and Tobago, emigrating to the US as a child and arriving in the UK after being deported, on the weekend of the 2020 Notting Hill Carnival, we take a look back at the fascinating life Jones led.

The early life of an activist

Jones was born on 21 February 1915 in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.

Then-Claudia Vera Cumberbatch, the youngster emigrated to New York when she was nine years old, her parents already having moved to the US in 1924, it states in a 2008 issue of Race and Class.

When Jones was just 12 years old, her mother died of spinal meningitis. Jones later suffered from tuberculosis, the consequences of which affected her health for the remainder of her life.

According to the Race and Class article, Jones’s family had so little money that they were unable to afford a graduation gown for her when her academic education came to end.

Jones ended up dropping out of high school early, it states on non-profit organisation and online resource Black Past. Jones soon discovered activism, a path that would lead her to becoming an eminent political and social activist.

A burgeoning journalistic and political career

In the mid-1930s, Jones became a member of the American Communist Party and the Young Communist League in the US.

The young activist was reportedly drawn to the Communist Party as a result of the organisation’s support of the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine African American boys who were falsely accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama in 1931.

In April 1931, eight of the nine teenagers were convicted and sentenced to death. However, their convictions were overturned in 1932 following protests, and the Scottsboro Boys eventually served more than 100 years in prison altogether.

While working as a journalist for the Young Communist League Weekly Review, Jones wrote on behalf of the young men’s legal defence.

Jones also wrote for The Daily World, the newspaper for the Communist Party, in addition to becoming editor-in-chief of the Weekly Review in 1943.

The activist gained prominence within the Communist Party in America, joining the National Committee of the Communist Party by the mid-1940s and later becoming the secretary of the Party’s Women’s Commission, it states in Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones, by Carole Boyce Davies.

However, Jones’s involvement with the Communist Party also caught the attention of the FBI, at a time when communism was seen as a particular threat in the US.

According to Boyce Davies’s book about Jones’s life, the FBI had a one-thousand page file on the activist, with Jones being arrested four times and serving nine months in jail in West Virginia.

Despite the decades she had spent living in the US, Jones was unable to obtain American citizenship and was deported. She was offered residency in the UK on humanitarian grounds.

Jones continued to make her mark as a political and social activist once settled in England, joining the Communist Party of Great Britain and founding the West Indian Gazette, the first black newspaper in Britain.

Jones championed intersectionality, emphasising the need to understand the oppression of black women. In 1949, she wrote an article for Political Affairs magazine about the issue.

Jones’s legacy as the ‘mother’ of Notting Hill Carnival

Before the first outdoor street festival took place in Notting Hill in 1966, an indoor “Caribbean Carnival” was held by Jones in 1959, an event that was televised by the BBC.

The event came about as a means to celebrate Caribbean culture amid discrimination and prejudice in the UK, which had intensified in the years following the emigration of many people from countries in the Caribbean following the Second World War.

Many of these people, who became known as the “Windrush generation”, settled in areas of West London, such as Notting Hill. Black Past outlines how a group of white working class men called the “Teddy Boys” were “openly hostile” towards them, with a wave of violent attacks taking place against the black community of West London in August 1958.

The violence culminated with the start of the Notting Hill Riots on 30 August, which saw hundreds of young white people attack the houses of West Indian residents on Bramley Road, West London. The riots lasted for around a week, resulting in the arrests of more than 100 people.

A year later, Jones’s Caribbean Carnival was held in St Pancras Town Hall.

On the website for Notting Hill Carnival, it says that Jones is “widely credited with sowing the seeds for carnival in the UK” with her indoor event.

“An appetite for the indoor Caribbean carnival was fed by Trinidadian husband and wife booking agents Edric and Pearl Connor who along with many partners including the West Indian Gazette began promoting indoor events in halls dotted around 1960s London,” it states.

Two years before the first outdoor Notting Hill Carnival took place, Jones passed away at the age of 49. The activist is buried in Highgate Cemetery in North London, next to the grave of Karl Marx.