Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

by Margaret Humphreys

  ‘With the benefit of hindsight, those who engaged in this response to the children’s plight can be seen to have been acting out of the best intentions but misguidedly.’

  Michael Jarman, of Barnardo’s wrote in a letter to the press: ‘At the time, Barnardo’s believed that it was providing these young people with an enormous opportunity, as well as expanding its capacity to help more children in Britain. This idea is greatly at odds with our emphasis today on working to keep families together.’

  The City of Liverpool Social Services had an entirely more helpful response. I had a letter and a telephone call from Councillor Cathy Hancox who wanted me to confirm that child migrants from Liverpool had been sent to Australia.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Quite a number.’

  Mrs Hancox, along with an officer from Liverpool’s Department of Social Services, came to see me to discuss how they could help, and eventually The City of Liverpool Council provided the Trust with funds to pay a social worker’s salary for eighteen months.

  I spent most of those last few days before the broadcast in the bunker, dealing with last-minute telephone interviews. The setting mirrored my mood. What better place to be during a siege than deep underground behind walls of steel-reinforced concrete?

  I had heard from Western Australia that police had begun investigating complaints filed by child migrants against the Christian Brothers, and there had been calls in Parliament for a full judicial inquiry. Australian lawyers were preparing to lodge claims by more than 250 men who alleged they were abused in Christian Brothers institutions.

  Similarly, I had heard that lawyers in the UK were preparing writs against the British government on behalf of child migrants, along with applications for legal aid.

  On the afternoon of Thursday, 15 July, before the first episode of The Leaving of Liverpool, we did a final test of the telephones. A switch was pulled and all of them rang simultaneously. Rather than wait for the programme, people were already calling, having read the numbers in newspapers and magazines.

  We logged 700 calls that first evening and 10,000 over the next five days.

  Counsellors struggled to comfort callers and take down their details. We had tearful mothers wondering if the children they gave for adoption could possibly have gone to Australia; brothers and sisters who remembered seeing siblings taken away; and even calls from abusers ringing up to confess that they had molested children and needed help.

  My only disappointment was the discovery of just what the BBC meant by ‘further editing’. There is a very moving scene in the first episode that shows a ship arriving in Australia and the children disembarking. They are shepherded into a holding area and made to line up beneath large signs naming the charities who were receiving children off that ship.

  This brief incident was taken out by the BBC. There was no reference, by name, to any of the charities or child care agencies who participated in the child migration schemes. This could well have left British viewers with the impression that it was only the Catholic Church which played a major role in child migration.

  First the BBC had refused us phone lines; then it refused to screen the help-line numbers and finally it decided to edit the mini-series. I wrote immediately to John Birt, the Director General, requesting an explanation.

  His reply, drafted by the ‘Appeals Secretary’ of the BBC, totally failed to address my concerns of bias against the Catholic Church.

  ‘… following transmission in Australia, the Fairbridge Trust contacted the BBC to emphasize that they were no longer associated with this kind of work. In deference to their concern, this small cut [in the film] was made, and included a similar sign to Barnardo’s since they were the only other organization identifiable in the scene.

  … we certainly do not agree with you that to remove the reference amounted to editing the production with bias.

  What bizarre logic! Would the BBC edit Schindler’s List on the basis that the German army is no longer involved in the persecution of Jews?

  * * *

  The second half of the mini-series, on the following night, was even more demanding. Within the bunker we were fighting to stay awake in the early hours of the morning and answer the continuous stream of calls. Amid the commotion, a journalist from Perth managed to get through.

  ‘I just heard on the national news that the Australian flag is flying over Nottingham,’ she said.

  ‘Yes it is,’ I told her. ‘It’s flying alongside the Union Jack as a mark of respect for the child migrants.’

  The journalist became very emotional. As her voice faltered, she told me that she had never heard anything like it.

  39

  The Leaving of Liverpool created an enormous sense of outrage in Britain, as it had done in Australia. It touched the hearts and conscience of the nation. Letters poured in, adding to the thousands I had received since the Trust was founded.

  Such letters are often moving, but there is one, in particular, that I will always remember. It was written by a former London policeman who, in the early 1950s, found two boys wandering lost and alone near London Bridge. He wrote:

  It subsequently transpired that the boys had absconded from a children’s home in Kent. They were two boys of a family of six, three boys and three girls, whose father was a Flight Sergeant in the Royal Air Force stationed in Berlin. As you will guess the marriage had broken up and the children had been put in the care of the local authority.

  The lads had got as far as London Bridge Station and after crossing London Bridge and entering the City, I had found them.

  Their purpose in absconding was that they were aware that they were on their way to Australia with a view to eventually being put to a career in farming. They had mutually decided – and I can only guess their ages at about ten and six years – to run away to find their sisters to say goodbye to them before they went.

