Transnational Celebration and Defiance: Claudia Jones, the West Indian Gazette, and the Notting Hill Carnival

Introduction

Claudia Jones’ transnational and intersectional background influenced her ideologies and led her to found the Notting Hill Carnival as a form of transnational Afro-Caribbean resistance in England. Ultimately, the Notting Hill Carnival was created as a distinctly transnational event that sought to bring forth Black celebration in the wake of a period of intense Black suffering.

Though she spent just nine years in England, her time organizing there was critical in the history of Black radical organizing in London. The Notting Hill Carnival is one of the most prominent Caribbean Carnivals in the world. The West Indian Gazette and Notting Hill Carnival were the result of the transnational fusion of Jones’ experiences in Trinidad, the United States, and poor Caribbean immigrant communities in both Harlem and London. Moreover, her transnational identities as an African-American, a Caribbean woman, and a descendant of the greater African diaspora were fundamental in the founding of these two institutions.

Jones’ transnationalism and the manifestations of that transnationalism are characterized by her dually and triply diasporized identity, her involvement with the Communist Party of the United States, her deportation, the West Indian Gazette, and finally, the Notting Hill Carnival.[i]

Claudia Jones in North America

Claudia Jones was born in Port-of-Spain in British colonial Trinidad in 1915. Though she immigrated to the United States at the age of eight because of an economic recession in the colonial Caribbean, Trinidadian culture remained a key aspect of her identity. Her family moved to Harlem, a center for Black Caribbean culture in the United States. Thus, Jones grew up with the direct influence of Caribbean culture in Trinidad, as well as with diasporic Black Caribbean culture in the United States. Jones’s mother passed away just a few years after arriving in the United States, dying when Jones was just 12. Being in an immigrant family with one parent, her family struggled financially. As a result of poor living conditions in Harlem, Jones was diagnosed with tuberculosis at age seventeen, leaving her with a chronic illness that would follow her throughout her life.

Jones always had great intellectual curiosity and thrived in school, but was unable to attend her high school graduation for financial reasons. Growing up as a poor Black woman in the United States, Jones became very conscious of how her race, her gender, and her class affected her treatment and opportunities in society.[ii] She could never be bound to just one identity: “She was very clear about her membership in the Caribbean diaspora, as she was clear about her identification as an African American under the oppression of U.S. racism.”[iii] Her upbringing laid the groundwork for her ideas of triple exploitation and the diasporic nature of her lived experiences gave her a unique perspective on issues of race, class, and gender.[iv]

Claudia Jones is well-known for her involvement in the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA), where she first became politically active at the age of twenty-one. She originally joined the Young Communist League USA, a youth-oriented branch of CPUSA, in 1936 because of its unwavering support for the Scottsboro Boys (a group of African-American teenage boys falsely accused of raping two white women for racially motivated reasons who were tried by an all-white jury in Alabama, falsely convicted, and given over a hundred combined years in prison[v]) and its promotion of the anti-imperialist Hands-Off Ethiopia campaign, which opposed the invasion of independent Ethiopia by Mussolini’s Italy. As the only African country to evade colonial rule, Ethiopia was a symbol of Black strength on the world stage; the CPUSA’s campaign attracted Jones and other Black anti-imperialists. She quickly climbed the ranks within communist circles, serving as an editor for the Daily Worker and eventually secretary of the Women’s Commission within CPUSA. She became well-versed in organizing and radicalizing Black Caribbean immigrant communities through her time with CPUSA. Her communist beliefs were thus motivated by her principled support of international Black liberation and solidarity.

Eventually, the U.S. government took notice of Jones’ outspoken radical activism, and she was arrested in 1948. Being both an immigrant and a member of the Communist Party, Jones was convicted of “un-American activities” in 1951 under the Smith Act[vi], an anti-sedition act widely used during the McCarthy era to prosecute Communists.[vii]For these “crimes”, she was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, and, under the McCarran Act, which allowed for the investigation and deportation of immigrants involved in “subversive activities”[viii], she was deported to Trinidad in 1955, but the colonial governor of Trinidad barred her from returning, saying: “she may prove troublesome.”[ix] Trinidad was still colonized by the British Empire, so Jones was instead deported to Britain. Arriving in London, Jones had extensive Black radical organizing experience that she was ready to apply in Black communities there.

