Notting Hill Carnival started with a melting pot of Caribbean immigrants who never intended to make history, but to celebrate their shared culture in the UK, one of their proud descendants has told the Mirror.
Kevin Layne, who has previously starred in Star Wars and Jurassic World, and creates masks and costumes for the Carnival mas band Genesis. The 44-year-old has shared his family’s personal history with Trinidadian Carnival, as well as how the Caribbean community continued to celebrate, despite racist backlash.
Kevin said that the first procession of Notting Hill Carnival proper, took place in 1964, and his dad Vernon 'Fellows' Williams, was part of the group who helped make it happen. The actor's early memories of the Carnival include the smells from creating the costumes and being surrounded by his aunties and uncles at the band camp as he helped create the costumes for their performers.
Kevin told the Mirror: "I’ve got many memories of all those nights at the camp, the smells of the glue from making those wonderful costumes. The smells bring you back, to spending late nights in the camp with your aunty and your uncle cracking jokes, and anecdotes about the West Indies, my mum cooking every night for all the workers and even passers-by who wanted to grab a plate of food.
"Everyone was like family, the orientation of our band, the concept was about the family unit, us being a family band, that was always our foundation, we invited people in from all walks of life."
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In 1980, Vernon and his wife Allyson Williams MBE, started their own mas band, which is short for Masquerade bans, are one of the key parts of Notting Hill Carnival and participants dress up in intricately designed and made costumes and masks and dance through the parade. So every year, Kevin helps design the outfits and costumes and masks for his band.
Taking it back to the start of Kevin's roots, his father Vernon moved to Leeds from Trinidad and Tobago in 1953 to study dentistry. After running out of money, he travelled south to London to try and find a job so he could continue his studies. But it didn't go quite to plan.
Later on, his dad, who got his artistic drive from his mother, a talented seamstress, would go on to work on Cleopatra with Liz Taylor, and star in Live and Let Die, with Roger Moore. In London, instead of finding funds to become a dentist, Vernon spent time at the Coleherne Pub, which was described as a “crazy artistic melting pot”, where figures from all walks of life, from politics to activists, to artists and musicians came together.
It was here Vernon met Russel Henderson, who would play a key role in the first Carnivals in west London, and together they started a jazz band that would take part in the first ever Notting Hill Carnival. Kevin said that despite the first carnival often being attributed to 1965, he insists a procession a year prior is when it really started.
Speaking of the likes of Russel, and others who played vital roles in starting the first Carnival, Kevin insisted it wasn't down to no one individual, but a “movement”.
Kevin added: “There’s a lot of debate over who started the first Notting Hill Carnival, some say it was Claudia Jones, some say Selwyn Baptiste, some say it was Russel Henderson, some say it was Rhaune Laslett, the truth is it was all of them, it’s a movement, it’s not about one individual thing, it comes from a very specific place, the expression of freedom.”
Tracing Notting Hill Carnival back, before his father, Kevin spoke about race riots which took place in 1959 that saw white crowds attack the homes of West Indians. The Met Police at the time tried to downplay what had happened, but at one point the racist mob numbered in the thousands.
This came so soon after so many of the community had come over as a part of the Windrush generation and it rocked their sense of safety and place in the UK. In response, a series of events were held, mostly organised by Claudia Jones, that celebrated Caribbean culture which featured carnival-style events, dancing troupes and steel bands at isolated and indoor events.
Kevin described these as “planting the seeds” for Carnival, and added: “They were a way of saying we’re here you can’t ignore who we are … basically Black Lives Matter, old school Black Lives Matter.”
These events organically grew towards what countless members of the community had at home, a Carnival. Rhaune Laslett was able to facilitate the first processions, negotiating with the authorities to get Carnival onto the road itself. This helped turn it from the individual events at isolated venues into something far bigger.
But being out on the street, celebrating so openly, was not without its risks in England at the time. Coming just a handful of years after such a horrific racist attack by white people, they could have been putting a further target on their backs. Kevin described holding those first Carnivals as a “very brave act, a very noble and courageous act”.
Opposition to Carnival didn’t end there, infamously in the 1970s clashes with police led to worries it might be shut down.
But Carnival preserved, and in 1980, Vernon and Allyson started their own band, Genesis - named so because they had been there since the beginning - and Kevin and his sister have been helping to design and create costumes for them ever since.