‘We brought colour to this country’: the matriarchs of Notting Hill carnival
Sitting in a neat little cafe at the back of the Tabernacle, a Grade II-listed pub and arts venue in London’s Notting Hill, Sister Monica Tywang is reflecting on how much has changed since her association with the carnival began in 1975. “We’d call it the annual pilgrimage,” she says. “We didn’t have the ways of communicating then that we have today, so everybody looked forward to coming to Notting Hill, to meet other Caribbean people and to celebrate our culture.”
Today, Notting Hill carnival is an indelible part of the British cultural calendar. It dominates the August bank holiday weekend, as around a million people descend on west London for Europe’s largest street festival. Lining the white walls of the cafe are photos from carnival’s past, and Tywang can’t help but reminisce about the days they capture. “We brought colour to this country. After the war everything was black and grey and drab, smog was billowing out of the chimneys that everyone had in those days.”
Born in Trinidad, Tywang moved to England in the 1960s, aged 13. Ten years later, she entered the Daughters of Wisdom, a convent, and trained as a nurse in Blackpool before settling in London. “It was either get married or join the church. Now women have more choices.”
Tywang’s involvement in carnival began with a shrewd request from Basil Hume, the newly appointed archbishop of Westminster. “Cardinal Hume asked me to work full time in the community: ‘Your job is on the street,’ he said. For sure I was met with suspicion as an ‘agent of the church’. As if the pope told the cardinal to tell me to keep an eye on things for him.”
In Tywang’s second year, however, police clashed with black and white youths after they tried to arrest a pickpocket near Portobello Road on the main carnival route. Sixty six people were arrested. Police were attacked with stones and other missiles and more than 100 officers were taken to hospital. Standing in a full, white habit, just a short walk away was Tywang. “Somebody asked if they should get involved. I said: ‘Only unless you’re looking for a buss head.’”
The incident led to calls for carnival to be banned but the event survived, in part owing to campaigning from the then deputy editor of Race Today, Leila Hassan Howe, and backing from Prince Charles (“It’s so nice to see so many happy, dancing people with smiles on their faces”).
Public celebrations of Caribbean arts and culture have taken place in London since at least the late 1950s. Women have played a defining role from the inception. In January 1959, the Trinidadian human rights activist Claudia Jones put on an indoor “Caribbean carnival” at St Pancras town hall that was broadcast by the BBC. Five years later, The Notting Hill children’s neighbourhood festival, the first held in the area to include steel bands, was organised by the community activist Rhaune Laslett.
“They were disruptive characters,” says Tywang. “Claudia Jones was a real Trini gal.” Asked to explain the term, she simply says: “It’s about roots. If I have to, I can behave like an English lady but I have that Trini confidence. If you ask me my opinion, I’ll give it to you.”
Over almost two hours, Tywang is true to her word. But she is at her most strident when addressing the myriad ways in which carnival has “lost its way” over the decades. She is clear that the practitioners of mas, calypso and soca are as sharp as ever but the centrality of carnival arts to the weekend has declined and for her, this has been to the event’s detriment.
“What the Notting Hill carnival has become is unrecognisable to me. If you want to have a nude party in your house, by all means, but don’t do it out on the street and tell me that it’s my culture.”
“It’s not a street party. It’s street theatre and it has to be for the whole family.”
One woman who’d no doubt agree is Lady Lee Woolford Chivers, MBE, 85. In the late 1970s, carnival was marred by violence, in part because the event was severely over-policed. “I wouldn’t sugarcoat it, 1979 was the worst [carnival] experience I ever had,” says Woolford Chivers. “I decided there and then that something needed to be done for the children. Because I had four little kids and I couldn’t take them out.”
Woolford Chivers started holding small gatherings around playgrounds in the area where local kids could try on costumes and learn the carnival arts. Spurred by their success, she founded Capca (the Children and Parents’ Carnival Association) in the 80s, which sought to create a space for children to be part of the main carnival procession.
From there, she had the bright idea of using Sunday as a “children’s day”.
“It started on a morning but by three we had to be off the road. In those days it was really hard because the steel band wasn’t on wheels. We had to get the parents to come and push it. Meanwhile, the children are anxious to go on the road to do this thing called carnival, they’ve been getting dressed since five in the morning.”
While neither the Met nor a number of residents campaigns (Tywang: “People would say carnival was disturbing them”) could get the show off the road, a global pandemic has won out for the second year. For children in particular, the absence has been felt. “My little granddaughter said to me, ‘But if the spectators are such a headache why have them?’ That’s how a child’s mind thinks. These children are growing up with the carnival in them.”
