Thought For The Day – Monday May 13^th 2024

Actor, author, broadcaster, campaigner, charity fundraiser, politician, presenter, role model, singer and writer The Right Honourable The Baroness Benjamin OM DBE DL has been honoured with a “British Academy of Film and Television Arts” (BAFTA) Fellowship Award.  There were very gracious and moving tributes from the Prince of Wales and Clive Myrie.

Of the honour, BAFTA stated: “We are honoured to present Baroness Benjamin the BAFTA Fellowship for her tireless support of children and young people, her impact on television broadcasting, and for her unwavering championing of diversity. She is an unstoppable force for good with a determination to create opportunities and positive role models for future generations that has seen her effect a tremendous amount of positive change over fifty years and counting. She is deservedly a national treasure.”

Baroness Benjamin was part of “The Windrush Generation”, as her parents came to the U.K. from Pointe-à-Pierre, Trinidad and Tobago, in the Caribbean, to help re-build and lead the U.K.  after the Second World War. Floella’s story was fraught with challenge and trauma both before she joined her parents in the U.K., and, after arriving in the U.K., suffering abuse and negative prejudice and discrimination, like so many. The book “Coming To England” describes her story. As a child in the U.K., Floella lived in just one room with her eight family members, though she was surrounded and inspired by their love.

Having left school to work in a bank, Floella was self-motivated and self-taught, studying for her A-Levels at night school.  After stage performances in West End musicals, it was as a presenter of the children’s television programme, “Play School” in the 1970s and 1980s, that Baroness Benjamin was a groundbreaking leader, person and voice.  In a previous generation especially, children’s television programmes were a vital source of learning and enjoyment.  But children being taught, and inspired by Floella Benjamin on their televisions at the time, did not know of the battles Baroness Benjamin, and her generation, faced. But Baroness Benjamin had changed, and still changes, society for others.

Baroness Benjamin talked of her life, values, inspirations, roots and principles in an outstanding acceptance speech of integrity last night.  She also talked of the vital importance of shining a light for others: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MY14lSgbDDk

“Windrush Is Me”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgiNxe0Cfz0