Next week, English Heritage will finally unveil its long-awaited Claudia Jones plaque on a house in Meadow Road near Vauxhall in south London, where the indefatigable activist once lived.
Hopefully, the wording on the plaque, as we have been unofficially informed, has been amended, thus avoiding any association of Jones with Notting Hill Carnival.
From 1959 to 1964, when she passed away, Jones and her supporters organised six indoor carnivals across various venues in London, but none within the Notting Hill area. Therefore, while she deserves the title of Mother of Caribbean Carnival, she had no involvement in, nor was she or her Caribbean Carnival the inspiration or motivation for the creation of the street carnival that began in Notting Hill after her death.
Pigeonholing Jones’ legacy within the context of founding Notting Hill Carnival could be argued to be Afriphobic, as it reduces her legacy to a Carnival which today is mostly about revelry and minimises the presentation of Jones was a serious person.
She is possibly the greatest British African activist, and deserves to be better remembered as an avowed Communist; anti-racist; political, community and labour activist; a radical, womanist, editor, publisher, or a tireless campaigner.
Earlier this year, the image of a Jones plaque was made public. The African identity advocacy group TAOBQ (The African Or Black Question), and others, wrote to English Heritage pointing out that Jones was not involved in the founding of the Notting Hill Carnival. In our letter – TAOBQ Request English Heritage Change The Erroneous Wording On Claudia Jones Plaque – we stated that the “founding spirit of Notting Hill Carnival” text was an artifice:
“We are not buying the choice of the supposedly clever use of the ‘founding spirit of’ phraseology in a bid to avoid stating that erroneous but often repeated ahistorical description of Claudia Jones being ‘the founder’ of Notting Hill Carnival.”
It would therefore be to English Heritage’s credit if it has indeed amended the plaque’s text to avoid making any connection with the prevalent factoid which places Jones, who has many more deserving accolades, as a central figure in the development of Notting Hill Carnival.
Although English Heritage CEO Kate Mavor has not yet replied to our recent letter asking if the text has since been amended, an unofficial sources has informed us of an amended text that does not mention any link between Jones and Notting Hill Carnival.
We hope that this is true, because we have pointed out to Mavor and her colleagues at English Heritage that the claim that Jones was a founder or a precursor of Notting Hill Carnival is false and misleading. Mavor herself admitted in her reply to our previous letter that:
“There was no intention to indicate either that she founded the Carnival or that there was a direct organisational link between the events she ran and what later developed in Notting Hill (we are aware that such claims may have been made in the past, and are not well founded – and have deliberately sought to avoid repeating them). The phrase ‘a founding spirit’ is intended to indicate a more distant, inspirational, level of involvement and also – importantly – that her activities were one of a number of cultural precursors to the Carnival.”
After such an admission, why would English Heritage want to imply a vague and unsubstantiated “more distant, inspirational, level of involvement” between Jones and Notting Hill Carnival? Why not just acknowledge her for her Caribbean Carnivals, without any reference to Notting Hill Carnival, instead of continuing the ubiquitous but false association.
On October 5 we expect that the unveiled plaque will do justice to Jones’ legacy, and will not associate her with Notting Hill Carnival.
Because to do so would be to embed a falsehood within the public realm. If that’s the case, anyone who supports such a plaque without question, along with those who privately agree with us but don’t want to publicly say that Jones was neither the founder nor a participant in the development of the street festival known as Notting Hill Carnival, would be complicit in the continued propagation of this falsehood.
Whilst Mahatma Gandhi may not be our favourite person because the Afriphobic views he expressed whilst living in South Africa, this quote of his is most apt:
“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.”
