Notting Hill Carnival turns sixty

Carnival’s sixtieth year was marked with something more durable than a parade: a plaque at Westbourne Park Underground station naming 70 people who helped create it.

The station is not a neutral choice. Westbourne Park sits at the northern end of the parade route and is one of the main stations people use to get there — the plaque is at the top of the road, where the thing itself starts.

Two anniversaries, deliberately joined

The unveiling marks Carnival’s sixtieth, and also 70 years since London Transport began recruiting staff in the Caribbean. In 1956, unable to find enough people to run the capital’s expanding bus and Underground network, London Transport sent recruitment officers across the Atlantic. Those who came were employed right across the network, and many stayed for the rest of their working lives.

Carnival is a celebration of the Caribbean communities that have shaped our city, and the men and women recruited in 1956 helped create the transport system the capital relies on today.

Andy Lord, London’s transport commissioner

Whose names are on it

Costume designers, mas players, steel pan players and sound system operators — the four crafts Carnival is actually made of, rather than the officials who administer it.

The first two names listed are Claudia Jones and Rhaune Laslett. Jones, born in Trinidad and the founder of the West Indian Gazette, organised an indoor Caribbean carnival in London from 1959 until her death in 1964. Laslett was instrumental in setting up the Notting Hill street festival that grew into the Carnival.

That is two different events, five years apart, one indoors and one in the street — and putting both names first is an argument about where Carnival came from, made in brass.

Who put it there

The plaque was organised by the Nubian Jak Community Trust. Its chief executive, Dr Jak Beula, said installing it at Westbourne Park fulfilled a long-held ambition and would give people a way to learn about Carnival’s origins in Britain.

TfL, whose own history the plaque is half about, also ran a decorated bus in the Sunday parade and showed an exhibition of artwork by its staff at Paddington.

The number that explains the station choice

More than two million journeys are made on the transport network for Carnival each year, according to the TfL colleague network group that works on it.

Which is why the standing advice is to travel to Paddington and walk: the stations nearer the route cannot absorb that, and Westbourne Park itself — the one with the plaque on it — is among the first to come under pressure.