A tradition that began as an act of defiance is now being absorbed by authority. Sixty years after the initial Notting Hill Carnival, which burst onto the streets of West London in rebellion, the event takes place under conditions the founders could never have imagined. This year, close to two million people participated, while 7,000 police officers, drones, and facial-recognition cameras monitored the crowds. A security operation costing up to £20 million surrounded the area. Over 330 individuals were banned from attending before the event started, and by the end of the first day, police had made 169 arrests. The difference between Carnival’s origins and its current state is not just stark; it is a matter of history. Carnival was born from a riot; today, it is managed as if it could be another riot.
To understand what has been done to Carnival, one must
return to the figure who helped bring it into being: Claudia Jones. Her life,
politics, and purpose illuminate precisely what is being erased and why.
Claudia Jones: A Revolutionary Life Against Empire
Claudia Jones wasn't a “community organiser” in the modern, sanitised
sense. She was a communist, a Black internationalist, and a leading
anti-imperialist thinker of the mid-20th century. Born in Trinidad and raised
in Harlem, she was radicalised by the racism of the Depression era. Jones
joined the Communist Party USA and became a prominent writer on issues of race,
gender, and class. Her 1949 essay “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the
Negro Woman” is still a key text in Black Marxist feminism.
Her political activism led to state repression, with the
U.S. repeatedly detaining, imprisoning, and finally deporting her in 1955 amid
McCarthyism. Britain only permitted her entry because Trinidad was still a
colony; she arrived in London as a political exile. There, Jones found a Black
community facing problems eerily similar to those in her homeland: racist
policing, housing discrimination, low wages, and rising violence from far-right
street gangs. She founded the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s first major Black
newspaper, not just as a cultural platform but as a means for political
activism. It became a space for agitation, organisation, and awareness-raising.
In response to the 1958 Notting Hill race riots and the 1959
murder of Kelso Cochrane, Jones opted for action rather than appeals to
authority. She organised an indoor Caribbean carnival at St Pancras Town Hall
in January 1959 to directly address racist violence. The event celebrated
Caribbean culture and made a political statement: Black people had the right to
occupy public space, be seen, express joy, and remain unafraid. The roots of
carnival in Caribbean masquerade traditions—created by enslaved and colonised
people to mock the planter class highlighted its political significance.
Carnival was never just entertainment; it was a cultural act through which the
oppressed found a voice in a context where theirs was otherwise suppressed.
Today, this history is hidden beneath barricades, drones, and biometric
checkpoints.
The outdoor street Carnival that emerged in the 1960s and
1970s was influenced by the same challenges Jones faced: police harassment,
racial violence, and the British state's refusal to recognise Black Britons in
public life fully. Carnival served as a form of resistance, asserting existence
against erasure, collective identity against isolation, and joy against
repression. It was never meant to be 'managed' but to be visible. In its early
years, Carnival often confronted police, who viewed it as a threat instead of a
cultural celebration. The way police respond to Carnival has always reflected
the government's attitude toward Black communities. What has evolved is not the
suspicion itself but the mechanisms behind it.
The increase in policing at Carnival is a systemic issue,
not just occasional. Arrests have steadily risen each year—209 in 2022, 308 in
2023, 355 in 2024, and 528 last year. The Met publicly celebrates the success
of live facial recognition, which identified 98 individuals in 2023 and
resulted in 61 arrests. This year’s operation was the largest so far. The
stated reasons are always the same: ensuring public safety, addressing knife
crime, sexual assault, and preventing a minority from ruining it for everyone.
However, this framing is deeply connected to a historical pattern of viewing
Black communities as suspicious. Carnival is uniquely labelled as a security
threat among Britain’s major cultural events. The policing tactics resemble
counter-insurgency measures more than crowd control.
Even senior police officials acknowledge the double
standards involved. Former detective chief inspector Mike Neville has described
Carnival as the country's worst example of a two-tier policing system. The
London Assembly’s Police and Crime Committee warns that repeatedly diverting
officers to police Carnival disrupts neighbourhood policing throughout the
capital. The operation expands each year, funded by millions from City Hall.
Each year, politicians and media repeat the same pattern: celebrating “vibrant
multiculturalism” while using surveillance and coercion tools against the
communities being celebrated. Carnival is lauded as a symbol of diversity but
also policed as a potential source of unrest.
Commodification Wears a Friendlier Face
If policing serves to neutralise Carnival’s radical roots,
then commodification symbolises capitalism’s role. Each year, media coverage
reduces Carnival to an economic event focusing on tourism income,
transportation issues, and hospitality profits. The “Carnival Economics”
project highlights how this reduction neglects the community-based
infrastructures—steel bands, mas camps, cultural centres like the Yaa Centre that
support Carnival year-round. This form of erasure is subtler; it doesn’t
involve drones or facial recognition but instead redefines Carnival as merely a
“cultural asset,” a tourist draw, or a contributor to GDP. The political
messages the defiance, the assertion of presence, the Caribbean working-class
history are erased. Carnival becomes a brand, and its creators fade into the
background.
