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| Mother of Carnival lies almost
forgotten |
Why is there no permanent memorial in
Camden to one of the greatest civil rights heroines who ever lived?
asks Angela Cobbinah
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Claudia Jones
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ON a crisp winter’s afternoon 21 years ago a group of people
gathered in the shady grandeur of Highgate cemetery to commemorate
the civil rights champion Claudia Jones.
Deported to Britain from the United States during the McCarthy witch-hunts,
she died at her Gospel Oak home after playing a dazzling role in
the anti-racist struggles of 1950s England.
Incredibly, the woman once described by Paul Robeson as “one
of America’s finest daughters”, would lie in an unmarked
grave next to Karl Marx’s tomb, all but forgotten outside a
loyal circle of friends and fellow activists.
One of them was a former Camden Council youth worker Winston Pinder
who ran the Afro Caribbean Organisation in King’s Cross in
his spare time. A rallying point for local black youth, the organisation
decided to launch a fund raising campaign to buy a headstone for
Jones’ final resting place.
“Claudia made an immense contribution to the fight for social
justice and equality, yet there was no recognition of her,”
says Pinder.
“We wanted people to know who she was and what she stood for.”
The youngsters held a series of fund-raising parties at the Afro
Caribbean Organisation’s premises in Gray’s Inn Road and
donations began to flow in. The biggest – £300 –
came from the People’s Republic of China which held Jones in
particularly high regard following her visit there in the early
1960s.
But a battle royal ensued when Abhimanya Manchanda, Jones’s
boyfriend who had bought the burial plot, threatened Pinder with
legal action for “interference”. But a year later, on
January 6 1984, a stone was laid at a moving ceremony attended by
many of Jones’s fellow campaigners including the American journalist
Mikki Doyle, who had been deported with her, the actress Corinne
Skinner-Carter and singer Nadia Cattouse. MP Tony Benn sent a message
of support.
But apart from a mention in the local press and the communist Morning
Star, the event, like Jones’s achievements, passed completely
unnoticed.
Today, a resurgence of black consciousness has elevated Jones to
the ranks of forgotten black heroes and heroines who have been reclaimed
for posterity. She has also been the subject of a number of books
including Claudia Jones: A life in exile by Camden-based historian
Marika Sherwood. And on Thursday US academic Carole Boyce-Davies,
is to inaugurate the Claudia Jones World Series Lecture at the London
Metropolitan University in Holloway at a conference chaired by actress
Cathy Tyson.
Even so, those who knew her feel that her extraordinary contributions
have gone largely unacknowledged.
“The younger generation of blacks born here have no idea what
life was like for us in the 1950s, so they don’t make the connection,”
says Donald Hinds who worked closely with her.
When Jones began her exile in Britain, growing hostility towards
newly arrived Caribbean migrants would boil over into race riots
in Notting Hill.
Black London felt under siege and Jones, a charismatic speaker and
brilliant organiser, was able to give it a voice through her tireless
campaigning and her newspaper, the West Indian Gazette. In truth,
they were one and the same thing.
In 1959, she also brought the first carnival to London. It was winter
and it was indoors – St Pancras Town Hall – but it helped
to wash away the bad taste of Notting Hill.
Jones had honed her political skills in the US, where she had emigrated
from Trinidad as a child. A prominent communist, she was considered
to be a subversive by the authorities, who jailed her for a year
before kicking her out of the country in 1955.
Her health permanently broken, she nevertheless threw herself into
the political frontline. Pinder, who had recently arrived as a young
man from Barbados and worked as a Post Office engineer in King’s
Cross, met her while she was selling copies of the Gazette on a
Brixton street corner.
“We got talking and I agreed to sell it at work,” he says.
Like many, he would come to regard her as a political mentor. He
also recalls a lighter side to her character. “Claudia loved
to dance and have a drink and was always fun to be with,” he
says.
Trevor Carter, a distant relative who lives in Archway and whose
wife Corinne used to do Jones’s hair, remembers how she stood
out with her American style.
“She was a power dresser who’d sweep into a pub and order
a double Scotch while everyone else would be having half a lager
and lime,” he laughs. Yet beneath the charm and warmth was
a very private person.
Carter says: “You were drawn to her but she never let you in
too close. And nobody could see what she saw in Manchanda.”
In fact, few people realised how ill Jones was. When she died at
her home in Lisburne Road in 1964 at the age of 49, she was alone
and penniless. It was two days before anyone found her body.
“She had spent just nine years in London but left us with so
much,” declares Hinds fondly.
“Most of all, she taught us that there was hope as long as
there were people around to say ‘No’”.
• Inaugural Claudia Jones World Series Lecture. London Metropolitan
University, 166-220 Holloway Road N7 on Thursday November 3 at 7pm.
The event is is free but to reserve a place call 0870 240 4698.
• Angela Cobbinah is a freelance journalist who writes for
BBC publications and African magazines.
The newspaper which Claudia built
Retired teacher Donald Hinds recalls his days
as a reporter on the West Indian Gazette
Donald Hinds |
On December 7 1955 at the Harlem Hotel Theresa, New York, some
350 people bade farewell to Claudia Jones as she was deported to
Britain.
A selfless and indefatigable fighter for equal rights, she continued
where she had left off and set up the West Indian Gazette, Britain’s
first black newspaper. Published monthly, it was sold for six pence
and accepted the few advertisements that came its way.
Over its seven-year existence, it managed to sell on average between
3,000 to 4,000 copies. But during the month of the Notting Hill
riots in 1958, it sold a record 30,000. That year, the Gazette’s
Brixton offices saw more worried blacks than did the government’s
Migrants Services Department.
During a meeting at the newspaper the idea of a carnival was suggested
to wash the taste of Notting Hill out of our mouths. In Winter?
Everybody laughed until Claudia called us to order. Why not? She
asked. Could it not be held in a hall somewhere, which is where
it ended up, in St Pancras Town Hall, January 31, 1959.
The West Indian Gazette took its role as a newspaper seriously.
Through its pages freedom-fighters like Patrice Lumumba, Oliver
Tambo and Nelson Mandela became well known to readers while its
trenchant editorials identified the Cold War hotspots. Radical writers
from all over the globe would send in stories, including the great
WEB Du Bois from his new home in Ghana.
Very soon nationalist leaders from the Caribbean were seen climbing
the stairs to the editor’s office, among them Norman Manley
of Jamaica, Eric Williams of Trinidad and Cheddi Jagan of British
Guyana.
But the Gazette was not merely a news vehicle, it also commented
on the arts in all its forms, reviewing novels by leading Caribbean
writers of the day, and publishing poems and stories from unknowns,
including myself. If you wanted to know where performers like Cy
Grant or Nadia Catouse were appearing, you looked in the Gazette.
But the Gazette was not a viable business and Claudia did not receive
a viable salary as an editor. Its wobbly finances led to many threats
of lawsuits demanding payment for outstanding debts. People stepped
in to help out, including Paul Robeson who performed at St Pancras
and Lambeth town halls to raise funds. But it was an uphill struggle
and the Gazette was barely able to keep to its publication deadlines
– when Claudia died the paper inevitably died with her. |
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