What did the first Notting Hill Carnival look like?

Every year around two million people rush to just one small street in London to take part in Notting Hill Carnival.

The area, famous for its brightly painted houses and the setting for rom coms, has hosted the festival every year over the August bank holiday weekend since its start in 1966.

But the event was born from racial violence which erupted in Notting Hill in 1950s.

The original event wis said to have been created by Trinidadian human rights activist Claudia Jones with social worker Rhaune Leslett organising the original town hall event in January 1959.

Leslett said he wanted to create a space for children of the West Indian community to enjoy following the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush.

In May that year, 32-year-old Antiguan-born Kelso Cochrane was killed in a racially motivated attack in Notting Hill.

It came off the back of some of the worst nights of racially motivated violence the UK had seen in 1958.

Hundreds of white men took to the streets and fire bombed black people’s homes, with violence raging for five days.

The organisers of the original event realised more had to be done to life the spirits of the black community.

The carnival began to fully take shape in 1966, combining elements of Claudia Jones’s 1959 celebration.

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