In another panel, perhaps, could go the following quote: “”At a time when empty cradles are contributing woefully to empty spaces, it is necessary to look for external sources of supply. And if we do not supply from our own stock we are leaving ourselves all the more exposed to the menace of the teeming millions of our neighbouring Asiatic races. . . The policy of bringing out young boys and girls and training them from the beginning in agricultural and domestic methods has the additional advantage of acclimatising them from the outset to Australian conditions.”
Archbishop of Perth welcoming British boys arriving in Australia on the SS Straithaird, August 1938.
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By CRISPIN HULL Her birth name was Elizabeth Ball. But they even took that away. They called her Christine and told her parents were killed in a car accident. In 1939 she was taken from a home in England at the age of eight and was sent to an orphanage in Australia. For nearly 50 years she was alone. During her childhood she had no family and was abused by a teacher at the orphanage. During her adulthood she could trust no-one easily.
Her thoughts had become institutionalised, desensitised because she had no mother, no father, no adoptive family, just an institution. She had an endless, unfulfilment. She would have probably gone to her death that way but for an astonishing co-incidence in 1986 and the tenacity and care of one woman: Margaret Humphreys.
This week Margaret Humphreys published the story of that co-incidence and what it led to in a book called Empty Cradles.
The Australian and British public know the gist of the crimes described in Empty Cradles through a series in The Guardian reprinted in Australian newspapers and two subsequent television programs: Lost Children of the Empire and The Leaving of Liverpool.
They told of 10,000 children being taken from homes, where they were often placed temporarily by mothers who could not cope, and sent to Australia to a life in institutions run by what are called charities.
It happened from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s, but the scars continue.
Essentially there were numerous breaches of human rights:
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Children illegally deported _ without their or their parents’ permission.
Children lied to about what sort of life they were going to in Australia: sunshine, plenty and loving foster homes.
Parents lied to about the fate of their children: they have been adopted into loving homes.
Children being put in institutions and denied proper education.
Children being forced to labour to build buildings for the Catholic Church and others and to do other forced or underpaid labour.
Sexual and physical abuse.
Children being denied even the chance of going into foster homes because the charities got paid by the Commonwealth Government to look after them.
Children being lied to about their parents (died in the war or a car accident).
Children being used as part of an Empire political game to populate the far corners of the Empire so the teeming Asian hordes would not take over and at the same time to rid Britain of the expense and trouble of homeless children.
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Margaret Humphreys now tells the story of how she uncovered this horror. Her book now reveals perhaps an even greater culpability that the original crimes.
Margaret Humphreys is a social worker who lives in Nottingham. In 1986 she was running a support group for adoptive children and their parents called Triangle.
One day she got a letter from a woman in Adelaide woman called Madeline who had heard about Triangle from some friends who had visited Nottingham.
“”I was four years old when I left England,” she wrote. “”I was living in a children’s home because my parents were dead, and I was put on a boat with other children and sent to Australia. I don’t even know if my name or birthdate are right. All I know for certain is that I once lived in Nottingham.”
Humphreys was sceptical. There would have been adoption papers or a guardian. Children don’t just get sent to Australia. She wrote back saying Madeline must be mistaken. But Madeline replied with a more insistent letter. Humphreys thought she might go through the motions of the basic adoptive search.
There the matter would have rested but for the co-incidence.
Shortly afterwards, at a meeting of the Triangle group, a woman named Marie who had been adopted when young told of how in her early adulthood “”one day, out of the blue, I remembered I had a brother. The more I thought about it the clearer it became to me that he was younger than me and his name was Harold.”
Marie told of how she traced Harold through the Salvation Army to Australia and made contact, but then did not keep it up because Harold and her husband had a row and he went back to Australia.
How did he get to Australia, Marie was asked.
“”I don’t know somebody put him on a boat.”
“”With your mother and father?”
“”No he went on his own?”
The group could not believe it _ a little boy taken away to Australia on his own. But the group had not heard of Madeline’s story.
It was corroboration. It came in the co-incidence of the telling of these two stories to one social worker in Nottingham. The stories could have been told separately to different people and been disbelieved or not seriously acted upon.
Humphreys acted. She tried to find Harold and Madeline’s family, through the registry of births, deaths and marriages, Australia House and the charities.
Her searches revealed dark hints that many children might have been sent to Australia. Humphreys approached a journalist on the Observer to help uncover the secret. The journalist suggested placing advertisements in Australian newspapers. The first appeared on January 10, 1987, seeking child migrants for help in research.
More than a dozen letters came in and the Observer paid for Humphreys to go to Australia, and then it steamrolled.
More than 10,000 children had been taken to Australia, illegally, without out proper adoption procedures without their parents’ or their consent.
Humphreys records the details.
Sandra:
“”There was just the orphanage in the middle of nowhere. There was the school, the church and the convent. That was considered all that was necessary.
“”We wore unbleached calico and ate peas and mince every day.”
Did she marry?
“”No. And I think that can be put down to a loveless upbringing. It made me unable to trust anybody.
“”Not having a family makes you feel as if you don’t belong to the human race.”
Marie:
“”I can’t stand Mothers’ Day. Every year it is a constant reminder. I’ve spent years looking at families from a distance, trying t understand what it would be like to be part of one, my own. To have my own mum and dad.”
Child migrant after child migrant tell of loss of identity, betrayal, alcoholism, mistrust, suicide attempts, failure to make relationships and failure to adjust.
“”I don’t have birth certificate. I’m so angry with the agency that sent me out. I’ve written to them from the age of 20 and got not satisfactory reply, ever.”
