|
Alex Pascall OBE about.me/AlexPascallOBE
--------------------------------------------
On Thu, 3/12/15, Alison Bajaican <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Subject: Last word from Yvonne Field: Mrs. Sybil Phoenix: a few questions
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, 3 December, 2015, 12:38
Greetings
I havent read below in
detail (as I dont really have time) but wonder what all the
fuss is about.I first saw Mrs Phoenix
referred to as a Dame about a year ago,
in a
Black community weekly email circular which profiles Black
s/heroes I receive. I was surprised.However
please note that I have interviewed Mrs Phoenix about her
life on numerous occasions and was the Co-Chair of
Friends of Marsha Phoenix for a number of years. I also
wrote a short biography and produced the 25th anniversary
booklet for the Marsha Phoenix Trust
I
have not seen Mrs Phoenix for quite a while (a couple of
years now). The last time I saw her she had recently
received an OBE.
She told me she was the
first Black woman to receive an MBE in the UK.She also
received an MS for her services in Guyana. I am not
aware that she became a Dame.Why doesn't some simply
contact the Director of the charity (Rebecca) and ask
them?BestYvonne
Please feel free
to contact Yvonne directly if you have any further queries
re Mrs. Sybil Phoenix
Looks like she
has been stripped of all her titles now!
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the EE network.
From: Kathleen
ChaterSent: Thursday, 3 December 2015
09:22To:
[log in to unmask] To: The Black
and Asian Studies AssociationSubject: Re:
From Yvonne Field: Mrs. Sybil Phoenix: a few
questions
#yiv5116602865 #yiv5116602865 --
.yiv5116602865hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;padding:0px;}
#yiv5116602865 body.yiv5116602865hmmessage
{
font-size:12pt;font-family:Calibri;}
#yiv5116602865
I did a quick search on The Gazette website -
it's the official public record that should give info
about honours and awards, etc. Didn't have time to do
a proper search but I can't find any awards - just a few
traffic notices about a street named after Sybil Phoenix.
Kathy
Date:
Wed, 2 Dec 2015 11:28:08 -0700
From:
[log in to unmask]
Subject: Re:
From Yvonne Field: Mrs. Sybil Phoenix: a few questions
To: [log in to unmask]
The
internet is a great tool, but we simply need to check the
veracity of information we cull from it to
disseminate
A
"Dame" with quotes could have been seen as
"affectionate" but without quotes lacks authority
and open to ridicule
K
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: From Yvonne Field: Mrs. Sybil Phoenix: a few
questions
From: Alison Bajaican <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, December 02, 2015 5:58 pm
To: [log in to unmask]
Yvonne Field
wrote about Sybil on the website dedicated to Sybil's
daughter.
I'm guessing
the "Dame" came from someone who felt she should
have got a higher honour and affectionately calls her
"Dame"
Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the EE network.
From: Yvonne Field <[log in to unmask]>Sent:
Wednesday, 2 December 2015 17:03To:
Alison HEWITTSubject: Re: Dame Sybil
Phoenix: Kwaku has a few
questions
Hiya
What are the questions? I
didn't know Sybil was a Dame.
She
was the first Black woman to get the OBE. She is
also MBA and MS (from Guyana).
Best
Yvonne x On 2 Dec 2015 16:45,
"Alison HEWITT" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Hello
Yvonne,As you can see from the trail below I
attempted to answer one of Kwaku's questions. Do you
have any more insight for him at all?!?Alison
NNN will
celebrate 14 years of service to the community in May
2016!
1000 signatures needed asap
https://www.change.org/p/matthew-kershaw-julian-lee-stop-racism-at-brighton-and-sussex-university-hospitals-nhs-trust
5th anniversary, 5Dec15, 5
million online readers:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-phoenix-newspaper-official-launch-gala-dinner-and-awards-presentation-tickets-16558385577
Please consider donating to
the following worthy cause...
Rose Thompson is a fellow Radiographer who set
up the BME Cancer website and is now undergoing chemo
herself
Capture the
Expression of a Loved Onehttp://www.bmecancer.com/index.php/capure-the-memory-of-a-loved-one###################################
Is the event you are planning
youth-friendly?
How will
your organisation accommodate the youth we must nurture
NOW?
Don't leave it to
the parents, schools or church!
www.facebook.com/Nubian.NationalNews
More Action, Less Talk!
Bajaican Blessings: Visioning
is second nature, success is routine, excellence is
habit...
On Wednesday, 2
December 2015, 16:36, Alison HEWITT <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Feels
like I'm doing someone's homework for them. Are you
saying, Kwaku, that she may not have received these awards
because you cannot find proof?Women in
History: Dame Sybil Phoenix – First Black Female
Recipient of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire
(MBE)
Dame Sybil Theodora Phoenix
DBE, MBE (born Sybil
Marshall, 21 June 1927) is a British community worker.
