LAST weekend saw me at the Notting Hill Carnival, which is always held in west London’s Ladbroke Grove. For a generation Ladbroke Grove (or the Grove as it was popularly known) was the heartbeat of Britain’s black community. The centrality of that part of London to the West Indian migrant’s story is largely to do with economics.

In the early 1950s, very few migrants could afford to fly. Thousands, like my mother, took the banana boat (Messrs Elders and Fyffe’s) from Kingston to Bristol. And when they disembarked the train from Bristol to London, they had arrived at Paddington railway station. Paddington is just a few short steps from Ladbroke Grove.

Better still, all around Ladbroke Grove, and never more than a bus ride away, were a multitude of jobs. There were jobs on the railway, jobs in the hospitals and just up the Harrow Road in Willesden, Harlesden and Kensal rise had thousands of jobs in factories and small workshops.

Most of the jobs for semi-skilled workers have disappeared. The grandsons of that generation have the gang culture awaiting them instead. But when my parents came to Britain in the early 1950s there were jobs aplenty for people who wanted to work. Furthermore, there were landlords, like the notorious Rachman, willing to let rooms to West Indians when no-one else would.

This was the Ladbroke Grove where the Notting Hill Carnival was born, amongst ramshackle four-storey houses where one room sufficed for an entire family. West Indians who lived grim lives in the grey and sometimes hostile streets of London were able to throw off their cares for just one fun-filled day.

The British were first astonished, and then over the years charmed. They came to marvel at the costumes and the steel bands and stayed to taste jerk chicken and maybe lose their inhibitions and shake a leg too.

Nearly 50 years later, it is a very different Ladbroke Grove. The ramshackle houses have been restored, painted in pretty pastel colours and merchant bankers pay millions for them. Those same wealthy owners, rather than leaning out of their windows to enjoy the music, lock up their houses and flee when carnival comes round.

Nearly 50 years later, it is a very different Ladbroke Grove. The ramshackle houses have been restored, painted in pretty pastel colours and merchant bankers pay millions for them. Those same wealthy owners, rather than leaning out of their windows to enjoy the music, lock up their houses and flee when carnival comes round.

Far from being a near slum neighbourhood, Ladbroke Grove is one of the most desirable addresses in London. The demographics of Ladbroke Grove have changed too. Although there are still cultural and community associations connected with the West Indian community based in the Grove, most of the West Indians have gone.

Many of the ethnic groups living in the Grove now know nothing of carnival. And every year residents agitate for it to be taken off the streets altogether.

The carnival is different too. Every year you see an increasing number of grimly determined young white people playing steel pans. They have learnt it at school, in the name of multiculturalism. And every year the carnival becomes a little less intrinsically West Indian.

And yet, every year the children and grandchildren of that first generation of West Indian immigrants find our way back to the Grove. For one weekend the streets are ours again. We come, not just for the jerk chicken and the music, but to remember our childhood and recall who we are.

This was where our parents first came; this was the site of their dreams. So we are drawn every year to return and listen to Grove Music.

Diane Abbott is the British Labour Party’s shadow public health minister

www.dianeabbott.org.uk