The West Indian Gazette

Jones arrived in London alongside a wave of immigration to London from the British Caribbean. A distinct Black population in London was just beginning to emerge. At the time of her arrival, there were a few Black newspapers in London, but “none had reached the high newsstands.”[x] Being a seasoned newspaper editor, previously working for the Daily Worker Weekly Review, and Negro Affairs in the United States, Jones founded the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News, abbreviated as WIG. Using the connections she forged as a Black leftist leader in the United States, Jones was able to bring WIG to the high newsstands and gain a wide readership. WIG was a transnational newspaper, reporting on the conditions and happenings of Black people worldwide, with a specific focus on the British Caribbean. It served as a way for West Indian people in London to stay connected with their culture and form an Afro-Asian Caribbean diasporic community in London. She brought together existing Black political and intellectual leaders in Britain, the United States, and other parts of the world, including Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Amy Jacques Garvey, and Donald Hines.

WIG was a “catalyst, quickening the awareness socially and politically of the West Indian, Afro-Asian, and their friends.”[xi] Making up less than 1% of the mainland British population at the time, the Black Caribbean community was not previously centralized or connected in an intentional way. WIG provided a place for the community to feel seen and connected to one another. It uplifted Black art, music, and writing that was overlooked by the White-controlled media. WIG “commented on the arts in all their forms, at a time when Black performers were getting the crumbs, which fell from the production tables. WIG was talking up Cy Grant (Guyana), Nadia Cattouse (Belize), Pearl Prescod (Tobago), Edric Connor and Pearl Connor (Trinidad) … among others.”[xii] By promoting media featuring Black immigrants, Jones created a greater sense of community and empowerment for the Black Caribbeans in London. Jones’ West Indian Gazetteactively uplifted the work of Black immigrants from around the world, thus solidifying WIG’s transnational role.

In terms of Jones’ organizing in London, WIG represented the intellectual side, while the Notting Hill Carnival represented the action-based side, with both using culture as a means of political mobilization. Jones theorized that the West Indian Gazette would occupy intellectual space and the Notting Hill Carnival would occupy physical space, helping to build solidarity within England’s Caribbean diasporic community.[xiii]

Racial Violence As a Backdrop for the Creation of the Notting Hill Carnival

A driving ideology of Jones’ was culture and celebration as a form of resistance amid racial violence. Amid a period of intense racial violence in London, WIG served as a safe place for the Black community: “From late summer to the autumn of 1958, the Gazette’s office did more business meetings with worried Blacks than did the Migrants’ Service Department.”[xiv] Not only did Claudia Jones write about the Black Caribbean community in London, but she also engaged in mutual aid efforts and organized people on the ground. Jones did not want the persecution to get to Black Caribbeans; she wanted them to celebrate their culture instead of hiding it. By celebrating Caribbean culture at the Notting Hill Carnival, Jones showed white supremacists that immigrants retained their pride and dignity in spite of violence and persecution.

In the late 1950s, prominent fascist MP Oswald Mosley held regular rallies in London with the rallying crying of “Keep Britain White,” and exacerbated post-war racial tensions. Organizations like the White Defence League (WDL) as well as Mosley’s Union Movement gained membership by appealing to working-class Protestant Whites who were upset by the increase in Caribbean immigrants to Notting Hill after World War II. They employed the enduring anti-immigrant rhetoric that immigrants were criminals who were stealing British jobs. A popular sentiment among these White men was “No Irish, no coloureds.” In the summer of 1958, the WDL held nightly rallies in immigrant neighborhoods in London, including Notting Hill. WDL was known to go into immigrant neighborhoods to engage in “hunts.”[xv] They were widely seen as responsible for the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, where mobs of hundreds of white people raided and attacked the homes of West Indians each night.[xvi] It was less a riot, and more a racially-motivated, targeted attack on Black immigrants by white supremacists. However, the police did not take these attacks seriously and did not approach them as being motivated by racism, as revealed by recently-declassified police documents.[xvii] These documents detailed how police bureaucrats decided to deny the presence of racism as a motivator for these attacks, despite overwhelming evidence of organized anti-Black violence.

These so-called riots culminated in the murder of Antiguan immigrant Kelso Cochrane in the summer of 1959. Cochrane was walking home in Notting Hill late one night in May 1959 when he was stabbed to death by a group of white WDL-aligned young boys. Though WDL never took responsibility for the murder, Black public opinion widely agreed that the WDL was involved in the killing. No arrests were ever made. This racially-charged murder was symbolic of the state of race relations in London at the time. Cochrane’s death brought more public sympathy for Black immigrants in London and led to a decline in support for Mosley.

