PORTOBELLO
CARNIVAL FILM FESTIVAL 2008
1
Portobello Carnival Film Festival 2008
2 Lord
Holland’s Slavery to Work Scheme
3 The
Notting Dale Gypsies
4 Portobello
Busker Parades
5 1966
London Free School Michaelmas Fayre
6 1968
Interzone International Times Fair
7 1977
Two Sevens Clash Punky Reggae Party
8 1983/4
Aswad Live And Direct Carnival
9 1995
Hugh Grant Mas and Mayhem
PART 8
1983/4 Aswad Live And
Direct Carnival
Viv Goldman reported pre-Carnival tension brewing on
All Saints Road in 1983 ‘among problem professionals,
who’ve been hanging around on the street corner
outside the Apollo pub, closed for months, that used
to be a happening centre for all forms of social exchange,
till Bass Charrington closed it down after too many
horra shocka stories in the Sunday Nasty. They watch
the police going by in twos like the animals in the
ark, at 5 minute intervals, cursing them and sucking
their teeth in annoyance, vowing vengeance for this
hampering of their street sales, come Carnival.’
1983 turned out to be the most commercial yet, with
body-popping, baseball caps, tracksuits and trainers
succeeding skanking, dreadlocks and combat gear, and
‘police this year picked for their wimpish manner,
with beards whenever possible.’ Nevertheless,
when Emotion sound-system outside the Apollo at the
All Saints/Lancaster junction shut down on the Monday
night, there was another riot.
As rap first challenged reggae’s Carnival dominance,
in her NME review Viv Goldman compared Ladbroke Grove
and Acklam Road with ‘Brooklyn and the Bronx,
home of rap’, noting that ‘Intergalactic
Sound under the Westway by the footbridge over the railway
track felt like New York’s Paradise Garage.’
At this point though reggae still held sway: ‘All
down Acklam Road, Jah Love Sound and Shaka reverberated
the Westway with roots, amidst stalls bedecked with
icons of Marcus G and Selassie I.’ In ’83
Aswad were recorded ‘Live And Direct’ in
Meanwhile Gardens alongside the canal at the ‘Notting
Hill Gate Carnival’, and Rip Rig & Panic played
their last gig on Portobello Green filmed by JB.
The 1984 Carnival was described in the NME’s ‘What
has Red Stripes and 600,000 legs?’ review as the
best ever and the new Lord Mayor’s Show. After
watching Aswad ‘playing to a bruisingly confined
Meanwhile Gardens’, and judging People’s
Sound on Oxford Gardens the best sound-system, Danny
Kelly ended his report, referring to a Nike billboard
featuring the cricketer Viv Richards, with ‘All
is well in Viv’s kingdom.’ With the police
otherwise engaged elsewhere with the miners’ strike,
’84 was a rare trouble-free year.
As the Carnival expanded again in the mid 80s to 4 stages;
at Portobello Green, Meanwhile Gardens, Powis Square
(‘Paris Square’ in NME), and the West London
(Linford Christie) Stadium on Wormwood Scrubs; outbreaks
of rioting at closedown continued to be a regular feature.
In Once Upon A Time There Was A Place Called Notting
Hill Gate, the Wise brothers considered ‘the Trinidadian
costume-steel band merry go round – despised by
the young blacks in the mid 70s,’ to be little
more than a job creation scheme and predicted the inevitable
commercialisation: ‘In some ways the organisers
would like Carnival to be more like American festivals,
where for instance Schiltz Beer sponsors a country and
western jamboree in Tennessee.’
1987 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid Carnival Riot
In 1987, as there was another Carnival riot,
‘while London burns’ Sammy and Rosie Get
Laid with an obligatory riot scene and hippies abseiling
from the Westway. The Stephen Frears directed follow
up to My Beautiful Laundrette, state of the nation address
by Hanif Kureishi focused around an anarcho-hippy travellers’
encampment by the Westbourne Park curve of the Westway.
The site is now occupied by Westbourne Studios and the
Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre.
