Claudia Jones

A BLUE plaque will honour the Windrush generation and mark the spot where the first British Caribbean carnival took place.

Camden Council and the Nubian Jak Community Trust (NJCT) will unveil the plaque on Thursday at Camden Town Hall – where the first indoor British Caribbean carnival took place in 1959.

It is also a celebration of the activist Claudia Jones who organised the festival in response to rising racial tensions. Founder and chief executive of the NJCT Jak Beula told the New Journal: “She didn’t just fight for black rights. She fought for human rights and gender rights.

“Her civil rights activity brought light to the plight of the voiceless, the powerless, the African-Caribbean per cent who were marginalised and suffered latent discrimina­tion from the institutions that had no shame in discriminating against the immigrant population.”

At a time of intense hostility, Ms Jones used art as a form of resistance, aiming to bring together black people in cultural celebrations. The carnival in Camden is considered a precursor to the Notting Hill Carnival.

Born in Trinidad in 1915, Claudia Jones moved to the US as a child, where she became a journalist, feminist, and leading member of the American Communist Party. Deemed a threat by the FBI for her activism, she was deported in the early 1950s and arrived in London in 1955 – seven years after the arrival of Windrush.

Jak Beula

The carnival has since grown into Europe’s largest street party – the Notting Hill Carnival – a prominent symbol of multiculturalism and community in London.

“The Windrush plaque is not just about the past,” Mr Beula said. “It’s a reminder of Claudia Jones’s enduring legacy – and an example for future generations.”

Since founding NJCT in 2006, Mr Beula has overseen the installation of more than 90 commemorative blue and black plaques, memorialising the historic contributions of Black and minority ethnic people in Britain.

“Plaques are permanent,” he said. “Millions of people walk past them and see them. The importance of unveiling a plaque is to give a starting point for people to go and do their own research and learn for themselves.”

Ms Jones has been honoured by the NJCT before. In 2023, a plaque was installed at her former home in Lisburne Road, Gospel Oak, where more than 100 people attended the event.

The new plaque at Camden Town Hall is part of a broader effort to highlight the cultural, political, and artistic legacy of the Windrush generation who arrived in the UK between 1948 and 1973.