Windrush carnival theme celebrates the 50-Year Caribbean presence in modern Britain

The Black presence in Britain has a long history that is hardly known and rarely recognised. Black people were part of the Roman occupation of Britain and there were large black communities before they were deported by Elizabeth I back in the 16th century. We want now to portray with mas' a modern period of this long history of the Black presence in Britain.

On Wednesday 22nd June 1948 the troop ship SS Empire Windrush arrived in Tilbury dock, England. On board were 492 passengers from the Caribbean. Many were ex-servicemen who had recently fought in Britain during: World War II.

This event 50 years ago marked the beginning of the significant Black presence in Britain in modern times. The great wave of post-war migration from the Caribbean to Britain can be symbolically said to have begun with the fateful sea voyage of the Empire Windrush.

Caribbean peoples from Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Monserratt, St Kitts-Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent, Trinidad and Tobago made their lives and brought up their children in cities all over Britain.

Caribbean peoples have enriched the culture of Britain by introducing their cultural traditions, language, creativity, music, literature, art, and style.

We were needed, but, not wanted in Britain. Caribbean peoples organised and struggled for justice, social, educational and political demands against hostile racism at all levels in British society.

The theme of Peoples War Carnival Band for Notting Hill Carnival 1998, organised in six sections, is a celebration of the Caribbean presence in Britain over the last fifty years.

1) Our Contribution- Nuff Respect
This costume celebrates the list of exemplary people of Caribbean descent and their contribution to Britain. It includes Claudia Jones, Linford Christie, Baron Baker, Sista P, Boots Davidson, Denise Lewis, Horace Ove, John La Rose, Stuart Hall, Eddie Grant, Sir Learie Constantine, Wilfred Wood, Moira Stewart, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Bill Morris, Edric Connor, Cassie Macfarlane, Alex Pascal, Andrew Salkey, George Padmore, Errol John and many others.

2) Sailors Ashore In De Economy
They came to find work and a better life for their children. They came on the express invitation of official bodies in Britain desperate for workers. They bolstered up the British economy when workers were needed in London Transport (underground and the buses), the National Health Service, British Rail, and factories and industries up and down the country.

Despite crushing racism they joined trade unions and brought a new dimension to workers struggles in Britain. They diligently saved their money to buy their own houses by holding dances or collectively saving using systems from back home like "Partner" or "Sou- Sou" and Credit Unions. This costume celebrates the hard work and lives contributed by ordinary people from the Caribbean to Britain's wealth.

3) Blues Dance -Bass Culture
This section of costumes celebrate the contribution of the culture of the sound system to Britain's musical heritage. We celebrate the sound system pioneers and their creativity. Sounds like Fatman, Sir Dees, Coxsone, Duke Vin, Sir Biggs, Lord Koos, Sufferer and many others. It was in Jamaica that sound systems originated the use of turntables as an instrument with the poetic expressions and chants of the toaster or MC riding the riddim!

The Blues Dance was the place where people made money to pay the rent, new musical artists singers and DJs received their first and only exposure, and black people connected with their Caribbean heritage receiving strength and affirmation of their cultural identity in a hostile and racist Britain.

The music was the key, "The Israelites" by Desmond Dekker, " My Boy Lollipop" by Millie and Bob and Marcia's "Young Gifted and Black" were all Top Ten hits in the British charts and albums by Jimmy Cliff and Bob Marley and the Wailers gained a large audience . The sound systems gave rise to record labels like Trojan, Island, Studio One, Treasure Isle and Ashanti releasing black music in to the British market.

Winning an audience of black and white youth they laid the foundation for a new musical culture in Britain. Sound system culture influenced artists like the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, Police, Selecter, UB40, Madness, Peter Andre, and Prodigy.

A new generation. of British artists and bands also came out of the sound culture and included, Blackbeard, Louisa Marks, Janet Kay, Matumbi, Aswad, Steel Pulse, Carole Thompson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Motion, One Blood, Misty in Roots, Blackstones, Macka B, Maxi Priest, Tippa Irie, and Ariwa Possee.

This Bass culture also gave rise to new musical forms like Dub poetry, Saxon's fast style chat, Hardcore, Jungle, Rave music, Drum and Bass, Speed Garage and endless fashion and cultural styles now and in the future.

4) Wings Of War
The Caribbean contribution in the second World War is played down or forgotten. We pay tribute here to the Caribbean service personnel who fought and died in Britain and in other parts of the world during this war. They are organised today in the West Indian Ex-Servicemens' Association. In this costume we highlight the people who joined the Royal Air Force.

5) A Riot Of Colour
Black people in Britain have faced many adversities. They have struggled and survived against the odds drawing on a history of organisation, struggle and resistance which they brought with them from the Caribbean.

Daily racial prejudice, physical attacks from racist groups, a hostile police force, and race bating politicians like Winston Churchill, Enoch Powell, and Margaret Thatcher have been the daily experience for blacks in Britain in the last 50 years.

With this costume we recall the major events in British history when Caribbean' people responded to racism and injustice with organisation, struggle and rebellion which touched every major city in Britain. The first the Notting Hill and Nottingham Race Riots in 1958, the Mangrove 9 trial, the Notting Hill Carnival uprising in 1976, the anti-sus campaign, numerous education struggles, the Black Peoples Day of Action in 1981, to the nationwide uprisings of the 1980s in Brixton, Tottenham, Liverpool 8, Leeds etc.

