SISLIN ALLEN: 1938 – 2021
Sislin Fay Allen, a former geriatric nurse who in 1968 became the first Black policewoman in Britain and later worked in law enforcement in her native Jamaica, died on July 5 at her home in Ocho Rios, Jamaica. She was 83.
Allen, who went by Fay, had emigrated to Britain in 1962 after the death of her father, whom she had looked after for years. Her mother died much earlier. In England, she trained and qualified as a nurse in Britain’s publicly funded National Health Service.
She was married and raising two children when she perused a newspaper during her lunch break and saw an advertisement for recruits to the London Metropolitan Police.
“So, I looked at it and thought, ‘Why not?’ ” she told Sky News in 2020. One of her friends told her she was “silly” for even considering it, doubting they would accept her. As a precaution, she said, she wrote on the application that she was Black.
She soon went back to her friend and said: “I’ve got news for you. I’ve been accepted.”
She won appointment in an era of considerable antagonism between the Met (as the London force was known) and the Black community, including many from the Caribbean.
It was two months after she first pounded the beat, initially always with a male colleague, that a Conservative member of parliament, Enoch Powell, stoked racial animosity in what became known as his “Rivers of Blood” speech attacking mass postwar immigration to Britain.
Allen said her superiors told her they received hate mail addressed to her but declined to show it to her – so to not weaken her morale. They did present her with the many positive letters welcoming her appointment.
Source: | This article originally belongs to smh.com.au
