Apologising for history: the case of child migrants

There has been a lot of hoo-ha in the press in recent days about the likelihood that Gordon Brown will issue an apology to Britain’s child migrants. While many welcome the prospect of an official government apology, others express doubt and even cynicism, arguing that apologies for past historic events are meaningless, hollow, pointless and even cheap. The voices of numerous now-adult child migrants are also valid and important here – some at least believe that leaving Britain (and also places like Malta) was one the best things that ever happened to them. Others – some of whom suffered profound exploitation and abuse - welcome the prospect of a British government apology. One such woman – Lesley Wells – whose brother was sent to Australia aged 7 – commented movingly: ‘A few years ago Barnado’s apologised to me for their part in causing my childhood suffering, I wept for days simply because someone had finally acknowledged this unnecessary suffering had happened, someone had finally said ‘sorry’! Today my brother, and thousands of others in Australia, will have experienced the same reaction - my heart and prayers go out to them’. You can read her brother’s account of his experience as a child migrant in Australia by clicking here.

The mixed voices of child migrants remind us that the history of child migration within the empire was an inevitably complex thing: there were many different experiences with the result that there are multiple and even in some senses competing histories to be told. In Australia, Prime Minister Rudd’s apology reflects the multifaceted experience of child migrants: apologising to those who suffered under such schemes but also rightly commemorating and celebrating the achievements of many child emigrants and their contributions to Australian society.

Lesley Wells’ comments also reminded me of the response to the official government apology in early 2008 to aboriginal Australians for the ‘stolen generations’ policy. As an historian of Australia who has spent a lot of time there over the years and watched things begin slowly and unevenly to change, I for one wept when I watched the coverage of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology early one Bristol morning on Youtube. If you feel cynical about the likely impact of any apology to British child migrants, try watching the clip. See the crowds gathering in Parliament House and on the lawns all around, the celebrations, the tears, the crowds of many different types of Australians, and then tell me that apologies for past events are somehow inevitably always hollow, empty, meaningless or pure cheap rhetoric. Words do sometimes have power: they are rarely enough on their own but they can be a first step in recognition and the expression of respect. As Lesley comments above it is above all about the value of finally being acknowledged and about the fact that one’s history, one's story is no longer being denied.

Most of the newspaper articles in recent days have perhaps understandably focused almost exclusively on the experiences of those child migrants who were the subjects of various twentieth-century imperial schemes. These children were sent out by often well meaning if ultimately misguided charities in response to the demand for labour in Commonwealth countries like Australia, Canada and Rhodesia, but also for racial reasons. Concerns about race were intimately tied throughout these decades with concerns about population and, in turn, to a belief that population equalled power. What they meant was white population equalled power. Countries like Australia for example were increasingly fearful of their neighbours – anti-Asian racism was rife as was the fear that Australia might be swallowed up by the so-called ‘yellow peril’. Child migrants were considered part of the solution: they were perceived as good British stock who would one day grow up, marry and breed white. Although there were many, many differences between the two schemes, the Stolen Generations policy was inspired by similar concerns. Like British child emigrants, aboriginal children were removed from their families ‘for their own good’ and in order it was argued that they might be given more opportunities and education. But the plan was also to literally breed them white: so-called ‘half-caste’ children were particularly targeted in the belief that they could be educated (to a basic level) given training (for low-waged jobs like domestic service) and then encouraged to marry and have children with whites. Like many child migrants, the stolen generations have also faced far too many obstacles in getting into state and other archives in order to read their own records, track their own histories, find their own families and understand their pasts. The experiences of both groups (and of others like them around the world) remind us that archives are far from simply stuffy places filled with dusty old papers, they are also sites of power.

Britain, of course, has been involved in child emigration (most of it non-voluntary) for much longer and on a bigger scale than just the twentieth-century schemes that governments are now beginning to apologise for. The history of child migration in fact dates back to the very origins of empire and to the English settlement of the Caribbean colonies and of the Americas. Throughout the seventeenth- and early eighteenth centuries, boat-loads of often destitute children were shipped off to the colonies as sources of labour. Others were literally stolen off the streets. There are numerous accounts of children being kidnapped, tied up and then taken on board ships. Governments – both national and local – were often directly involved in such schemes. In the face of public concerns and complaints about such kidnapping – or spiriting as it was often called – various attempts were made to regulate and repress the trade. These attempts were rarely properly enforced however and so it went on. While most of these early schemes were driven by the economic needs of planters in the colonies and by the hope of spinning a profit at home, by the nineteenth century child emigration had become a focus of philanthropists. In the 1830s, for example, groups of children were sent out to the Cape Colony by an organisation called the Children’s Friends Society run by a man called Captain Edward Brenton. Philanthropists like Brenton believed that they were rescuing children not only from poverty and possible delinquency (even crime) but also from the corrupting influences of Britain’s rapidly developing and industrialising cities. Believing that the countryside was the best place for many such children, the colonies – envisioned as vast green spaces – were believed to offer a solution. You can find a useful overview of these schemes and some hints for further reading on the Institute of Historical Research’s website.

