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26/7/05
7:48 pm
Page 63
Drum: INSIGHT 63
Carnival
In Context
The Mayor’s Carnival Review process, and its aftermath,
has brought about a very public reflection on the state
of London’s Notting Hill Carnival, writes sociologist
Colin Prescod And it is not that we’ve come out of the
whole process with a common voice – but we should
have come out of it with some common understandings.
T
his is indeed an historic moment for our carnival and for the carnival movement
in the UK. But beware – the thing about historic moments is that they are
moments in which things can either get much better or much worse. Historic
moments are decisive moments, and I am here to sum up the arguments and put a little
fire in your belly same time. Carnival is here, in England, because we are here in England
and Carnival is part of us. And everybody knows why and how-come we are in England!
So, we plant Carnival in England. But it takes root here for reasons that are very distinctive,
when contrasted with its Caribbean roots. Bear with me, those who already
know this history inside out.
“Where we comin’ from”
In the beginning – in the Claudia Jones and Rhaune Laslett organised
beginning, Carnival was useful and promoted as a kind of ‘healing’
thing – initially, in the period immediately following the 1958 Notting
Hill (race) riots, indoors, as an annual event, and, eventually, in the
late Sixties, on the streets, as the most joyful part of the little Notting
Hill Fair. But by the late 1970s this thing had taken on a proportion
and a social significance that no one would have anticipated. What
had been a few hundred and then a few thousand people at
Carnival became hundreds of thousands and even millions –
and that’s just in London. Leeds and Manchester
and Birmingham and any number of other cities
brought hundreds of thousands more to the
carnival movement in the UK. And the »