Ron:
“”The search for identity is very important. If you look at the sort of techniques used in concentration camps, they were designed to take away people’s identity. It is the ultimate indignity.”
Humphreys tells of how the charities (Bernardos, Fairbridge, the Salvation Army and the Catholic Church) said no files existed, or refused to open up archives or asserted confidentiality.
“”The problem was that I’d broken a taboo and spoken out against the charities,” she wrote.
Some children told of physical and sexual abuse at institutions run by Fairbridge and the Christian Brothers. These were at first denied and then acknowledged when the evidence was overwhelming, but only as isolated incidents.
Humphreys tells of laborious searches through the births, deaths and marriages records at St Catherine’s House and then physical searches for parents and siblings using electoral rolls and phone books and going to addresses to make inquiries.
This work that has been going on by the Child Migrants Trust for seven years is different from usual adoption cases on several important counts.
With adoption it is usual for children to have been brought up in a loving home. Often they have been told about the adoption. Child migrants have trauma to overcome and need help. Secondly, adoption follows court orders and detailed record-keeping so natural parents can be traced more easily. Thirdly, with ordinary adoptions, there is no bureaucratic and institutional conspiracy to hide past misdeeds.
With adoptions governments have long recognised the need for children to come to terms with their origins and find their natural parents while taking nothing from the adoptive parents, and they have legislated and provided resources to help that process.
But what of the child migrants.
Well, this happened long ago. And it is has been in the open now for seven years, so all of that has been fixed up, surely? Surely, governments have done everything possible for these victims of the criminal folly of earlier policy.
No.
This reveals perhaps an even more culpable breach of human rights, because neglect continues in the face of knowledge. With everything we know about these child migrants the British Government refuses to fund the Child Migrant Trust; the charities by and large refuse to co-operate and the Australian Government provides the salary of one social worker.
A couple of months ago Humphreys had to tell a 50-year-old man that his mother had died the month before while the trust had been trying to find her.
The reason this man’s reunion with his mother was at a gravesite instead of a home or airport was only lack of money.
Humphreys book reveals that the Australian Government concurred in the child migrant scheme to help populate the country. It paid the charities to keep the children. It failed to inspect the orphanages and failed to encourage fostering.
These child migrants then get insult added to injury after they find relatives in England and want to travel for reunification. They need a passport. They find they are not Australian citizens and if they want to become one, they have to pay a $55 fee.
A parliamentary committee at least recommended the waiving of that fee last month.
Humphreys says if officials of the British and Australian Governments could meet then to perpetrate this scheme, they could meet now to help heal some of the trauma.
“”Time is of the essence,” Humphreys said by phone from Nottingham. “”Every month that goes past increases the chances that we have to tell a child migrant their mother or brother or sister is dead.”
Christine, who lives in Camden, tells of the importance of reunion and the knowledge of origins. She was brought up in a Fairbridge home.
“”Nothing can give you back the lost years,” she said this week. “”When I first met Margaret in 1988 I was 57 years old and I was still governed by that institution.”
Humphreys describes her in the book as being hostile to her and initially defending Fairbridge. It was denial.
Through Margaret she now knows her past.
“”I have been able to get in touch with the child within and tell her she is loved and given her some answers,” she said.
“”Before I was never fulfilled. Now I can take decisions. My friends tell me I am a better person. And now I have turned my pain around to help others. Revenge does not help heal the wounds.”
Christine is appalled at governmental indifference.
“”If they wait long enough, of course, we’ll all die,” she said. “”But my children are angry. I want to see England admit it.”
She is writing a book about her experiences.
But we have already had a book and two TV programs, surely that’s enough.
If only it was.
Humphreys says the trust has had no financial help from any of the responsible charities in Britain. The British Government gives only occasional one-off grants. She is grateful for the social workers’ salary from the Australian Government, but it is not enough.
“”When I first started I thought it would be a five-year task,” she said. “”There are no official statistics of how many children are involved, so we don’t know precisely how many child migrants there are out there. But many thousands have come forward and many thousands still want the services of the trust.”
Colin Peach, the social worker at the trust’s office in Melbourne, said this week, “”I’m it for the whole of Australia.
“”We could do with another full-time social worker and secretary and still be snowed under.”
Peach and Humphreys argue cogently for government money. They are not just another group with their hand out for the government to fix a problem. Indeed, it is precisely because of governmental interference and the politics of the white empire that the child migrants are in their present plight. The two governments have a moral duty to help repair the damage they caused.
They are opposed to the responsible charities being given the job.
“”You do not put the abused back in the hands of the abusers,” Humphreys said. “”And the child migrants do not trust government agencies.”
Peach said, “”The work is painstaking and detailed. It is a lengthy process.”
The trust offers four main services:
Information retrieval. First in Australia to get clues then in Britain to get birth certificates.
Tracing relatives. Peach says the trust never gives up; even if reunion is at the graveside.
Counselling.
Preparation and arranging for reunification.
The trust does not charge.
Peach says there are two major questions. One looking at the past and the other at the present.
How did the scheme come about? Who was responsible and so on.
The present human-rights question, though, is “”what are the responsible governments doing no to alleviate the suffering?”
It seems to me these crimes are worse than those perpetrated on the Birmingham Six and Guilford Four in terms of government complicity and cover-up. They are similar to Australia’s involvement in Vietnam in terms of misguided policy for political ends causing human suffering to citizens.
Yet in those instances there has been a concerted effort at reparation.
In the case of the child migrants there has been virtually nothing in the seven years since both governments were publicly reminded of their predecessors’ crimes.