Woolford Chivers’ daughter, Kim Woolford, agrees: “That’s the significance of having families and children at carnival. If you do not have someone to follow in behind you then the legacy dies.” Woolford’s expertise, however, goes well beyond helping her mum negotiate a zoom call. She is a matriarch, too, having taken over as chair of Notting Hill Children’s Carnival from her mother when she was 18.
The sense of there being two carnivals, one for the traditionalists and another for the revellers-come-lately, is a thread throughout every matriarch’s experience. Not even Tywang is prudish but the sheer amount of flesh on display – and the extent to which that creates a less inclusive atmosphere – clearly grates.
“You will see a sombre realisation coming out of the pandemic,” says Woolford. “Yeah, they want to celebrate but they want to celebrate roots, they want to celebrate life in a way that reflects the inclusivity they want to see going forward.”
For carnival institution and “Queen of Mas” Allyson Williams, the event is a family affair. In 1974, she met her husband Vernon there, who founded Genesis, one of Notting Hill’s longeststanding bands, in 1980; since his death in 2002, Allyson has led the band alongside her daughter.
“Marrying a Trinidadian was a dream come true,” she says. “I want my children to understand our legacy: the legacy of slavery, where I came from, to understand the culture of steel band and carnival.”
While their involvement with carnival might not stretch quite as far back as that of Tywang or Woolford Chivers, Debra Eden and Debi Gardner are a two-headed driving force behind much of what defines carnival in 2021. “We’re inseparable most of the time,” says housing worker Gardner.
She is an executive officer of the British Association of Steelbands (BAS), a year-round role that involves keeping the various bands that perform at carnival every year “functioning, connected and resourced”. She says each band has a unique identity but hers, Mangrove, understandably maintains a special place. “It’s the way that people associated with Mangrove fought for equality. All the challenges they faced that we’re still facing now … continuing that fight is central to who I am as a black woman.”
Since carnival was last held in 2019, the name Mangrove has come to wider significance, not least because of the Steve McQueen film, the first part of his BBC anthology, Small Axe. She didn’t enjoy the film, in part because of the “portrayal of certain characters”, people she either knew or had heard about since before she could walk. However, she concedes that “what was important was that the story was told”.
Appropriately for a matriarch, Gardner is a west London native, having grown up around North Kensington. “People think that west London was quite an affluent area but it’s only in the last 30 years that some of the houses have got inside bathrooms.” She now lives in Wembley. “When it was a time to buy a house, I thought this is where I want to be, but Wembley was as close as I could get on my budget … It’s definitely different not living in the area, but I think because of Mangrove, because of my links to carnival, I’ve never really left.”
Will the pandemic deal a blow to carnival tradition? “I think what we’re going to find when we do come out the other end of this, is that a lot of bands will have folded. However, on the positive side, what we have seen is a lot of innovation around the arts. Young people have been crazy creative and what we’re gonna see in the next two or three years, is a huge explosion of stuff online.”
Eden works with autistic children as an SEN teacher but after hours she is a carnivalist, and one who wears a number of hats in relation to the event. She plays with steelpan band Ebony and teaches with Mangrove. She sits on the carnival advisory council as a residents’ representative and performs as solo artist Pan Diva (“that’s my Sasha Fierce”).
For Eden, carnival is a birthright: she first dressed in a Mas costume aged four or five. Her carnival is built around Panorama, the UK’s national steelband competition. “It’s the battle for pan supremacy but beyond competition, steelpan gives you a creative outlet when, today, there are no youth centres. Once you get to secondary school age where do you send your kids in the summer? Who cares? We care.”
Although Eden is a grandmother, at 49 she is perhaps on the young-side for a matriarch but doesn’t consider the designation “anything but an honour. “Women play such an important role, they’re the mums and the aunties even when they’re not related to you,” she says. “You inspire each other to become more creative, more talented, bringing out different elements in each other. It’s a sisterhood.”
While she’s disappointed carnival will not be going ahead, she thinks it is for the best: “It’s a very small space to have a million people and if there’s a third wave or Notting Hill variant, the community will get the blame. Anyway, there’s no such thing as socially distanced wining. How are we supposed to party without touching?”
While technology will do its best to recreate the carnival atmosphere this August bank holiday, the matriarchs are already looking ahead to next year’s event. All have given their lives to a celebration of freedom, one they’re looking forward to returning to without restriction.
• This article was amended on 18 August 2021 to correct the spelling of Trini. Also, Kim Woolford became the chair of Notting Hill Children’s Carnival, not Capca, when she was 18.
I can behave like an English lady but I have that Trini confidence. If you ask me my opinion, I’ll give it to you