  I subsequently went on to have a happy and worthwhile career in the police service, reaching relatively high rank and to have five children from an extremely successful marriage, but that little incident still brings a lump to my throat. It still causes me to wonder what happened to those young boys, I can only hope they have done well and that they are still in touch with their brother and sisters.

  I retired some years ago and from time to time give a little talk to Rotary Clubs, Women’s Institutes and the like. I always refer to the incident of those two lads as being the saddest moment of my police career.

  The Leaving of Liverpool also touched the hearts of the decision-makers in Britain.

  Shadow Health Secretary David Blunkett openly called for a public inquiry into child migration. Labour’s Social Services spokesman David Hinchliffe said the Government had a ‘clear obligation’ to provide proper funding to the Child Migrants Trust.

  The plight of the child migrants was now firmly on the political agenda. In some ways, I blamed myself for the fact that it had taken so long. I had simply failed to get my message across to the politicians in the UK.

  Despite the barrage of publicity and questions in Parliament, by August 1993 the British government had still not acknowledged the enormous tragedy that had taken place. I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep silent when the child migrants were being treated with such indifference.

  In Australia there was a huge sense of embarrassment for a policy of social engineering that had gone so badly wrong, but the British government appeared ready to ignore any suggestion that it was in any way responsible.

  During parliamentary question time on 2 November 1993, David Hinchliffe MP confronted the Prime Minister John Major.

  ‘Is the Prime Minister aware that early next month Mrs Margaret Humphreys will become the first British citizen outside the royal family to be awarded the prestigious Order of Australia medal for her work rehabilitating victims of the British child migrant scheme? In recognition of that award will the Prime Minister set up an independent public inquiry into the operation of the scheme until 1967 and the resulting
appalling treatment of vast numbers of British children? In view of his professed commitment to open government, will the Prime Minister end the disgraceful Government cover-up of the issue once and for all?’

  John Major replied, ‘I am certainly happy to congratulate Mrs Humphreys on her award. I was not aware that that was the case, but I give her my warmest congratulations. As the honourable gentleman will know – for I am aware that he has taken a great interest in this matter – the migration schemes to Australia and other countries were run at the time by respected national voluntary bodies. The Government’s concern now is to ensure that former child migrants who want to make contact with their families are able to do so. Any concern about the treatment of the children in another country is essentially a matter for the authorities of that country.’

  Mr Major’s ‘concern’ that child migrants were reunited with their families sounded rather hollow when one considered the fact that the Trust had received only two Department of Health grants in five years.

  Similarly, his claim that the suffering of child migrants was not the concern of Britain alarmed me. Surely Mr Major wasn’t aware of all the relevant facts. I wanted to remind him that these were British children. I wanted him to look at the government documents and social welfare reports which showed, beyond doubt, that successive British governments played a major role in our children being sent abroad.

  Under the Empire Settlement Acts of 1922 and 1937, the Government actively co-operated with private organizations to jointly help people who wanted to settle in ‘His Majesty’s Overseas Dominions’. Although not specifically designed to include children, this legislation allowed organizations like Barnardo’s and the Fairbridge Society to begin shipments of youngsters.

  Under the Children’s Act 1948, the Government had a duty to properly supervise the charities and organizations who were receiving children in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Rhodesia. But all evidence pointed to the fact that successive British governments had made little or no effort to inspect or even keep track of the children once they had left British shores.

  If the Prime Minister chose to ignore such facts, he wasn’t by any means the first. For when Mervyn and I began researching Britain’s involvement in child migration, we uncovered a catalogue of denials, ignorance and unheeded warnings.

  The Child Migrants Trust gained access to the archives of former welfare organizations in the UK. Immediately, it was clear that two organizations in particular had been worried about child migration – the Association of Psychiatric Social Workers, and the British Federation of Social Workers (BFSW). The latter set up a special sub-committee in February 1945 and convened a conference on child migration for December of that year.

  Among the recommendations to emerge was that special emphasis be placed upon ‘the importance of giving children links with the country of origin and of giving them contacts with persons outside the institutions or foster homes in the receiving country’.

  This warning went unheeded.

  And then in 1948, a former principal of the Fairbridge Farm School at Pinjarra in Western Australia, voiced his concerns to the BFSW. Mr Paterson complained that the new committees that were running the farm school still retained some of the old people associated with the ‘bad traditions of the past’, whose first care was not the welfare of the children and who were identified with the policy of cheap labour …

  But still the ships left England carrying more and more children.

  On 24 March 1948, a letter was published in The Times signed by sixteen of Britain’s leading welfare agencies.

  Emigration of Children.

  Sir,

  … The undersigned have reason to think that the practices of the various agencies for the migration of children overseas vary and that their methods of selection of children, their welfare, education, training and after care in the receiving countries are not always of a sufficiently high standard. We would urge, therefore, that, in conjunction with the Commonwealth Relations Department, an inter-Governmental commission of inquiry be set up to examine the whole system of care of deprived children of British origin in the Commonwealth …

  On the far side of the world, The Age newspaper in Melbourne picked up the story. ‘Welfare Officers Seek Migrant Inquiry,’ the headline read.

