October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
‘Historical’ includes people still alive today, doesn’t it? Damn straight it does! So the last eight people in this journey will be modern Britons who have put their mark on this country in their various ways.
Floella Benjamin, Baroness Benjamin, DBE, DL was born in Pointe-à-Pierre, Trinidad, in 1949 – one of six siblings, with three brothers and two sisters. An actor, author, television presenter, singer, businesswoman, and politician, she is known as a presenter of children’s programmes such as Play School, Play Away and Fast Forward and now sits in the House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat life peer.
When her father, a policeman and a talented jazz musician”, decided to emigrate to Britain, the children were left in the care of family friends. In 1960 they joined him in Beckenham, Kent, and Floella has discussed the racist experiences she endured as an immigrant.
Having left school to work in a bank, she studied for A-levels at night school. After a spell as a stage actress in West End musicals, she began presenting children’s television programmes in 1976.
Floella has appeared in Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Black Mikado and on screen in the 1975 horror film I Don’t Want to Be Born and the 1977 film Black Joy. Her television credits include Angels, Within These Walls, Crown Court, The Gentle Touch and Dixon of Dock Green. She also appeared in the first episode of Bergerac (Jersey’s own detective) in 1981.
In 2007-09, and again in 2011, she guest-starred in the Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures as Professor Rivers, and narrated three ‘making-of’ documentaries on the Doctor Who DVD box set The Black Guardian Trilogy. In 2007, she played a small role in the British comedy Run Fatboy Run.
Floella was chief executive of Floella Benjamin Productions Ltd, which produced television programmes from 1987 to 2014.
Floella’s twentieth book, Coming to England, about moving from Trinidad, was published in 1997, and is now used to teach modern history to young people. Other books written by Floella include titles such as Floella’s Fun Book, Why the Agouti Has No Tail, Caribbean Cookery and Snotty and the Rod of Power.
Floella was made an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2001, while she was chairperson of BAFTA, from whom she has also won a Special Lifetime Achievement award. She was chairperson of the Women of the Year Lunch for five years and a Millennium Commissioner. She is president of the Elizabeth R Commonwealth Broadcasting Fund and a governor of the National Film and Television School. She was a governor of Dulwich College, where her mother once worked and her son attended.
In 2006, she was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Exeter and became Chancellor of the University, a post she held for ten years.
In 2008 she was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Greater London and made a life peer in 2010. This year Floella was listed in the Top 100 most influential people in the UK of African/African-Caribbean descent in the UK, and made a DBE for her services to charity – she received the honour from Prince Charles at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace just before the COVID-19 lockdown.
Floella served on the 4Rs Commission established by the Liberal Democrats to look into primary education in the UK. She is vice-president of NCH Action for Children and Barnardo’s, and was in the NSPCC’s Hall of Fame. She runs the London Marathon to raise funds for Barnardo’s and the Sickle Cell Society. She was a cultural ambassador for the 2012 Summer Olympics.
She is a patron of the charity Beating Bowel Cancer, having lost her mother to the disease in 2009.
More about Floella Benjamin at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floella_Benjamin