Beware of whites who think that we are savages incapable of organising ourselves

Over the past 15 years or so, political and social movements among the old immigrant population of Caribbeans, Africans and Asians have declined. That is to be expected. No movement can maintain levels of revolt for ever. More questionable is the way some people capitalise on the spoils of successful movements. The strikes of Asian workers in the 1970s and 1980s launched the careers of many in the Labour Party. The street battles, which brought the police to heel, served to enlarge the race relations bureaucracy.

The carnival movement is another example. Over the past two years, the Notting Hill Carnival committee has limped along. It failed to submit proper accounts to grant-giving bodies, the Arts Council and the Greater London Authority included. As a consequence, it could not raise funds anywhere. This was not always the case. Carnival was built from below and organised democratically. It was not created by any entrepreneur.

The Tory borough of Kensington and Chelsea, within which Notting Hill falls, repeatedly attempted to undermine the carnival. It was fended off when there were high levels of alertness among Caribbean people, their social confidence rippling with what was then described as black consciousness.

The decline of such confidence was brutally evident when a committee met this month at the London Assembly to discuss preparations for this year's carnival. The dregs of the old committee, with Kensington and Chelsea now at the helm, presented itself in unity with Earls Court Limited, represented by a white man who organises exhibitions at Earls Court and Kensington Olympia.

This man sees his role as bringing a "civilised experience" to the carnival. A West Indian mulatto, representing the old committee, dismissed all of Carnival's history as "a joke". And presumably, the white coloniser who was sitting beside him will now rescue this people's festival.

Even the Tory members of the London Assembly objected. And Ken Livingstone's cultural adviser, Jennette Arnold, commented that we are "back to slavery times" - though not a peep came from Ken's race relations adviser, Lee Jasper.

The lesson is to keep power with the people. Otherwise the lifeblood will be sucked by white vampires who still, in effect, view us as savages incapable of organising ourselves.

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