‘To take children from their families and their countries was an abuse; to strip them of their identity was an abuse; to forget them and deny them their loss was an abuse… Few tragedies can compare’ (Margaret Humphreys)
EMPIRE’S CHILDREN: CHILD EMIGRATION, WELFARE, AND THE DECLINE OF THE BRITISH WORLD by Ellen Boucher
In this book Ellen Boucher writes ‘in the 1980s the silence surrounding the subject of the lost families started to be broken. The decade witnessed a rapid growth of advocacy groups dedicated to raising awareness about the history of child emigration and to seeking redress for men and women who had been hurt by the policy. One of the first was the Child Migrant Friendship Society of Western Australia, founded in 1982 by a group of former migrants who aimed to relieve ‘the suffering, helplessness, distress, misfortune, poverty, destitution and emotional disturbance’ that they believed the initiative had produced. Five years later Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham based social worker established the Child Migrants Trust, which campaigned to pressure the emigration charities, as well as the British and Australian governments, to acknowledge the trauma endured by former migrants……. It was instrumental in the release of a 1989 popular history and documentary, Lost Children of the Empire**, which was followed by Humphreys’ Empty Cradles. Combined these works reveal harrowing accounts of physical and psychological suffering in child migrant institutions, and emphasized the message that the emigration movement had produced lifelong emotional harm. As Humphreys argued ‘to take children from their families and their countries was an abuse; to strip them of their identity was an abuse; to forget them and deny them their loss was an abuse…. Few tragedies can compare’
** LOST CHILDREN OF THE EMPIRE by Joanna Mack (Producer/Director) & Mike Fox (Co-Director)
Lost Children of the Empire looks at the fate of some of the 150,000 British orphans, who – often without their parents’ knowledge and consent – were shipped abroad to be brought up in children’s homes. Some were exploited and many were abused. This practice began at the turn of the century, but children were still deported overseas up until 1967! Joanna Mack produced and directed this ground breaking documentary, uncovering the story of child migration from the UK under which children as young a three were shipped to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the former Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The film’s broadcast in the UK and Australia, and the subsequent book of the same name, helped secure the foundation of the Child Migrants Trust and their work supporting families separated by these practices. Two decades later it led to official apologies from the Australian and UK governments. In 1991 the programme won the Silver Hugo Award for Documentary at the 26th Chicago International Film Festival. It has also won a gold medal at the International film and Television Festival of New York. Joanna Mack also produced and directed the first of the Breadline Britain series in 1983 and was the series editor for the second series Breadline Britain in the 1990s.
THE LEAVING OF LIVERPOOL (John Alsop, Sue Smith, Penny Chapman)
The Leaving of Liverpool, a television program produced by BBC in 1992, is a dramatized account of unaccompanied child migration from Britain to Australia. It was screened in Britain and in Australia and was mentioned in parliamentary inquiries in both countries .It had a significant impact in putting child migration ‘on the map’ in terms of awareness among the general population and those people who had been sent to Western Australia as child migrants. The program is based on the book Lost Children of the Empire and the writers of the program are John Alsop and Sue Smith, who were offered development funds to research the story in the UK by Penny Chapman (BBC).
It is the story of two young children caught up in the British child migration schemes of the 1950s. Lily (Christine Tremarco) and Bert (Kevin Jones), are deported from an orphanage in Liverpool (Britain) to Australia, where their childhoods are stolen from them in ‘institutions of care’ where they are exploited and abused by those whose responsibility is to take care of them. Their love for each other and extraordinary strength of character enables them to break out of the dehumanising world into which they have been thrown.
(Can be viewed on You Tube)
