When sorry can be enough

Today I read the comments of Mr Tom Flanagan in Wednesday’s edition of the Globe and Mail, Past wrongs can’t always be undone, which is an attempt to rebut the call for an apology by the Canadian Government in relation to British Home Children and I cannot let it pass.

I read very carefully what Mr Flanagan had to say and I cannot but think he has twisted the arguments. No one to my knowledge is asking for compensation, and I suspect we are all aware of the falseness of an apology by people who had no direct connection with the events. Moreover it is absurd to suggest that we do not understand that past wrongs cannot be undone. Of course they can’t, who has ever said they can?

I personally wish the Holocaust had never happened along with many murky events that were done by the country I belong to but they were and the responsible question is how do we deal with them as deal we must? Lessons can be learned from history and victims deserve recognition and these are the issues that are at the centre of the call for an apology. Sorry is not what really it is about.

I doubt that the stoic and often very brave children who were sent to Canada would be interested in a sorry, they after all got on with their lives helped build their adopted country and rarely talked about what happened to them.

But what an apology does do is give force to the fact that this was wrong.
And don’t for one moment tell me that this was a different time governed by different values. Not only is it wrong by today’s attitudes but there were enough people here in Britain who said it was wrong at the time and criticised a system which allowed vast number of people to live hard and desperate lives, only to end their time in the workhouse.

With an apology even given all the caveats the last of the BHC and their descendants can look to more official support for the issue to be taught in schools as a compulsory part of the curriculum, for more awareness in the media and above all a fresh discussion on how we treat looked after children.