Securitisation and commodification are not opposing forces
but are interconnected. They jointly symbolise how a working-class, anti-racist
cultural legacy is absorbed into the administrative and economic systems of a
state and market that did not originate it and are keen to neutralise its
significance. Carnival emerged from Claudia Jones’s revolutionary activism,
Caribbean anti-colonial traditions, and Black Britons’ refusal to be invisible.
It served as a declaration of presence in defiance of a hostile system.
Today, that tradition has adapted to absorb dissent. It
encloses Carnival with police, drones, and biometric tech. It markets Carnival
as a tourist destination. It advocates multiculturalism while viewing Black
presence as a security threat.
The steel bands continue to play. The crowds keep arriving.
Yet, the political significance has been stripped away. An event created
because Black Britons faced attacks for claiming public space now relies on
thousands of officers and biometric systems to control who can occupy that
space. This is not true stewardship. It’s the gradual replacement of a
community’s self-organised resistance with the machinery of the very state it
once challenged.
Carnival Pays Lip Service to the Memory of Grenfell
Every year, during Notting Hill Carnival, a moment is set
aside to remember Grenfell. Green hearts decorate banners and sound systems, a
silence is observed, and tributes spread among the crowd. Those who participate
do so genuinely. However, on an institutional and political level, Carnival now
only superficially acknowledges Grenfell. The act of remembrance has been
stylized, losing its deeper significance, and has been absorbed into the
official story that has ultimately neutralized the spirit of Carnival.
Grenfell was more than an isolated tragedy; it was the
unavoidable outcome of a political system that considers working-class, racialised
communities expendable. Policies such as deregulation, outsourcing,
cost-cutting, disrespect for tenants, and the dismissal of warnings set the
stage for the disaster. The government's response, characterised by delays,
confusion, and a lengthy inquiry that has yet to deliver justice, mirrored this
same underlying attitude. Ultimately, Grenfell symbolises a form of social
murder.
Carnival’s official remembrance is mainly symbolic,
providing a platform to acknowledge grief without addressing responsibility.
The green heart signifies acceptable mourning, enabling recognition of loss
while avoiding the acknowledgment of the systemic issues behind it. The
political statement of Grenfell that the system endangers residents at home and
surveils them in public is intentionally left out. Carnival can grieve, but it
cannot openly assign blame or accuse.
This is the pattern of managed memory. The entity that uses
drones and facial recognition to police Carnival also oversees the unresolved
aftermath of Grenfell. It allows commemoration because, when stripped of
politics, it is harmless. However, what it cannot accept is the link between
the two: that the same communities whose cultural practices are seen as
security threats were the ones left to burn in a tower with flammable cladding.
Carnival recalls Grenfell. However, unless remembrance turns
into blame—unless sorrow shifts into activism, the memory will stay a tradition
rather than a true confrontation. The green heart may continue to beat, as long
as it does not reflect on the systems that enabled Grenfell and now encircle
Carnival.
The Bands Played On
This year, as the procession arrived at Ladbroke Grove fire
station, firefighters in uniform paid their respects to Grenfell. They formed a
solemn line, heads bowed and saluting the memory of the 72 victims of the tower
fire wrapped in flammable cladding. It was a sincere display of dignity by
workers who witnessed the tragedy firsthand, carried bodies from smoke-filled
stairwells, and continue to live with the trauma. Meanwhile, around them, the
bands played on.
This isn't disrespect from Carnival’s participants but
reflects the choreography imposed on Carnival itself: remembrance is allowed
only if it doesn't disrupt the spectacle. The music keeps playing because
Carnival has been redesigned to absorb grief without making it political.
Firefighters pause; the crowd pauses; the sound systems lower the volume
briefly, then the rhythm continues, as if grief were just another programmed
beat in the entertainment. Grenfell turns into a ritual rather than a true
reckoning.
The firefighters’ tribute highlights a contradiction. While
those who risked their lives see Grenfell as a social murder caused by
deregulation, outsourcing, tenants' contempt, and a political economy that
disposes of working-class lives, Carnival’s official memorial remains only
symbolic. Green hearts, brief silences, and respectful nods are permitted
because they avoid naming the responsible parties.
The issue isn't the bands performing; they're merely a
symptom. Carnival has become a commercialised event, stripped of its political
roots Claudia Jones’s resistance, fighting racist violence, and highlighting
Black working-class communities—now seen as mere historical background.
Grenfell is recognized, but only as a sad event, not as a critique of the same
system that now encircles Carnival with drones and facial recognition
technology.
The firefighters attempted to show respect. They genuinely
tried. However, the surrounding machinery made their tribute merely symbolic,
not confrontational. The music restarted because Carnival can mourn, but it
cannot accuse. Until accusations can disrupt the rhythm, Grenfell will stay a
tolerated memory for the state—as long as the bands keep playing.
Jones recognized that culture is inherently contentious. It
is a site of ongoing conflict. Carnival was never intended merely as a
celebration of diversity; it was a political statement affirming that Black
working-class life in Britain would not be marginalized, erased, or
intimidated. The issue is not that Carnival has always been subject to
policing—that was part of its history—but that this policing has become
normalized, integrated into the frameworks of “public safety,” “crowd
management,” and “economic impact.” This shift has obscured Carnival’s radical
roots, which institutions once challenged it.
