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London's Notting Hill Carnival has always had the reputation of being a unifier of Afro- Caribbeans in London, even of all inhabitants of London regardless of their ethnic origin. Nevertheless, the Carnival has repeatedly been the cause of rifts and struggles between London's Afro-Caribbean community and British society at large, as well as within the Afro- Caribbean community itself. The focus of this paper are the rifts within London's Afro- Caribbean community following the violent Carnivals of 1976 and 1977. I understand these rifts, as well as the efforts to solve them, as clashes of representations. Not only did they give rise to negotiations on how to avoid future violence; they also caused clashes between different concepts of-being-in-the-world and identity, as they raised the question of what the "real" Carnival, "real" Afro-Caribbean culture and "real" Afro-Caribbean identity are and how they can be passed on to future generations.
Keywords: Notting Hill Carnival, Representation, Identity.
INTRODUCTION
"250 are hurt as Notting Hill carnival erupts into riot."1 "Confrontation recalls 1958 riots."2 "Police and Blacks in London battle."3 These are just a few of the newspaper headlines after the 1976 Notting Hill Carnival. Though intended to be a happy occasion, by the end of the second day young blacks and the police were clashing in the streets of Notting Hill - stones were thrown, shops looted and cars set on fire. In spite of efforts to avoid such violence, the 1977 Carnival the following year once again ended in a riot.
The aim of this paper is to show what debates, negotiations and struggles the Carnival riots caused or fostered within London's Afro-Caribbean community. My thesis is that the Notting Hill Carnival was strongly linked to the Afro-Caribbeans' understanding of their self and identity in the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, the debates about the Carnival, its future and its problematic nature were not just about a festival but were always related to questions of identity and culture and repeatedly caused clashes of representations within London's Afro-Caribbean community.
This paper is part of my Ph.D. project on the history of the Notting Hill Carnival from the late 1950s until the late 1980s, which investigates the relevance of the Carnival for London's Afro-Caribbean community. It especially focuses on the...