The summer of ’87 saw the police ‘swamp’
All Saints Road with another series of raids on the
Mangrove, as part of the inner-city crime crackdown
Operation Trident. On the first day of the ’87
Carnival a stallholder was stabbed to death. On the
Monday the steaming attacks escalated, and at closedown
rioting broke out in the traditional flashpoint areas;
under the Westway on Ladbroke Grove, at the junction
of Portobello and Acklam Road, and on All Saints Road
at the Lancaster and Westbourne Park junctions. From
there the disturbances spread out west and east to the
Lancaster West and Brunel estates. The Wise brothers
gleefully recorded street fighting on Elgin Crescent
‘in the very heart of freshly conquered yuppie
territory’, and Kensington Park Road ‘where
Sting has his business centre.’
The Sun headline, ‘Riot Yobs Slash Girl Cops –
Horror at the Carnival’, was accompanied by a
picture of a black policeman confronting a Rasta, as
‘helicopters with searchlights hovered overhead,
following the marauding gangs as they tried to dodge
police cordons.’ After the ’87 riot, All
Saints Road was subject to a £1 million ‘designer
policing’ makeover. To the Wise brothers, ‘The
very centre of Carnival revolt in the 80s had finally
fallen and the light had gone out on the last remaining
shambles of an urban trouble spot.’
In 1988, there were more calls in the press to ‘Stop
the Carnival’ following a steaming riot in Shepherd’s
Bush after a pre-Carnival reggae gig on Wormwood Scrubs.
In the late 80s, the bay under the Westway by the Acklam
Road footbridge known as ‘the Cage’ hosted
Mastermind v Rap Attack sound-system clashes featuring
Chaka Khan, Lisa Lisa, Norman Jay and Tim Westwood.
Miss Dynamite has recalled dragging Rasta relatives
away from dub sound-systems to “Westwood at the
flyover.”
1989 Last Carnival Riot
At the ’89 Carnival Arts Committee general
meeting, an even more moderate Carnival committee was
formed and the local barrister Claire Holder was elected
chair. In the last Mangrove trial, Frank Crichlow was
cleared of trumped up drugs charges, the police raided
the Mangrove some more, causing further clashes outside,
and 1989 saw the last Carnival riot on All Saints Road.
As the area was lit by crane-mounted floodlights and
helicopter searchlights, 400 arrests were made in the
clean up operation. According to the Standard report,
‘5,000 police, almost 600 in full riot gear with
shields, and some police on horseback, fought running
battles with pockets of revellers after trouble was
sparked in the All Saints Road area. Within seconds
they had to retreat under a hail of bottles and flower
pots. Uniformed officers battled in vain to contain
the trouble, drafting in riot police who sealed off
a section of Lancaster Road. But they came under attack
from two directions as youths in All Saints Road and
Westbourne Park Road began hurling missiles.’
Private Eye reported that ‘the world’s largest
police festival passed off without serious incident
last night. Even though the weather was overcast, it
did not dampen the spirits of the quarter of a million
Metropolitan policemen who turned out in their traditional
fancy dress of tin hats and riot gear. As helicopters
roared overhead, the ‘boys in blue’ danced
with each other in the streets until the early hours,
watched only by a ‘token force’ of Rastafarians.’
1990-2 Soul II Soul to Don-e Carnivals
Appearing on Portobello Green at the first
Carnival of the 90s were Soul II Soul, Aswad, Jalal
of the Last Poets, Misty in Roots and Burning Spear.
In ’91 there was Screaming Target, Don Letts’
post-Big Audio Dynamite outfit that became Dreadzone,
along with Horace Andy, Freddie McGregor and Gwen Guthrie.
Time Out ‘Get into the Grove’ with the ’92
Carnival king, the new soul sensation Don-e, touring
the former riot zone bounded by Westbourne Park Road,
Ladbroke Grove, the Westway and All Saints Road.
1993 Ragga Carnival
As All Saints the group were forming, another
Carnival riot was predicted after a series of ragga
riots at Hammersmith Palais, but 1993 had the lowest
arrest figures ever. Although ragga was considered reggae’s
more violent younger cousin, the only culture clash
it caused on the streets was of garish lycra and customised
denim.
1994 Jungle W11 Carnival
The 1994 jungle W11 Carnival, at which All
Saints made their debut in Powis Square, had the first
million plus attendance according to the Standard; prompting
proposals for a new 4th stage in Hyde Park, to avoid
a Hillsborough style crush and accommodate the likes
of Prince and Michael Jackson. All Saints Road was twinned
with Vienda Street in Soweto at the Nelson Mandela election
victory street party.
9 1995
Hugh Grant Mas and Mayhem
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