This week for Windrush Wednesday I’m talking about Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, DBE.
What can you say about Dame Jessica that hasn’t been said already?
Now retired she is best known for winning an Olympic gold medal and being a part of the Super Saturday evening of the London 2012 Olympics. At the time of winning her Olympic gold she was also world and European champion at that point as well.
She was introduced to sport by her mum who enjoyed high jump and her Jamaican dad who favoured sprinting. When she appeared on Desert Island Discs she revealed that her grandfather would offer her cash incentives as a reward for her initial successes in her early track competitions.
I was going to list her medals and awards but quite frankly I’d run out of characters to post.
One thing I learned that I didn’t know, but that makes me love her a little more is that she used to have a stand named after her at Bramall Lane, home of Sheffield United. In November 2014 she stated that she wanted her name removed from the stand if the club ever re-signed a former player who was a convicted rapist. After stating this she received horrific threats on social media that South Yorkshire police took very seriously. In 2015 the club renamed the stand after a sponsor!
I love everything that she’s achieved but speaking up like that and removing her name from a stand at the football ground of her club for that reason is just amazing!
As you know I have the Hope Gala Ball coming up soon, we are raising funds to enable GEM – Global Empowerment Movement to continue their work in supporting women survivors of abuse. If you’d like to join us at the ball we still have a few tickets available, just follow this link and get your tickets here.
This is still an ongoing case so there isn’t too much information about it in the public domain.
Police were called on the morning on February 18th to a property in Hamilton Park North, Lanarkshire, when they arrived they discovered the dead body of Darrell Buchanan, the police had been called after reports of a disturbance.
Her husband is on remand pending trial – he has appeared in court a couple of times but hasn’t lodged a plea yet.
This case is slightly different for me because there has been no reports that we are aware of at the moment of domestic violence, they appeared to be a happily married couple, the age difference she was 37 and he was 64 at the time of the murder, they lived in a nice part of town and seemed to be living a good life.
What shocks me about it is I hadn’t heard of it, it was shown to me – I’m wondering if it’s not made any news in England that I’ve seen because she’s a black woman? I’m wondering if it was a well of white woman we might have heard more?
I’ll certainly be keeping an eye on it when it goes to trial.
If you are interested in other Truth Tuesday posts, it’s still relatively knew, so far I have talked about Denise Keane-Simmons and Logan Mwangi.
Last week for throwback Thursday I shared me singing at last years Hope Gala Ball (tickets for this years ball are available at this link).
This week I thought I’d share a quick bit of inspiration that I first shared in December 2020, it’s about being the bigger person.
This is about knowing you are right but being able to maybe walk away from a situation, or maybe agreeing to disagree, it’s about taking a stance that brings you peace by being the bigger person and not causing an argument just to be right.
Let me know what you think in the comments are you good at being the bigger person?
Blondel is the daughter of Windrushers from Anguila.
Blondel has been a solicitor for over 37 years and is a fellow of Kings College, London where she was a member of the college council for several years, focusing on institutional change, governance and investment, she has also written several books about the West Indies.
She has held various public appointments addressing communities, education, health and heritage, having recently retired as a diplomat she represented the British Overseas Territory of Anguilla, she supported the territory through hurricane Irma, constitutional reform and in its preparations for Brexit.
Blondel is CEO of the West India Committee, the committee was founded in the City of London in 1735 and is the oldest body representative of the Commonwealth. The committee is a UK registered charity and Royal Charter Institution and is custodian of a UNESCO inscribed library and collection on the Caribbean and a Consulting NGO of UNESCO.
While she has retired from as a diplomat she is still a member of the Windrush Cross-Government working group which brings together community organisations with government representatives to support the deliver of practical solutions to address challenges affecting the Windrush generation and their families.
I just think she is amazing and even though she faced issues being female and black she still pushed the glass ceiling and is still pushing it.
If you’d like to help GEM empower and inspire the next generation then please join me at The Hope Gala Ball later this month, tickets are available at this link
The heartbreaking story of Logan Mwangi got more press coverage than the story I shared of Denise last week, however still not enough.
Logan was only 5 when he was murdered sometime in late July 2021, he was beaten to death by his mother, stepfather and his stepfathers stepson, the young defendant was only 13 at the time of the crime. After they had disposed of his body in a nearby river, cleaned the crime scene and then filed a missing person report.
The stepfather already had a series of criminal convictions from his time as a member of the national front, the convictions were for violent crimes, he was well known for being a racist and often made racial slurs to Logan about his ethnicity, having a father with Kenyan descent.
In August 2020 Logan broke his arm falling down the stairs, they didn’t initially seek medical help and tried popping the bone back by themselves, this incident was referred to the police. When Logan returned to school in September teachers noticed a dramatic decline in him. In January 2021 he was placed on the child protection register which meant that social workers would visit the family every ten days. These visits began in March 2021 and continued until shortly before his murder.
When passing sentence on the trio the judge stated that Logan was physically and emotionally vulnerable at the time of death, particularly those days leading up to his death when he had covid and was isolated in his room.
Both adult defendants were in position of trust, these are the people Logan should have been able to trust.
The murderous assault on Logan involved extreme and forceful impact to cause internal injuries of those expected in a high velocity car collision or a fall from a great height. He would have survived his injuries for several hours, had medical assistance been sought Logan would have had an 80% chance of survival, instead the defendants left him to die and then worked together to dispose of his body like fly tipped rubbish.
All three of them have been found guilty and sentenced to life for what the Crown said was a brutal and sustained assault prior to his death.
In the aftermath an inspection of local child protection services in Bridgend and in particular a review of events leading up to Logans death took place. The young age of one of the defendants was was 13 at the time, 14 when he went on trial received some attention, especially as he was known to child services and had only recently been placed in the care of his stepfather even though he had expressed extreme hostility to Logan.
This is another case where I feel the victim has been let down by the systems that should have been protecting him.
