1968. The gates are forced open (Paris 1968!]

TURNER’S HOUSE in Performance.Mick JAGGER is TURNER PURPLE, jaded rock star.

1971 CARNIVAL . Here LEMMY debut, with HAWKWIND (MOTÖRHEAD)

1985. NIRVANA

1991. KURT COBAIN & COURTNEY LOVE. RAINCOATS reform. Tour with NIRVANA. Before KC shots himself.

Progressive rock. YES group practice mid-70s.

Peter Rachman, slum landlord

By the end of the 19th c. the houses dilapidated, lack of funds to upkeep them. Divided into flats, rooms.

Students. 
WREN COLLEGE. Young men destined for the Indian Civil Service (“Little India”).

Decline continued into the 1950s.

PETER RACHMAN came to the scene: this became the heart of his shady empire. Controversial, erratic MICHAEL X emulated him.

Flats, prostitution , gambling, night clubs… PR moved into property development in 1958. A network of 33 companies, a discovered by the MET.. MX and JOHNNY EDGECOMBE (Jazz promoter and the man who fired the shots that set off the PROFUMO AFFAIR) helped run. PR was prosecuted for brother keeping.

In 1960, PR had a deal with the KRAY TWINS.

Polish (b.1919). WW2 Resistance. From an estate agency in SHEPHERD BUSH  to an empire of up to 100 rundown houses. Rundown  and  subdivided.  Suppression of statutory rent controls. Arrival of Africans and West In.. He helps them find accommodation but overcharging  them and evicting them when he wanted. 

Insalubrious dwellings. A community of downtrodden white residents. Racism.
4  days of violence. Mobs congregating around POWIS SQ. and going on a smashing rampage against West-Indian homes,

First tension was building up.

“BYE BYE BLACK BIR£.KEEP BRITAIN WHITE” chanted the racists in LADBROKE GROVE

IN BRAMLEY RIAD, MAJBRITT MORRISON was called "Black man's trollop". She was also hit in the back with an iron bar and somebody from the mob called out: "Kill her!” She was arrested when confronted.

Outside a Blues party, BLECHYNDEN ROAD: chants of KILL THE NIGGERS.

Then, Sunday 31rst youngsters congregated around LATIMER ROAD STA. armed with crowbars and knives, to attack randomly black . They turned against the police: COPPERS ARE NIGGER LOVERS.

Monday, 1st Sept: JEFFRE HAMM, associate of OM  makes inflammatory statements in front of 700: NH being turned into a brothel… Some shout GO ON BOYS GET YOURS SOME BLACK!

White gangs roaming NH with broken bottles, iron bars… and petrol bombs being thrown into houses.

SEYMOUR MANNING, 26 years old African student, attacked in BRAMLEY Rd.

Tueday 2nd and successive days

Calm descends in the area, still some anti black chants though, a sea of broken glass, with blood everywhere…

NORMAN MANLEY, PM of JAMAICA visits

A burst of black pride. 
UNITED AFRUCA-ASIA LEAGUE and COLOURED PEOPLE PROGRESSIVE ASSOCIATION founded. “United we stand, Divided we are lumbered “.

The ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLOURED PEOPLE, of AMY DASHWOOD  GARVEY (MARCUS GARVEY’s widow) sets up a local office… From this group emerges the idea of a local CARNIVAL.

https://radicalteatowel.co.uk/radical-history-blog/amy-ashwood-the-other-garvey/ 

A carnival?.  Scroll down

In the wake of the riots this area became the focus of community action: I.e lack of safe playing areas

A goat was thrown into an abandoned area of  green grass (a good curry goat!)…protests… then council bought the parcel to establish a playground. It took years to get a hut and today’s equipment…

Born Trinidad. Moved to New York where she became a Communist. Caught up in the McCarthy trials she was imprisoned and then extradited to Britain in December 1955. Became a community organiser after the Notting Hill race riots in 1958. Started an indoor annual event which grew to become the Notting Hill Carnival. Contributed to the lives of West Indians in London. Died at home, Lisburne Road, Gospel Oak. Buried Highgate Cemetery, beside Karl Marx in what was for a long time an unmarked grave but then "a group of youngsters from the Afro Caribbean Organisation in King’s Cross ... raised money to buy a headstone in 1984." From the Camden New Journal.

CHRIS BLACKWELL’ IR was the first big independent label.

Ska, rocksteady, reggae , then folk, progressive glam rock 

JETHRO TULL (Chris Wright’s CHRYSALIS had an ISLAND licensing deal for JT), ROXY MUSIC

1963. BOB MARLEY.
And again in the 70s with THE WAILERS. EXODUS recorded here after BM being shot in Jamaica. Punk-reggae. Rock and reggae fusion.  BM was initially sceptical .“ PUNKY REGGAE PARTY recorded by BM, LEE PERRY and ASWAD to accompany JAMMING. “Catch a fire” album.
1973 Stones and BM & W recording at same dates.

