From Unity, 21 November 2009

More than apologies needed

The transportation of more than 150,000 children from Great Britain to Australia and Canada from the 1920s until 1967 is beyond any decent person's comprehension. The fact that the process known as the Child Migrants Programme was carried on under Labour governments is equally beyond comprehension.
     The facts now revealed, showing that these children suffered horrendous abuse and exploitation, apart from being lied to about whether they were orphans or not, must have been known at the time.
     It has also been revealed that a key part of the programme was to supply Australia and other Commonwealth countries with sufficient “white stock.” This motivation was spoken about by Sir John Norris, the representative of the governor of Tasmania, in a speech in Hobart in 1951. In his speech he referred to the millions of Asiatics that menace us, “and the need to have migrants of British stock with whom we share a common culture and identity.”
     Gordon Brown is to offer an apology, as has the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, but in his case it was to an estimated 500,000 children, many from overseas, who were held in orphanages and other institutions in Australia between 1930 and 1970.  
     In 2008 Rudd made what was called a landmark apology to the so-called stolen generations of Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their parents.
     Apologies do not go far enough. The full facts as to who were responsible for the Child Migrants Programme should be put into the public domain.
     The Department of Health, which drew up a document for migrants’ families after an investigation in 1998, described how a number of organisations were involved in sending children abroad. Among them were Dr Barnardo’s Homes, the Salvation Army, the Children's Society, and some Catholic groups.
     The children’s secretary, Ed Balls, described the Child Migrants Programme as a “stain on our society” and “something that we look back on in shame.”
     One of the child migrants went further by describing it as “one of the crimes of the century.” It certainly illustrates the inhumanity of those in authority. It certainly should not end with overdue apologies.

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