Published
Thu, Feb 2, 2023, 12:20
- In 1959, the Trinidadian activist held an event at St Pancras Town Hall that was a precursor to Notting Hill Carnival, among other events.
Claudia Jones, the civil rights activist who organised London's first Caribbean carnival, is being commemorated with a blue plaque from English Heritage.
The prestigious plaque will sit outside a house in Vauxhall, South London, where Jones lived for four years. Born in Trinidad in 1915, the journalist, feminist and activist is perhaps best known for hosting an event at St Pancras Town Hall in 1959 that became a precursor to UK carnival culture, inspiring events in Leeds, Bristol and, most famously, Notting Hill in West London. Jones's original event was broadcast by the BBC.
Today, Notting Hill Carnival—which was founded in 1966 by local resident and social worker Rhaune Laslett—is Europe's biggest street festival. Laslett was commemorated with a blue plague in 2011.
"Claudia Jones is an inspiration to so many," Linett Kamala, board trustee and director at Notting Hill Carnival, told Resident Advisor. "This includes her life-long activism against racism, establishing the first Black newspaper in the UK and bringing Caribbean culture to a wider audience through her organisation of the final annual Caribbean carnival in Britain in 1959 at St Pancras Town Hall."
In 1958, Jones started the West Indian Gazette, which, among other things, promoted various other carnival events around London. They were held to unify Afro-Caribbean communities and celebrate multicultural Britain in the face of racial violence inflicted on the Windrush Generation.
Read more about Jones, Notting Hill Carnival and the street festival's profound impact on UK dance music in this feature from last year, written to celebrate the 56th edition.
Jones, who died in 1964, is buried at Highgate Cemetery in North London. She's one of six people (and five women) getting a blue plaque in 2023, including the Suffragette Emily Wilding Davison and Ada Salter, the first Labour woman elected as a mayor in Britain.