  Sixteen British welfare associations, pressing the Government to investigate present conditions of 300 child migrants from Britain to the Dominions, say they have received adverse reports on children both from individuals and organizations overseas. Many children from seven to fourteen years – orphaned, abandoned or illegitimate – have been sent overseas by charitable organizations within the last eighteen months.

  The Government says it has sponsored only 150 such children. It has a complete check on what has happened to them and cannot speak for the other 300 who have been sent by voluntary organizations.

  One welfare officer said some of the children were now in institutions less efficiently run than those in England. ‘Our greatest fear is that population needs of the Dominions are being put before the welfare of these children,’ he added.

  Headed by the British Federation of Social Workers the associations claim that many children are undergoing ‘a new life of drudgery, with little thought to education.’

  They want a Government commission to investigate along the following lines:

  Conditions under which these children are selected;

  What has happened to them?

  What safeguards are there for their well-being?

  How can they be protected from blind-alley jobs?

  The demand for an investigation comes only a short time before the new Children’s Bill comes into force in July. Under this bill the Home Secretary gets power to control all arrangements for child emigration.

  There was no official Government inquiry or investigation.

  The 1948 Children’s Bill contained two clauses relating to child migration, both of them deeply flawed. The BFSW wanted them altered. In particular it wanted a stipulation that the Home Secretary had to give his consent before any child could be sent overseas by a voluntary agency. This regulation already applied to children in local authority care.

  If this wasn’t possible, the BFSW wanted an amendment to the Bill that would have forced the voluntary agencies to be registered and under greater control.

  When the Children’s Bill passed through the House of Lords on 13 April 1948, Lord Llewellyn spoke out: ‘… children should not be emigrated willy nilly without much enquiry as to their physical condition or the kind of conditions to which they were going in the Dominions or perhaps somewhere else …’

  The Lord Chancellor replied, ‘I can give an assurance that the Home Office intended to secure that children shall not be emigrated unless there is absolute satisfaction that proper arrangements have been made for the care and upbringing of each child …’

  Several weeks later, when MPs in the House of Commons expressed similar concerns, the Home Secretary assured them: ‘… the regulations will certainly require adequate arrangements to be made for ensuring that the child who is being emigrated has the same after care as that which is required for the Local Authority child.’

  No regulations were issued, no amendment was made, and the 1948 Children’s Act was passed. The second wave of child migration now had the green light and over the next five years more youngsters were sent to Australia than had been transported in the previous quarter of a century.

  The supporters of child migration breathed an enormous sigh of relief. They had escaped closer control, although some could see the writing on the wall. A memo written by Mr J. East at the Commonwealth Relations Office on 9 June 1948, revealed: ‘We are getting into rather deep water with the Home Office over child migration and there is a school of thought in the country which is almost opposed to child migration on principle.’

  There were more warnings – each one of them adding to the embarrassing catalogue of neglect. Yet the voluntary agencies
seemed beyond scrutiny – almost untouchable – with royal patronage, and their boards bulging with the great and the good. Even today, few people dare to criticize those charities involved.

  In the 1950s, there were many critical reports on child migration.

  A 1951 study by the National Council of Social Services reported: ‘Since the general opinion in this country seems to be against any child being brought up in an institution unless he is unsuitable for adoption or fostering, it seems doubtful whether it is in the best interests of children for them to be sent abroad in order to be brought up in institutions, completely cut off from any home ties they may have, and perhaps in very isolated places.’

  Despite such expert advice, the schemes continued.

  In 1953, the British government established the Oversea (sic) Migration Board specifically to promote child migration. It immediately criticized local authorities for not providing enough children.

  The Board’s first annual report, in July 1954, applauded the schemes and the voluntary societies involved:

  We are unanimous in the view that the United Kingdom authorities who bear a moral responsibility for these children, should not abandon their interest in this way but should renew the agreements with the voluntary societies …

  Having built up their organizations on the basis of United Kingdom as well as Australian government assistance, many of the societies would find it extremely difficult to continue on their remaining resources. They might be forced to lower their standards of accommodation and training, and the interests of the children already under their care, who emigrated with the help and the blessing, so to speak, of the United Kingdom government, might conceivably be prejudiced.

  Apart from the argument of obligation, there seems no doubt that the cost of child emigrants to the economy of the United Kingdom is less than that of adults who leave in the middle of their working life having already benefited from educational and health facilities in this country. Children, on the other hand, not only have not yet begun to contribute to the economy, but they have not completed their education and, as far as the emigrant children are concerned, frequently come from broken homes and might, if they stayed in the United Kingdom, eventually become or continue to be a charge upon the rates.