By 2019, the last year it was held before the Covid-19 pandemic,Notting Hill Carnival brought an estimated 2.5 million people to the streets of Ladbroke Grove, London, to celebrate Caribbean culture and community. Held over two days in August, the extraordinary event stands as a testament to the vision of Trinidadian journalist and activist Claudia Jones, who brought Carnival to London in 1959, following the Notting Hill race riots the previous year.
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Televised by the BBC, the first edition was held indoors and featured live music, dance, and a beauty contest. In 1966, the Notting Hill Carnival moved outdoors, reclaiming the neighborhood formerly the stronghold of fascist Oswald Mosley’s Union Movement and neo-Nazi Colin Jordan’s White Defence League. In 1973, Carnival director Leslie Palmer introduced costume bands, steel bands, and stationary sound systems to draw the new generation coming up on reggae music.
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That same year, British photographer Chris Miles moved to London to study at the London School of Economics. “The social and physical challenges of the inner cities were major issues of concern at the time and I helped run a youth project in a deprived area near Waterloo,” he says.
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By the mid ‘70s, the UK was struggling with widespread unrest in the face of inflation, lost wages, frequent power outages, and increasingly overt racism with the growth of the National Front. Groups began to organize against fascism and for equal rights.
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