British African activist Claudia Jones gets Blue Plaque

LONDON:

Trinidad-born Claudia Jones, who migrated at age eight with her siblings to the US, from where she was deported for supposedly “un-American activities” to the UK in 1955, had a Nubian Jak Community Trust blue plaque unveiled last month on the north London house where she died on Christmas Day 1964.

The plaque at 58 Lisburne Road in the north London borough of Camden has been long in coming. Former Camden councillor Gerry Harrison and the late New Camden Journal editor, Eric Gordon, were among those behind a campaign that started some 20 years ago to have Jones honoured with a plaque placed on the last house in which she lived.

The unveiling was officiated by the Mayor of Camden Cllr Nazma Rahman, with speeches by representatives of the Trinidad and Tobago High Commissioner H.E. Vishnu Dhanpaul, and the London-based Claudia Jones Organisation.

Also in attendance were persons who knew the radical activist. Claudia Manchanda spoke about her time living in the house with Jones and her father Abhimanyu (Manu) Manchanda, who was Jones’ political, business and romantic partner. She was named after Jones.

Eric Huntley, community and political activist and co-founder of Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, spoke about meeting Jones for the first time at a political rally in Trafalgar Square.

Interestingly, LindiweTsele, a South African exile, first met Jones in a nearby launderette, which is now the site of the London School of Mosaic. It was there that the reception took place, and the refreshments naturally included signature Trinidadian roti. She described Jones as her “encyclopedia”.

Veteran dancer and actress Corinne Skinner-Carter was a regular visitor to Jones’ house, where she often took care of Jones’ hair. She and her husband Trevor Carter and fellow Communists Billy Strachan and Winston Pinder were among the party that met Jones when she first arrived in London in 1955. Unfortunately, Pinder, Harrison, and Dawn Hinds, the widow of long-time West Indian Gazette journalist Donald Hinds, could not attend the event.

INDEFATIGABLE CAMPAIGNER

In the nine short years in the metropole, Jones became a leading figure within Britain’s African Caribbean community, and political and human rights activism circles. She was also the founding editor of the influential West Indian Gazette, and a committee member of several community organisations, including the Inter-Racial Friendship Co-ordinating Council (IRFCC), which was formed in the aftermath of the racially motivated murder of the Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane. His death in May 1959 was some three months after the gazette’s first Caribbean Carnival.

The BTWSC/African Histories Revisited committee has periodically organised a number of Jones-themed conferences, and co-sponsored the plaque, describing Jones as “the greatest British African activist ever”.

While there are other Jones plaques in Ladbroke Grove, west London and Vauxhall, south London, these make varying references to the Notting Hill Carnival, which Jones did not materially or spiritually found.

While she can rightly be described as the Mother of Caribbean Carnival, as her West Indian Gazette-sponsored cabaret-type Caribbean Carnivals which took place annually between 1959 and 1964 across various London venues, none were in or near Notting Hill.

The plaque unveiled last month avoids any contested accolades by sticking to the facts, describing Jones as a “radical human rights activist, feminist, journalist and publisher”.

The plaque is a worthy testament to the legacy of the indefatigable campaigner and staunch Communist, whose activism cut across race, gender, class, labour, and anti-colonialist, imperialist, internationalist and global/pan-African movements.

Jones’ remains are buried to the left of the huge Karl Marx tomb at Highgate cemetery in north London, where the Communist Party of Great Britain organises an annual remembrance on the Saturday close to Jones’ February 21 birthday.

Kwaku is an African identity advocate, independent history researcher and project lead for BTWSC/African Histories Revisited