Who Started the Carnival?

Everyone you speak with will have a different account of the Notting Hill carnival, when it started, who started it and where. The stories have common elements and major differences, especially on dates.

What's highlighted by each account is that Afro Caribbean history is truly oral in tradition and is very much alive today, with each account as valid as the next.

One point of view, is that carnival was started by the people who kept it alive on that other long journey, from the surrogate home-lands of the Caribbean to the mother-land - England...!!!

Which one individual can take credit for keeping carnival alive in the UK?

I say not one, but all.

Our parents came over to the 'mother country' on boats and planes with the carnival spirit alive and well in their beings. When here, working in the essential services, they had no choice but to unleash that spirit...first in their homes, then in "shebeens", then ultimately on a national scale - the Notting Hill Carnival...

Can any one person take credit? Or do we celebrate that Windrush generation and each generation after them!!!

Roy McEwen
IsisMas