Mangrove restaurant

Mangrove restaurant
Restaurant information
Established	1968
Closed	1992
Current owner(s)	The Rum Kitchen
Previous owner(s)	Frank Crichlow
Food type	Caribbean
Street address	8 All Saints Road, Notting Hill
City	West London
Country	United Kingdom

The Mangrove was a Caribbean restaurant located at 8 All Saints Road, Notting Hill, west London. It was opened in 1968 by Trinidadian community activist and civil rights campaigner Frank Crichlow. Like the El Rio before it — a coffee bar run by Crichlow at 127 Westbourne Park Road in the early 1960s that attracted attention in the Profumo affair, as one of the places frequented by Christine Keeler and Stephen Ward — the Mangrove was a meeting place for the black community in the area, as well as for white radicals, artists, authors, and musicians. Famous customers included Jimi Hendrix, Nina Simone, Bob Marley, C. L. R. James, Lionel Morrison, Vanessa Redgrave, Colin MacInnes, Richard Neville and Tony Gifford. A small newspaper, The Hustler, was published on the premises, underlining the community aspect of the restaurant, which also served as an informal head office for the Notting Hill Carnival.

In 1969 the Mangrove restaurant became the target of police attention that seemed designed to close it down. Robin Bunce and Paul Field write in The Independent that it was raided 12 times between January 1969 and July 1970, and in August that year a protest march was organized demanding "hands off the Mangrove". The protest ended in violence and the arrests of nine protesters (the "Mangrove Nine"), including Crichlow and Darcus Howe, on charges that included conspiracy to incite a riot. Their celebrated trial in 1971 — which featured an unsuccessful demand by Howe for an all-black jury — ended with the acquittal of all nine on the incitement charges, and five of the nine, including Crichlow and Howe, on all charges. Bunce and Field write that the Mangrove Nine "turned the fight against police racism into a cause célèbre."

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