Why I would like to sign the petition on British Home Children

It is a pity that I cannot sign the petition calling on the Canadian Government to offer an apology for the wrongs done to British Home Children.

Now I have written before about national apologies http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2012/02/who-will-speak-for-british-home.html and I remain of the opinion that the apology is more about bringing these young people out of the shadows than just a belated sorry.

Like many descendants of British Home Children I had no idea until recently that one of my family took part or the scale of the programme. I am indebted to my Canadian colleagues who have been working for years collating the lists of those who were sent and attempting to raise the profile of BHC.

But history is messy and sometimes the interpretation that people put on the story is not the one you expect. I was reminded of this when I picked up on the debate at one history group where the conversation centred on the opportunities that the programme offered for new lives in a new country.

And I suppose on one level it is the numbers game. For every child who experienced hardship loneliness and cruelty there were others who were lifted from poverty neglect and blighted lives. So is it possible to balance the two and come to a neat end sum of happiness versus sadness? Which I guess echoes that infamous discussion between Holly Martins and Harry Lime high above the streets of post war Vienna looking down on a crowd of people.
“Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?”*

But this of course is the way that progress is measured in history. Ultimately the Industrial Revolution was a good thing because despite the awful conditions experienced in our cities and factories it transformed Britain from a rural economy and laid the basis for a modern country. The Great War was a disaster because the loss of life far outweighed the attempt to check the dominance of Germany in Europe.

On the other hand is there not a danger in dwelling on the negative side of the British Home Children project which in turn creates an image of these young people as victims? It was once put to me that in Holocaust studies the constant emphasis on the persecution of the Jewish people can be counterproductive and reinforces that anti-Semitic idea that here are a group of people different from the rest of us. In the camps and the ghettoes there was Jewish resistance and a culture that 2,000 years of persecution has not managed to destroy.

Likewise British Home Children made new lives for themselves helping to build their adopted country and are due that recognition so I hope this will also be a result of the petition. And even if I can’t sign I will make everyone tomorrow at my next talk above the Co-op rooms on Hardy Lane here in Chorlton aware of that petition and the story behind it.

Picture; from the collection of Lori OSchefski
*The Third Man 1949