Windrush75 Ain’t no stopping us now!

Baroness

By Lester Holloway

BARONESS FLOELLA

Benjamin has been famous since the mid1970s, when she influenced the children who are today’s 50-somethings, as a presenter on BBC’s Play School

But last year she found a new audience, as the driving force behind the Windrush monument, which stands proudly in Waterloo station since being unveiled during last June’s Windrush Day.

This year, she’s as busy as ever promoting Windrush and the contribution of the Caribbean pioneers that rebuilt post-war Britain and made such a contribution to this country.

She’s been so rushed off her feet touring schools the length and breadth of the land, that it was amazing she found time to make history again, carrying the sceptre at the King’s coronation, alongside her friend and Mary Seacole campaigner, Dame Elizabeth Anionwu.

Struggle

As someone who has done so much to elevate the Windrush story, what motivates her to do what she does? Her answer is as simple as it is poignant: that telling these stories, so long untold, changes people who hear them.

Younger members of the Black community, who don’t always know details of the struggle their descendants had in the early years after the SS Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury in 1948, can contextualise current struggles.

Black Caribbean elders, too often silent about the traumas they endured, gain a cathartic release of telling their stories and educating the listener.

Older white people, who were around during the Windrush period, get to reflect on their own role — whether that be facing up to perpetrating racism, or ignorance of what was going on around them.

And younger white generations gain a greater appreciation of how this country was built, and the suffering and sacrifices that Windrush pioneers made in putting down roots and establishing themselves in all walks of life.

“These celebrations are about showing people we have a voice, we have a presence and our story needs to be told”, she said.

“Unfortunately people from the Windrush generation have been silent about their emotions and about their trauma, and so many Caribbean people are carrying trauma; the ones who were put in educationally subnormal schools because the teachers couldn’t understand their accent.

“All the things they had to go through, suddenly it’s all spilling out, and people who didn’t realise what was going on feel ashamed. And so now people are saying ‘sorry please forgive me’.”

Floella, now 73, added that the Windrush monument, which she was instrumental in delivering as head of the committee, has helped to spark conversations about those past decades, and prompted schools, institutions and companies to ask themselves what they can do to make things better?

She takes pride in the fact that schools are being named after her, and that her autobiographical children’s book Coming to England is being widely taught in schools across Britain, including in primarily white areas.

It has been a remarkable journey for the Liberal Democrat peer, who travelled 4,000 miles across the Atlantic from Trinidad in 1960 with her sister and two brothers, arriving at a platform at Waterloo station which is so close to the new monument.

That journey marked the end of a period of hell in which the

HONOUR: young Floella and her siblings were put in the care of strangers as their parents travelled before them to Britain, as was common.

Yet her arrival also heralded a new difficult period in her life, as she experienced constant racism in Penge, south London, on the streets and in school.

She got into, and won, plenty of fights, but describes in her books the moment when she realised that fighting racist people was not the answer, and that she

“needed to fight with my brain.”

It was a moment that has shaped her life ever since, as a TV presenter, actor, author of multiple books, peer of the realm, and member of many high-powered committees, including one that brought Britain the first stamps featuring Black faces.

Not content with her achievements, Floella is a vocal champion for change, and has spoken in parliament three times about the Windrush scandal which, she says “does not define the Windrush generation but is part of the story.”

Of the monument, she is keen to promote others who were involved, such as sculpture Basil Watson, the foundry where the statues were made, and other members of her committee, including her deputy on the monument committee Paulette Simpson,

Executive Director of The Voice

“My father bicycled from Penge to Colindale everyday there and back to work in a fac- tory. That’s how strong our Caribbean people have been. We’ve been resilient, we’ve been determined, we’ve been proud of who we are but we haven’t told our story”, she says.

“Now is the moment, so that your children and your grandchildren can hear your story.

“We are now standing on the shoulders of those 90-year-olds and those people, many who have died, and they have paved the way for us. There ain’t no turning back.”

She bursts into song: “Ain’t know stopping us now, we’re ON THE MOVE!”, adding: “This force that I feel, I really feel this force within my soul.

“We’ve reinvented ourselves because we lost our name, culture, religion, it was taken away from us. The financial richness of Britain has been off the backs of Caribbean people.

“We are a force to be reckoned with because we have that midas touch.

“We have made a difference; and it’s only now that people are recognising this. It’s about feeling worthy, feeling good about who they are.”

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