The Notting Hill riots

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 October 2019

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In August 1958 Britain was shocked by nearly a week of race riots in the west London district of Notting Hill. The clashes between West Indian immigrants and aggressive white youths known as Teddy Boys led to the first race relations campaigns and the creation of the famous Notting Hill Carnival. Using voices from the BBC archives Simon Watts tells the story.

Photo: Street scene in Notting Hill at the time the race riots broke out in 1958. Credit: Getty Images.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.7	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.5	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.
0:18.0	What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast from the BBC World Service.
0:45.0	And as part of our week of programming to mark Black History Month in the UK,
0:50.0	today we're going back to London in the summer of 1958 when serious racial unrest broke out in the
0:57.5	Notting Hill District of the city.
1:00.2	But as Simon Watts reported in 2017, the riots did lead to one good thing.
1:07.0	The creation of the famous Notting Hill Carnifal.
1:12.0	Something new and ugly raises its head in Britain.
1:15.0	In Notting Hill Gate only a mile or two from London's West End,
1:18.0	racial violence.
1:20.0	We looked out of a fifth floor window which we were at the top.
1:25.0	We saw hand-to-hand fighting, blood spilling, and it was particularly nasty.
1:33.0	You would see a bunch of youngsters running through the streets with petrol bottles and
1:39.0	when they got to where they knew black people were living they would smash the window and they
1:45.1	would chuck it through the window and start a fire. This violence is evil and
1:49.4	the law and public opinion must camp it out.
1:53.0	Most of the West Indians living in Notting Hill had arrived after the end of the Second World War.
1:59.0	At that time, immigrants from Britain's former colonies were led to expect a warm welcome in the UK.
	...

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