1979. Punk girl group THE SILTS signed for ISLAND. Then quit for ROUGH TRADE.

ELVIS COSTELLO.

STONES, LED ZEPPELIN (Stairway to Heaven)

Here Carnival 76. ASWAD. THREE BABYLON. Rioting, evacuation. Later on they played in METRO YOUTH CLUB (TAVISTOCK CR.) surr. by police

VIRGIN was f. with an ISLAND distribution deal for M OLFIELD

1984. ZTT, offshoot label of ISLAND (stolen from VIRGIN). FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD

80s pop stars: Bono, Boy George, Ph.Coll., Duran D, Spandau, Sting, G.Mich, Status Quo, ASWAD…in benefit ofcETHIOPIAN  famine

But police was always around. Those hippies and bohemians that came to NH scored their  dope in ALL SAINTS ROAD…  The MR and other venues  were regularly raided, in a manner quite  disproportionate to the level of crime.

Eventually, in exasperation, FC led a protest March in 1970. Police tried to alter the route, trouble broke out, arrests, and 9 came to trial : THE MANGROVE NINE case. Jury found them innocent..

Conflict continued into the 80s. Drugs became a serious problem. It culminated in 1987 with FC’s arrest. 36 offices gave testimony ag. him but it was proved to be a trumped-up drug charge. Released. He was awarded compensation 3 years later, but he felt defeated. Unable to restrain the conflict between the youth and the met, that would escalate around CARNIVAL days. He sold the restaurant.

1992. SHAZNAY LEWIS, SIMONE RAINFORT, MEL BLATT met here. RON TOM  took tapes to BASING ST SARM WEST STUDIOD  and ZTT signed the girls… and the rest is history.

1964. AHDN. RINGO STAR

Walkway across A40 WESTWAY and railways.  See  next chapter

You can skip this part and head towards Portobello Road

The first Carnival, organised by local TRINIDARIANS took place in ST.PANCRAS TOWN HALL.

Claudia Jones, Trinidadian, human rights activist based in London, put on a BBC broadcasted indoor ‘Caribbean Carnival’ at St Pancras Town Hall back in 1959. She is widely credited with planting the seeds for Carnival in the UK by doing so.

An appetite for the indoor Caribbean carnival was fed by Trinidadian husband and wife booking agents Edric and Pearl Connor who along with many partners including the West Indian Gazette (which was founded by Claudia Jones) began promoting indoor events in halls dotted around 1960s London.

Palmer participated in the annual Notting Hill Carnival street festivities since its inaugural event in 1966, and had also been back to Trinidad to study the organisation and artistic forms of the carnival tradition there. He had been thinking of how the London event could be improved, by broadening it to make it more inclusive of all the Caribbean islands as well as of British-born black youth, and he was given the opportunity to begin implementing his plans after taking on the role of carnival organiser in 1973.

ANTHONY PERRY provided the  premises from which to operate at 3 Acklam Road. "I don’t think there was a Notting Hill Carnival as the world knows it until 1973 when Leslie Palmer really put some juice into it and turned it into an all-island event".

In the words of Tom Vague: "Under the administration of Leslie Palmer, the Notting Hill Peoples Carnival was transformed into an urban festival of black music, incorporating all aspects of Trinidad’s Carnival... getting sponsorship, recruiting more steel bands, reggae groups and sound systems, introducing generators and extending the route. The attendance went up accordingly from 3,000 at the beginning of the 70's to 30–50,000."

Situationist group KING MOB featured in his float MISS NOTTING HILL, a girl with a needle stick out f her arm, from which it poured ketchup… a send-up of society’s preoccupation with drugs.

1970.100.000 people attend the events.  Thanks to ALEX PASCAL and the BBC’s BLACK LONDIN radio station. 1976.250.000. Insensitive policing. Police protecting themselves with dustbins lids. Looting. 60 arrests. 450 injured.

1981.New policing methods tested for crowds control: deployment of snatch squads

1987. The worst riots. Indiscriminate violence. A man knifed to death. A man prowling bathe streets with a broken bottle which he shoves into people’s faces. Cara alight. Police charge

Strenuous efforts have been made during the 80 and 90s to ease the tensions between the Black community and the police, but there are still plenty of doubters among the area’s wealthier and mostly white residents, most of whom switch the alarm system and leave town for the CARNIVAL weekend.

WILLIAM HAGUE leader of the Opposition visits.2 mill