Carnival’s Transnational Influences

In response to the immense suffering that the London Black Caribbean community was suffering, Jones sought to organize a cultural Carnival, a street festival filled with dance, music, food, and masquerade, to promote celebration in the face of intense racism. She believed Black immigrants needed a space to celebrate their culture instead of being targeted for it: she believed that “people without a voice were lambs to the slaughter.”[xviii] The Carnival, along with the West Indian Gazette, gave people a voice. Carnival has traditionally been tied to emancipation from slavery and cultural survival in the face of colonial white supremacy.[xix] Thus, it held great significance and was a culturally appropriate response to the continuous racial violence being perpetrated against Caribbean immigrants.

The first recorded Carnival-like celebration was in Trinidad in 1834 following the abolition of slavery in many British colonies: “[Carnival] emerged as a celebration on slave plantations, and represented the links to Africa that the slave masters tried so hard to beat and torture out of African-Caribbeans.”[xx] Carnival has always been highly transnational, fusing together European practices associated with Mardi Gras, and African, primarily Yoruba, traditions.[xxi] The precursor to Carnival was called Canboulay, a gathering of enslaved people that put out fires on nearby sugar cane plantations. While walking to put out the fire, the enslaved people would sing, dance, drum, and light torches. Ordinance No. 1 of 1894 and a subsequent series of laws outlawed Canboulay celebrations in Trinidad, including the use of Yoruba drums and throwing parties without a permit. Because of these laws, the Canboulay Riots of 1881 ensued, where countless Black Trinidadians sacrificed their lives for the survival of Carnival.[xxii] The outlawing of Canboulay sparked intense hatred of the Trinidadian colonial government. Therefore, Carnival is an inherently anti-colonial event, and Jones used it as such. It has always symbolized celebration amid the suffering of Black people, originally the abolition of slavery and eventually cultural survival after a year of racial violence.[xxiii] Jones drew from the anti-colonial tradition of resistance in bringing Carnival to London, using it to combat white supremacist violence, just as enslaved Trinidadians did in the 19th century.[xxiv]

By celebrating Caribbean culture, rejecting white British rhetoric, and engaging in a previously banned celebration, Jones used Carnival as a form of resistance and a symbol of strength, drawing from her Trinidadian upbringing: “Carnival was originally a Trinidadian tradition, she brought it to England as a form of Black resistance and to reach out to white communities amid period of great racial violence.”[xxv] The Carnival served as a unifying force between Black and white community members in Notting Hill, and also actively fought the effects of white supremacy by raising funds for the families of victims of those killed by the white mobs.

Notting Hill Carnival originally began with the name “Caribbean Carnival” and was held at the same time as Carnival in Trinidad— during British winter. The first few Carnivals were held indoors in St. Pancras Hall.[xxvi] Mostly WIG readers and those who frequented Jones’ Caribbean intellectual circles were in attendance. These early Carnivals featured a small crowd, dancing, and Caribbean music. Eventually, the Carnival gained wider momentum and transitioned into a street festival in the summer. Today, it’s one of the most well-known Caribbean carnivals in the world, attracting a global audience that travels to London to attend each year.

Conclusion

Growing up as a Trinidadian immigrant in the United States in a primarily Black immigrant neighborhood, Jones’s transnationality stems from the combination of her identities as a descendant of the African diaspora, a Trinidadian, a Caribbean immigrant, an African-American, a deported radical, and a citizen of the British Empire. The Notting Hill Carnival, preceded by the West Indian Gazette, is the culmination of these identities. The Carnival was created through Jones’ organizing skills learned in the United States, and Carnival itself is a Caribbean festival descended from African tradition. Jones brought it to London to be celebrated in an immigrant neighborhood.

Though she’s most remembered for the Notting Hill Carnival, Jones also made significant contributions to Communist and Black Feminist thought, namely with her discussion of intersectionality in An End to the Neglect to the Problems of the Negro Woman, forty years before the term was coined. She brought gender into consideration within the CPUSA and gained women equal respect within the party.[xxvii] She may not be well-known or widely studied, but she has secured her place in history, both literally and physically, as she lies buried in London’s Highgate Cemetery in the grave to the left of Karl Marx.