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Current Issues
Child Migrants from the United Kingdom
E-Brief: Online Only issued October 2001
David Watt,
Information/E-links
Coral Dow, Information/E-links
Social Policy Group
Background to the
scheme
Between 1922 and 1967 about 150 000 children with an
average age of eight years and nine months were shipped from Great
Britain to help populate the British Dominions of Canada, Rhodesia,
New Zealand and Australia with 'good white stock'. Estimates of the
number of children sent to Australia vary from 5 000 to
10 000, most of whom were sent to charitable and religious
institutions. The Australian Government welcomed the scheme and
encouraged non-government organisations such as Barnados and
Fairbridge to continue settling child migrants who were regarded as
adaptable with long working lives. However many child migrants
later claimed that they were ill-treated in the institutions to
which they were sent.
Child migrants are represented in Britain and Australia by a
number of organisations. The most prominent is the Child Migrants
Trust which was established in 1987 to assist child migrants
seeking family reunions. Child migrants and the Child Migrants
Trust have lobbied for compensation and an apology from
governments.
Other bodies which offer assistance are the Child Migrant
Friendship Society, and in Perth, the Christian Brothers'
Ex-Residents Services (C-BERS Services) and the Catholic Migrant
Centre.
Australian responses and initiatives
- In 1990 the Australian Government announced financial
assistance to the Child Migrant Trust branches in Melbourne and
Perth. This assistance continues to fund a case worker and
counselling services.
- In 1993 the Christian Brothers issued a public apology for the
abuses that they admitted had taken place at their child-care
institutions. They have funded travel by former child migrants to
make family reunions.
- In 1997 the Rockhampton Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy
apologised to former residents of St. Joseph's Home, Nerkool.
- In August 1998 the
Western Australian government apologised to former British child
migrants who suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse in
Western Australian orphanages and institutions. However, the
Western Australian government voted against a proposal to
re-establish a select committee set up by the previous government
to investigate the needs of former child migrants, or to implement
the recommendations of the Select Committee's Interim Report.
- The treatment of child migrants in Queensland was included in
the wider Report
of the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland
Institutions, chaired by Leneen Forde and tabled in the
Queensland Parliament on 8 June 1999. Following the tabling of the
Forde Report, a formal apology was issued by: the Premier of
Queensland, Peter Beattie; the Minister for Families, Youth and
Community Care, Anna Bligh; the Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane;
the Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane; the Moderator of the Uniting
Church in Australia (Qld Synod); the Territorial Commander,
Australian Eastern Territory, of the Salvation Army; the President
of the Baptist Union of Queensland and the Conference President for
the Churches of Christ in Queensland.
- In 1999, the Christian Brothers, the Sisters of Mercy and the
Poor Sisters of Nazareth launched PHIND: the Personal
History Index for former child migrants to Catholic Homes in
Australia.
British
Government response and initiatives
- In 1997 the British House of Commons Health Committee accepted
that responsibility for matters relating to the welfare of former
British child migrants rested with the British Department of
Health.
- The House of Commons Health Committee chaired by David
Hinchcliffe MP reported on the scheme and welfare of surviving
migrants. The committee took evidence in Australia in June 1998 and
tabled its report:
The Welfare of Former British Child Migrants in July 1998.
- In December 1998 the Health Secretary Frank Dobson accepted the
report's main recommendations. He accepted the policy had been
misguided and promised assistance to former child migrants by
setting up a central
database of information in the UK to help them trace their
records and a Support Fund of 1 million over three years to help
pay for family reunions. To qualify for assistance under the Fund,
former child migrants must be able to show that they have traced a
close family relative, (mother, father, brother, sister, aunt or
uncle), and that they wish to reunite for the first time, but
cannot meet the costs of travel to the UK.
The National Archives of Australia has published a research
guide to archival records on child migration: Good British
Stock: Child and Youth Migration to Australia 1901-83. It
includes an overview and history of child migration to Australia as
well as a guide to the National Archives records. A brief guide is
also available in the National Archives of Australia Fact
Sheet 124.
Child migrant experiences have been portrayed in the television
documentary Lost Children of the Empire, broadcast by the
ABC in 1989, and in the television mini-series The leaving of
Liverpool broadcast on ABC TV in 1994. A number of books
document the scheme and tell individual stories. These include:
- Philip Bean, Lost Children of the Empire, Unwin Hyman,
London, 1989.
- Alan Gill, Orphans of the Empire: the shocking story of
child migration to Australia, Random House, Sydney, 1997
- Margaret Humphreys, Empty Cradles: one woman’s fight
to uncover Britain’s most shameful secrets, Doubleday,
London, 1994.
- Perry Snow, Neither waif nor stray:
the search for a stolen identity, Universal Publishers,
2000. A Canadian perspective which is also published on demand on
the Internet.
An alternative view of child migration to Australia is presented
in: Geoffrey Sherington. Fairbridge, Empire and Child
Migration. University of Western Australia Press, 1998.
Various ABC radio and
television programmes have covered the issue. Transcripts are
available by searching 'child migrants' on the ABC’s search
engine.
Organisations involved in assistance to child
migrants to Australia are:
- International Social Service (ISS) with branches in Melbourne
and Sydney. ISS administers claims on behalf of the British
Government.
- Child
Migrants Trust with branches in Perth and Melbourne.
For copyright reasons some linked items are only
available to Members of Parliament.
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