She was born in British Guiana (Guyana), and grew up in
Georgetown. She and her fiancé Joe Phoenix moved to England
in 1956, and married in June of that year. In 1973 she
became the first black woman to receive an
MBE (Most Excellent Order of
the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth
II. Dame Phoenix initially refused to accept the
honor unless the council gave her a property where she could
house, feed and educate homeless young girls from the
Borough of Lewisham. Dame Phoenix is a legendary
figure in her adopted home of Lewishan in South East London.
It has been said of her: “Sybil has a tremendous capacity
for loving in the face of hatred, rejection and
discrimination”. In the early 1960s, she began providing
foster care for unwanted children and in 1977 she founded a
youth center for teenagers; named Moonshot. However, the
center was burned down by members of the right-wing
extremist “National Front” and Dame Pheonix vowed to
rebuild. “My name is Phoenix and I will build a new center
from the ashes of this club, so help me God.” she said.
Four years later, in 1981, the Prince of Wales was present
for the grand opening of the new center.
As a Black person, Dame Phoenix
experienced racism from the very beginning. This motivated
her to actively work against the kind of discrimination that
people suffer solely because of the color of their skin.
She co-founded of MELRAW (Methodist and Ecumenical
Leadership Racism Awareness Workshops), an organization
which offers Racism Awareness Training programs. She was
also a leader in the New Cross Fire campaign and the post
Brixton negotiations and the famous Black Peoples Day of
Action.
In 1979 Dame Phoenix and her
>>>husband<<< founded the Marsha Phoenix
Memorial Trust, a supported housing project for single
homeless young women aged from 16 to 24. The trust was
named in honor of her daughter who died in a car accident in
1974.http://guyanesegirlsrock.com/women-in-history-sybil-phoenix-first-black-female-recipient-of-the-most-excellent-order-of-the-british-empire-mbe/
NNN will celebrate 14 years of
service to the community in May 2016!
1000
signatures needed asap
https://www.change.org/p/matthew-kershaw-julian-lee-stop-racism-at-brighton-and-sussex-university-hospitals-nhs-trust
5th anniversary, 5Dec15, 5
million online readers:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-phoenix-newspaper-official-launch-gala-dinner-and-awards-presentation-tickets-16558385577
Please consider donating to
the following worthy cause...
Rose Thompson is a fellow Radiographer who set
up the BME Cancer website and is now undergoing chemo
herself
Capture the
Expression of a Loved Onehttp://www.bmecancer.com/index.php/capure-the-memory-of-a-loved-one###################################
Is the event you are planning
youth-friendly?
How will
your organisation accommodate the youth we must nurture
NOW?
Don't leave it to
the parents, schools or church!
www.facebook.com/Nubian.NationalNews
More Action, Less Talk!
Bajaican Blessings: Visioning
is second nature, success is routine, excellence is
habit...
On Wednesday, 2
December 2015, 10:37, Kwaku BMC <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
Enjoyed
scanning through Winder's book, and the case seems made
that Powell did not visit the Caribbean on a ministerial
recruitment drive
I admire Sybil Phoenix - she's
one of the contributors in my Look... Commentaries On
British Society And Racism? DVD - see trailer at bit.ly/1luXf8B, purchase at
www.bit.ly/AHRBTWSCResources
However are we sure she is a
Dame/DBE?
Can't
find any information that confirms when she was made a Dame,
and for what. Her boig on her Trust refers to her as Mrs -
perhaps another case of the internet perpetuating
misinformation?
Kwaku
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Did Enoch Powell as Health Minister (1960-63)
actually go
to the Caribbean?
From: Martin Spafford <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, November 30, 2015 12:27 pm
To: [log in to unmask]
The ‘black clergywoman’ Heffer refers to in the
article as the source of the story was (later Dame) Sybil
Phoenix. The story is quoted in Robert Winder’s ‘Bloody
Foreigners’ - https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7ORcaQIgdcEC&pg=PT245&lpg=PT245&dq=sybil+phoenix+enoch+powell&source=bl&ots=0hwmtTjre2&sig=OCkna1EiOn0VGHJYb9Lbthapebo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiYhfbHibjJAhXFOBoKHaM1BOoQ6AEIJzAB#v=onepage&q=sybil%20phoenix%20enoch%20powell&f=false
Winder’s note says that the quotations from Phoenix
are from Mike and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The
Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain, pp 127,129
and 329. Is there a
source for the story other than Phoenix? She came to the
UK in 1956 when Powell was a junior housing minister. In
that year he did advocate immigration controls at a
Parliamentary subcommittee. He wasn’t Health Minister
until 1960.
It
does seem generally agreed, though, that when Minister of
Health he pressed for more Commonwealth immigrants to come
and work in the Health Service, with a focus especially on
India and Pakistan. See, for example, http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/immigration-and-the-national-health-service-putting-history-to-the-forefron
“In 1963 the Conservative Health
Minister, Enoch Powell, who later led the call for stricter
controls on immigration, launched a campaign to recruit
trained doctors from overseas to fill the manpower shortages
caused by NHS expansion. Some 18,000 of them were recruited
from India and Pakistan. Powell praised these doctors, who
he said, 'provide a useful and substantial reinforcement
of the staffing of our hospitals and who are an
advertisement to the world of British medicine and British
hospitals.' Many of those recruited had several years of
experience in their home countries and arrived to gain
further medical experience, training, or
qualification.
