Growing up in Australia with no past, no family and just unanswered questions ..... Empty Cradles

The story of the children sent to Canada from the late 19th century into the early 20th has almost passed out of living memory, but those who went to Australia were still leaving our shores in the 1970s.

These Australian stories are no less harrowing than those young people who travelled across the Atlantic.

They bring to the surface all the same feelings of anger and incredulity that someone could think it was a good idea to solve the problems of our homeless, neglected and poverty stricken children by dumping them in other parts of the Empire.

Now before any one accuses me of a lack of historical impartiality I do have to say that like many of the descendants of children sent from Britain to Canada I have been very careful in examining the case for their migration. Some in Canada might even feel that I have been over cautious about coming to a judgement.

Here is it is enough to say that despite some well meaning thinking on the part of some good people and a belief that wide open spaces were a better environment than the streets and dismal courts of the poorer parts of our cities the policy was wrong.

And it was seen to be wrong at the time.  Almost from the onset of the programme people were worried about the lack of supervision and inspection in Canada and had been challenging the very premise upon which the migration was undertaken.

So, that I hope has negated that oft used argument by the apologists of the scheme that we are in  some way judging past actions by  present day sensibilities.   It always was a tired and barren argument but one totally exposed when you consider that the policy was still in full swing in the 1960s and really only came to an end 40 or so years ago.

This was no case of another time and another place, but at a moment when Britain had embraced the welfare state, believed we were advancing to a new bright future which offered new life choices to its entire people and set against full employment and growing prosperity.

And yet the children were still being sent.  In some cases having been told their parents were dead and in almost all cases denied any real knowledge of who they had been or why they were sent.

This shabby little episode, this last flickering of a discredited policy in child care was exposed by Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker in the 1980s.  Her work in providing a history for all those Australians who grew up with no knowledge of a family in Britain or the circumstances which led to them being sent to Australia is documented in her book Empty Cradles which in turn became the film Oranges and Sunshine.

It is a powerful account of the confusion, hurt and anger felt by many of these young people combined with an insight into the reluctance shown on the part of the charities and government agencies to either help or even admit the extent of the programme.

And this is why I think it is essential reading for all of us engaged in telling the story of British Home Children.

For most of us our own BHC relatives are dead and many of their records are scattered, lost or unobtainable.  Even just identifying the names of the young people is a huge task and some I fear will never emerge from the shadows.

So for most of us looking for family it is a matter of pouring over newspaper accounts, census returns and just possibly if we are very lucky the records of the local work house or children’s charity.

Going the next step and trying to understand the justification for the migrations is wrapped up in dense committee minutes of long forgotten charities or the often vain self congratulatory biographies and autobiographies of the worthies involved.

All of which means our own feelings of anger and disbelief are one step removed.  Mrs Humphrey’s book has the value that here are the voices and experiences of people still alive, still able to recount their stories and give a context to what happened.

In its way the book has done more to make me angry about what went on than the plight of my own great uncle or the stories uncovered by Lori and Norah and the many others committed to telling the story of our Canadian BHC.

But it is also a very revealing insight into how the charities and authorities tried to minimise what went on and in some cases to perpetuate the myth that it was all oranges and sunshine and that they were only doing what was best for the children.

More than once Mrs Humphrey’s was told that her work had caused hurt to those who ran the charities to which her reply was always that she knew of countless other Australians who had been at the receiving end and were also still hurting.

I know there are those who feel that the publicity around the book takes the limelight away from the experiences of our Canadian relatives but I rather think it is the reverse.  Empty Cradles exposed an awful episode in child care, opened up the debate and contributed to national apologies made by the Australian and British Governments.

All of that was a good thing, and will lead I have no doubt to an apology from the Government of Canada.  The work of those promoting the petition along with the growing number of books, exhibitions and research will continue to shine a light on all those young people sent north across the Atlantic.

In the meantime I shall finish the book and order up the DVD of the film.

*Empty Cradles,  was published in 1994. Its sales of 75,000 copies helped to fund the work of the Child Migrants Trust at a critical time when British government grants had been stopped. Empty Cradles has been dramatised as the 2011 feature film Oranges and Sunshine.

The Child Migrants Trust was established in 1987 by Margaret Humphreys CBE, OAM. It addresses the issues surrounding the deportation of children from Britain. In the post-war period, child migrants as young as three were shipped to Canada, New Zealand, the former Rhodesia and Australia, a practice that continued as late as 1970. http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/