Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture 2025

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

Image © House of Commons

THIS YEAR’S Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture, organised by the NUJ's Black Members' Council, will take place on Wednesday 22 October at 19:00 in the Guardian building in King's Cross, London (OpenStreetMap).

Our speaker is Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP for Clapham and Brixton Hill and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Afrikan Reparations. She will speak on “Learning from Claudia Jones in the fight against the rise of the far-right”.

Please note that this event is for NUJ members only. Tickets are free, but registration is required. The union will provide an attendee list to the Guardian for the purposes of security. Register here.

The Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture in given in honour of the pioneering journalist who founded probably the UK's first Black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Caribbean News.

A life of struggle

Claudia Jones 1915-1964

Image © NUJ

Claudia Jones was born in Trinidad in 1915, but later moved to New York where she encountered poverty and discrimination.

In 1936 she joined the Young Communist League and joined the staff of the Daily Worker. She was arrested in 1955 and served a year in prison before being deported and given asylum in the UK.

Confronted by posters saying "No blacks, no dogs, no Irish", she became a leader in the Black equal rights movement that was emerging in London's Notting Hill and founded The West Indian Gazette, one of the first Black newspapers in the UK.

Claudia always believed that "a people's art is the genesis of their freedom" and in 1959 was one of the founders of the Notting Hill Carnival. Today the carnival is the biggest in Europe and is a fitting memorial to Claudia's life of activism and campaigning. Claudia died in London on Christmas Day, 1964, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery next to Karl Marx.

Claudia Jones Memorial Lecture 2025 registration link at nuj.org.uk