Joshua Sur­tees

"Make it car­ni­val," sang Bun­ji Gar­lin on his col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ma­jor Laz­er. And his re­cent Truck On D Road video shows pre­cise­ly what he means. La­belled by one Web site "the best ad­vert for car­ni­val," it is thrilling and very dif­fer­ent from the "Car­ni­val" I grew up with back home.

Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val, which takes place this week­end was found­ed by a Tri­ni–I re­cent­ly found out.

Clau­dia Jones, born in Bel­mont, moved with her par­ents to the US at age nine, and, in adult life, be­came a Marx­ist, joined the Amer­i­can Com­mu­nist Par­ty and was fre­quent­ly jailed.

Amer­i­ca even­tu­al­ly de­port­ed her and, af­ter be­ing re­fused en­try to T&T by the British colo­nial gov­er­nor, she was tak­en in by the UK in 1955.

By 1958 she had start­ed the first black British news­pa­per, The West In­di­an Gazette.

By 1959, in re­sponse to racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and vi­o­lence against the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion of Caribbean im­mi­grants she had set up an in­door beau­ty con­test in St Pan­cras, Lon­don–a fore­run­ner of the Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val.

Jones died on Christ­mas Eve 1964, aged just 49. Too soon to see her dream of a car­ni­val light­ing up the grey streets of Lon­don. 1966 her­ald­ed the first out­door Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val, com­plete with mas bands and steel drums (as we call them in Britain.)

I've al­ways had mixed feel­ings about Not­ting Hill. It's a cul­tur­al event which is im­por­tant for black British peo­ple and yet it feels com­plete­ly out of place in Britain. Per­haps that's be­cause so many black British peo­ple feel out of place there (a feel­ing re­flect­ed in the wide­spread ri­ot­ing of Au­gust 2011).

To­day's gen­er­a­tion are de­scend­ed from grand­par­ents who were vic­tims of the 1958 Not­ting Hill Race Ri­ots when white gangs, urged on by fas­cist leader Os­wald Mose­ley, at­tacked black peo­ple, cul­mi­nat­ing in the death of An­tiguan stu­dent Kel­so Cochrane in 1959.

They are de­scend­ed from par­ents who were tar­get­ed through­out the 1970s by po­lice and skin­heads.

Car­ni­val spent decades as a kind of fo­cal point of black anger which al­so en­com­passed work­ing class anger, Irish anger and left wing rad­i­cal anger.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the Sun­day kids pa­rade pass­es off peace­ful­ly and the pro­ces­sion of floats (our word for trucks) al­so takes place in peace.

By Mon­day, how­ev­er, the heavy po­lice pres­ence and stop­ping and search­ing at ran­dom means ten­sions al­ways boil over.

I asked my mom about her ex­pe­ri­ences of Car­ni­val a few days ago. She told me, "the first time I went we end­ed up run­ning away from bricks be­ing thrown every­where un­der the un­der­pass, so no fond mem­o­ries for me!"

Though fun­ny, her re­sponse au­to­mat­i­cal­ly makes one think: "Bricks? At a Car­ni­val?!"

Tri­nis look­ing at YouTube footage from any giv­en year would say, "this is not a Car­ni­val."

It's a mass of packed bod­ies, it's fat po­lice­men try­ing to dance, it's mid­dle class white folk in­dulging in black tourism for two days be­fore re­vert­ing to de­fault ner­vous­ness around black peo­ple.

Brits can't do drink­ing with­out things turn­ing ug­ly. At night­fall, once the pa­rade has end­ed and fam­i­lies are mak­ing their way home, the Not­ting Hill vibe turns sour and ri­ot po­lice with shields, trun­cheons and hors­es move in as the pre­dictable hail of bot­tles start to fly.

In re­cent years, the streets around the main fes­ti­val points have al­so be­come an at­trac­tive venue for ri­val gangs from north, east and south Lon­don to meet up and demon­strate how good they are at con­ceal­ing, and lat­er re­veal­ing, knives.

It's not a good ad­vert for race re­la­tions, though my friend and Lon­don neigh­bour Alex Pas­call OBE–a Grena­di­an jour­nal­ist, knight­ed by the Queen–thinks the com­plete op­po­site.

Pas­call lives in Stroud Green, north Lon­don, home to CLR James dur­ing his Lon­don years. I live in neigh­bour­ing Crouch End. We talk on the bus but on this sub­ject we dif­fer.

He es­tab­lished The Voice news­pa­per (aimed at black read­ers) and Black Lon­don­ers, the first black ra­dio show, on BBC Ra­dio Lon­don.

He was a pro­mot­er of Car­ni­val through his links with the me­dia and still de­fends it against what he sees as un­jus­ti­fied at­tacks by the British press.

"It's al­ways about ar­rests; noth­ing tan­gi­ble about the art, mu­sic and en­ter­tain­ment," he told me this week.

"It at­tracts peo­ple from all parts of the world and has been the great­est medi­um for race re­la­tions."

He knows for a fact the May­or of Lon­don does not like it but asks the ques­tion, "why do they not in­ter­fere with oth­er mi­nor­i­ty fes­ti­vals that the Chi­nese and the Asian com­mu­ni­ties run? Why are the black youth paint­ed with crime at the car­ni­val?"

The an­swer to that though is de­press­ing­ly ob­vi­ous.

He goes fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that at a po­lit­i­cal lev­el, the Caribbean di­as­po­ra feels aban­doned, cul­tur­al­ly, in Britain.

"Our Caribbean gov­ern­ments have missed out by not un­der­stand­ing what the many of us who came to Britain cre­at­ed," he told me.

"Where the West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion failed, the Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val suc­ceed­ed by build­ing an artis­tic spec­ta­cle, which brought Caribbeans to­geth­er with an un­der­stand­ing of the true mean­ing of Caribbean uni­ty."

Per­haps he has a point there, in that many black Brits of­ten feel they're in a no man's land–keep­ing their mouths closed for 363 days a year, then ex­plod­ing loud­ly on the streets for two days a year.

How­ev­er you analyse it, it's clear some­thing needs to change.

Maybe, now I've seen what a prop­er Car­ni­val looks and feels like, here in Port-of-Spain, I may get in­volved with the or­gan­is­ing com­mit­tee back home and help turn Not­ting Hill in­to the re­al thing.