It’s the last bank holiday of the summer, which can only mean one thing: Notting Hill Carnival is upon us. For three days, west London becomes a place of masqueraders, music and movement – feathers and flags, calypso and soca, sound systems and steel pan, roti and jerk chicken, rum and red bull, White Oak and Hennessy. And, inevitably, someone asking where they can find the nearest toilet. But Carnival has always been more than a party. At 60, its history remains inseparable from its roots: protest, migration, racism and resilience.

“A people’s art is the genesis of their freedom,” Claudia Jones once said. The Trinidad-born journalist and activist founded Britain’s first major Black newspaper, , and, in January 1959, organised Britain’s first Caribbean Carnival at St Pancras Town Hall. It came in the aftermath of the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, when Black residents faced sustained racist violence in the area. Later that year, 32-year-old Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane was murdered in Notting Hill in a racist attack. His killers were never convicted and the case remains unsolved, and his death a lasting symbol of the hostility experienced by West Indian Londoners in the ’50s and ’60s.

In 1966, Carnival moved outdoors, with what is widely accepted as the first Notting Hill Carnival. Community activist Rhaune Laslett organised a multicultural street festival to bring together the neighbourhood’s different communities. She invited Trinidadian steel pan player Russell Henderson and his band, and, when they began walking through the streets, people followed, emulating Trinidad and Tobago’s carnival. It was spontaneous, communal and loud – which, as it turns out, was a fairly good blueprint for the next six decades.

The ingredients were West Indian to the bone, and they became something distinctly London. Trinidadian masquerade traditions brought elaborate costumes and bands – inspired by the attire in Trinidad’s pre-Lenten festivities; calypso supplied its wit and social commentary; later, soca brought a faster pulse. Steel pan – the Trinidadian invention developed after African drumming was banned under British colonial rule – remained at the heart of the sound. By the 1970s, sound systems had joined the procession, spearheaded by Leslie Palmer, the then-director of the carnival.

Which brings us to today. Over two million people attend Notting Hill Carnival each year, with the celebrations contributing nearly £400 million to the country’s economy. Sixty years on, the roots of the carnival are strong, but sometimes overshadowed by being “Europe’s biggest street party”. The feathers are brighter, the sound systems louder, the warm up parties are longer and the crowds larger. It’s a celebration of the Caribbean communities and

But first, a trip down memory lane. Here’s to another 60 years!