6) We Ting
A celebration of one of the major contributions to art and culture in Britain, the Caribbean Carnival. With the most developed Carnival in Trinidad, it was Trinidadians in Britain who took the lead in establishing Carnival in Britain and were joined by others with Carnival experience from Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia. St Vincent, Barbados, St Kitts. Guyana and Antigua. Carnival in Britain represents the whole Caribbean.

With stalls selling Caribbean food from fried plantain, roti, patties, flying fish, rice 'n' peas, bakes, pelau, jerk chicken, mangoes and sugar cane. Caribbean food was introduced to Britain.

Steelbands were established quickly after the visit of TASPO (Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra), with the best players in Trinidad, visiting the Festival of Britain in 1950. Some players stayed on to teach pan in schools. Prominent names include Sterling Betancourt, Boots Davidson, and Gerald Forsyth and established bands like Paddington Youth, Metronomes, North Stars, Ebony, Pantonic, Mangrove, Nostalgia, London All Stars, Glissando, Eclipse and others.

Masquerade was introduced to Notting Hill Carnival from the beginning with Individual satirical mas' as well as Dominican women wearing their National costume. Masquerade bands were established by 1973 the mas' makers being Lawrence Noel and Peter Minshall.

These elements of the Caribbean Carnival have established themselves up and down Britain. Carnival has become the most well attended festival of popular culture in Britain and Europe with Carnivals in London, Leeds, Bristol, Leicester, Birmingham, Reading, Luton, Preston to name a few.

About Michael La Rose

Michael La Rose was born in Trinidad. He was taken to Venezuela when he was two years old and later migrated to England from there in 1963 at the age of six. He attended state schools in north London where he was reasonably successful both academically and in sport.

As a teenager he represented Haringey and Middlesex in athletics and football. At that time he was keen to become a professional footballer and for a period played in one of the nursery teams for Arsenal. Laurie Cunningham and Glen Roeder also played in that team. In 1978 he formed his own successful amateur team, Uniques FC. In its heyday, in the early 1980s, it won or was runner up in many local competitions. Uniques are still in existence and are currently playing in the local Sunday leagues. Michael is now the manager and is no longer a player in the team.

Michael La Rose's other great interest was music. He began to DJ with his brother Keith in the West Indian-run Hibiscus Club in Stoke Newington. His experience expanded when the club gave them their own weekend spot as DJs in the Hibiscus. Later, in 1975, he formed his own Sound System with his brother and other friends, and they called it Peoples War Sound System. This was one of the first proper sound systems to play from a moving truck in 1978 at the Notting Hill Carnival innovating with an electric generator on the lorry to make this possible.

Active community worker
Michael La Rose has been active in the Carnival movement in London since 1973. He became Vice-Chairman of the first organisation of Carnival bands, the Carnival Development Committee (CDC). In 1983 he formed his own masquerade band, The Peoples War Carnival Band, with friends and supporters. He is both its designer and the bandleader.

In 1989 he became the first chairperson of the Association for a Peoples Carnival (APC), an organisation which arose out of the protest movement against the over policing of the 1989 Carnival. The Association's aim is to inform and educate people in Britain and throughout Europe about the history and culture of Carnival and to acknowledge the Notting Hill Carnival as the biggest and perhaps the most significant festival of popular culture in Britain. The APC has produced regular newsletters since its foundation. Michael edited a booklet Mas' in Nottinghill: documents in the struggle for a representative and democratic Carnival 1989/90, which was published in 1990. For many years he has also been giving lectures and talks on the history and culture of the London and Trinidad Carnivals.

Michael was a founding member of the Black Youth Movement in 1976. The BYM together with the Black Parents Movement fought many successful campaigns through the 1970s and 1980s both against police arbitrariness and oppressive conduct and for a better education for black children in British society. The BYM, BPM and Race Today collective formed the Alliance, which spearheaded the New Cross Massacre Action Campaign and organised the crucial Black Peoples Day of Action on March 2, 1981.

Black advocate
Michael has also been involved with the supplementary school movement over many years. He was a founding pupil of the George Padmore Community School formed by his father, John La Rose, in his own house in 1969. A basic objective of the Black Supplementary Schools, as they were then called, was the teaching of Pan African history and culture. The purpose was to give black students confidence in their own origins and histories while studying English, Maths, History and Sciences. Among the important books used at that time were Marcus Garvey 1887-1940 by Adolph Edwards and To the Groundings With My Brothers by Walter Rodney. Michael's own children later attended the George Padmore Community School, and he has also been one of its voluntary teachers.

La Rose completed an HND in Applied Biology at the South Bank Polytechnic. He then worked as a lorry driver for a couple of years. Michael later joined New Beacon Books in 1983 as the Sales Director and Books Distribution Manager. He is still one of New Beacon's directors. He worked with New Beacon for nearly ten years and during that time was one of the principal organisers of the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books, which began in 1982 and was held annually until the 10th Book Fair and Book Fair Festival in 1991. There were two further Book Fairs, held biennially, the 1Ith in 1993 and the 12th in 1995.

In 1992 he returned to university study and became a mature student at Middlesex University. There he successfully completed an honours degree in Applied Environmental Science, and is currently an Inspector with the Health and Safety Executive.