Notting Hill Carnival 2016: Its history explained

Every year, two million people take to the streets of west London to eat, dance and celebrate one of the biggest events within African-Caribbean culture. However, few know the Carnival has strong ties to social unrest seen in the area in the 1950s and 60s.

Notting Hill was once the very opposite of what it is today. It was a typical London slum with many people on low-incomes living in overcrowded accommodations. This happened to be where many West Indian migrants lived, who arrived as early as a decade before on Empire Windrush.

With a cocktail of poverty and social differences in the area, in 1958 it became the perfect storm for a race riot which lasted a week. Many "Teddy boys", typically white working class young men, were arrested for attacks on black families during that time. A year later, local carpenter Kelso Cochrane was the victim of a racist murder.

Ishmahil Blagrove told London Live: "It was the otherness, it was the difference that sparked the tensions and the fact that people of colour stand out so much in contrast to the white working class. It automatically lead to tensions".

It was on this backdrop of social unrest that one woman, Rhuane Laslett, is said to have started the very first Notting Hill Festival in 1966. It was an event that emulated a fair and was specifically for children, who dressed up in costume, to ease social and racial tensions.

Russell Henderson, the famous steel pan player from Trinidad, and many others like him were residents of Notting Hill and the surrounding area. They offered to play the steel pan in the streets as part of the event. Thus the Notting Hill Carnival was born.