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 asaphttps://www.change.org/p/matthew-kershaw-julian-lee-stop-racism-at-brighton-and-sussex-university-hospitals-nhs-trust5th anniversary, 5Dec15, 5 million online readers:https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-phoenix-newspaper-official-launch-gala-dinner-and-awards-presentation-tickets-16558385577Please 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.NationalNewsMore 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 driveI 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/AHRBTWSCResourcesHowever 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 -0700From: [log in to unmask]: 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 goto the Caribbean?From: Alison Bajaican <[log in to unmask]>Date: Sun, November 29, 2015 9:32 pmTo: [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. 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