“
It seems he almost certainly didn’t
visit the West Indies and Phoenix perhaps had a lapse of
memory, confusing Powell with Profumo (if Heffer is
correct).
However, the charge of hypocrisy still
stands. In 1955 he advocated immigration controls, then in
1963 he encouraged immigration from the subcontinent, then
in 1968 – only 5 years later - there was his Birmingham
speech. The immediate targets were Asian refugees from Kenya
in 1968 and Uganda in 1972 who arrived to face a climate of
hostility stirred up by his supporters. His defenders
present him as a man of principle, not scared to say
unpopular things. I see him as a coldly opportunistic
politician who knew his words would find support in 1968.
Had he been principled he would have spoken out against the
daily violence and discrimination suffered by Black people
in Britain as a result of his words. He never
did.
From: Kathleen
Chater Sent: Monday, November 30,
2015 8:05 AM To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Did Enoch Powell as Health
Minister (1960-63) actually go to the
Caribbean? Simon Heffer, his biographer, says he never did.
Here's a section from the piece:
In 1998, just
after Enoch died, the BBC broadcast a programme in which
they railed at Enoch for his hypocrisy. They said this
scourge of mass immigration had visited the West Indies in
1953 to recruit black labour for the NHS. I was told of the
story before the programme was broadcast and informed its
researcher that Enoch had never been to the West Indies in
his life. I was told, effectively, that I was lying, and it
was broadcast.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3017219/SIMON-HEFFER-allegations-against-Enoch-Powell-monstrous-lie-contempt.html#ixzz3sxYhnHPe
I see from other
sites that "emissaries" from his department
visited. It would be very unlikely for a busy minister at
that time to actually go there, any more than the succession
of health ministers recruiting in East Asia have gone there
themselves in more recent years.
Might be worth contacting the BBC to see if
they have a programme file on this to see where they got
their info. I'm fairly certain there was still an
Obituaries section at that time, located somewhere in the
current affairs department. In my day it was where, how
can I put this, those who were not of the first rank or who
had upset their department head were shuffled off so it
doesn't surprise me that they weren't letting facts
get in the way of their chosen line.
Kathy
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2015 20:40:05 -0700
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Did Enoch Powell as Health
Minister (1960-63) actually go to the Caribbean?
To: [log in to unmask]
Thanks, though looking for more concrete
information pertaining to where and when
K
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Did Enoch Powell as Health
Minister (1960-63) actually go
to the
Caribbean?
From: Alison Bajaican <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, November 29, 2015 9:32 pm
To: [log in to unmask]
Www.retiredcaribbeannurses.org.uk
would be a good place to start as well as contacting Sandi
Philips copied in
Sent
from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone on the EE network.
From: BBM/BMC Sent: Sunday, 29
November 2015 19:55 To: [log in to unmask]
Reply To: The Black and Asian Studies
Association Subject: Did Enoch Powell as
Health Minister (1960-63) actually go to the
Caribbean?
Did Enoch Powell as Health Minister
(1960-63) actually go to the Caribbean to recruit for
nurses? Is so which particular countries did he visit and
when?
Kind regards,
Kwaku
BBM/BMC
[log in to unmask]
My primary email is randomly bouncing mails, so until
further notice PLEASE COPY REPLIES To [log in to unmask]
BBMM @ Harrow
Mencap: Free,
fortnightly Monday, 6.30-8.30pm sessions: www.bit.ly/HarMen
African Histories Revisited (AHR) & BTWSC Books
& DVDs are now available via www.bit.ly/AHRBTWSCResources
Africans In Classical Music: From Samuel
Coleridge-Taylor To Okiem Monday Nov. 16, 6.30-8.30pm @
Harrow Mencap. Free. Led by Kwaku http://bit.ly/HarMen
History Of
African Media In Britain Monday Nov. 30, 6.30-8.30pm @
Harrow Mencap. Free. With history consultant
Kwaku and
media consultant Neil Kenlock www.bit.ly/HarMen
The
Publisher's Take On Walter Rodney's 'How Europe
Underdeveloped Africa' Monday Dec. 7, 6.30-8.30pm @
Harrow Mencap. Free. With book
publisher Elder Eric
Huntley www.bit.ly/HarMen
History Of
Black History Month In Britain & Harrow
Monday Dec. 14,
6.30-8.30pm @ Harrow Mencap. Free. With history consultant
Kwaku www.bit.ly/HarMen
Youths' Take On British History 50:70
Monday Dec. 21, 6.30-8.30pm @ Harrow Mencap. Free. With
Harrow BHM Group youth volunteers Antonio & Marcel
Phillip www.bit.ly/HarMen
|
