One of the biggest street parties of the year, Nottinghill Carnival never fails to impress. Don't miss it this weekend.
This webcam view will be covering the carnival live:
Live Nottinghill webcam
Carnival Background:
The roots of Carnival come from two separate but connected strands. Carnival began in January 1959 in St Pancras Town Hall as a response to the depressing state of race relations at the time. This carnival organised by Claudia Jones (a "Trini") who is widely recognised as 'the Mother of Notting Hill Carnival', was a huge success, despite being held indoors. The London Free School inspired festival was the first organised outside event in August 1966. The prime mover was Rhaune Laslett, who was not aware of the indoor events when she first raised the idea. This was a more diverse Notting Hill event to promote cultural unity but overlapping with earlier events by the involvement of Russ Henderson's steel band who had played at the earlier Claudia Jones events.
By 1976, the event had become definitely Caribbean in flavour, with around 150,000 people attending. However, in that year and several subsequent years, Carnival was marred by riots, in which predominantly Caribbean youths fought with police a target due to the continuous harassment the population felt they were under. During this period, there was considerable coverage of the disorder in the press, which some felt took an unfairly negative and one-sided view of Carnival. For a while it looked as if the event would be banned. Prince Charles was one of the few establishment figures who supported the event.
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