Other children were sent out as convicts – transported to the colonies for a variety of crimes, mostly property related. Interestingly, many of the early experiments in the reformation of so-called juvenile delinquents took place in the Australian colonies and were then imported back to Britain. The boy’s reformatory at Point Puer, in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), is one such example of the colonies as sites of experimentation.
In the late 1830s and early 1840s, government in London also experimented with sending out boy convicts on special juvenile-only ships to Australia. There were about 8 voyages in all before the scheme was abandoned. I plan to research and write about those boys and those ships as part of my current research project at the National Maritime Museum on convict voyaging. Many other children were sent to sea or joined the army and travelled the empire as boy soldiers.


A last word on apologies though. When I was growing up, my parents always told me never to apologise unless I meant it or, in other words, unless I meant never to do the same kind of thing again. Of course, as Judith Dennis, Policy Adviser to the Refugee Council points out in a letter to The Times, the British Government doesn’t seem to have learned that lesson very well. Dennis rightly draws links – yes, of course there are many differences too – between the experiences of child migrants in Britain’s twentieth-century empire and the appalling treatment of many child refugees in Britain today.


If you are interested in finding out more about child migrants and maybe even embarking on a research project of your own, you'll find a number of good guides to the archives and sources on the web. Try the following links to get started:

National Archives of Australia - child migration to Australia guide

The Parliament of Australia's online guide to child migrants

And there's also an interesting podcast from the National Archives at Kew available here

Kirsty Reid

Remember, remember, the ninth of November

When the Berlin Wall opened twenty years ago today, I was on a school exchange near Nantes. We heard the momentous news the following day, on the coach on our way to visit a biscuit factory. So preoccupied were we with the difficulties of intercultural communication (and in my case a kleptomaniac exchange partner) that it took a while for the news to sink in.

Now, of course, it’s hard to miss the significance of November 9. There’s been lots of press coverage commemorating the fall of the Wall, including Radio 4's excellent 1989: Day By Day. Timothy Garton Ash has written a wonderfully evocative description of 'Berlin's moment of freedom', and Radio 3 are running a fascinating series on how everyday objects can help unlock the history of communism.

There is, however, a lesser-known reason to remember November 9 1989, which I discovered during the research for my next book, Love In The Time Of Communism.

Hours before the Wall fell, Coming Out, East Germany’s first feature film about gay sexuality premiered in East Berlin. This was a revolutionary moment – homosexuality was rarely discussed in public, and publicly ‘out’ gay men and lesbians were few and far between.

Coming Out told the story of Phillipp, a teacher in his late twenties. Despite a warm relationship with his pregnant girlfriend, Tanja, Philipp is unable to deny his sexual feelings towards men, which have been suppressed since a homophobic incident in his teens. He falls in love with the younger Matthias, but is torn between his two lovers. Coming Out was daring not only in its choice of Philipp’s profession – he is portrayed as a dedicated, inspirational teacher – but also its scenes of gay sex.

Coming Out would have been a historic moment in the history of East German homosexuality, but it was very quickly overshadowed by the collapse of communism. After the premiere, the cast and crew went to an after-party at a well-known gay bar. They were greeted with the words: ‘The Wall is open!’ and soon hurried to the border to see for themselves. A year later, Germany was reunited.

Coming Out is still well worth watching though. You can watch an extract here, and the film is available as a DVD with English subtitles (in the Bristol University library catalogue here). Much of the film was shot on location in East Berlin, and many of the extras were regulars on the gay scene. It's a fascinating glimpse into a lost - and almost forgotten - world.

The Last Judgement

In this podcast from BBC History Magazine, Art historian Dr Beth Williamson describes part of the medieval painting of the Last Judgement at Dauntsey Church in Wiltshire. Click here to listen.

The lost voyages: Bristol, Cabot and America

In this recent lecture Dr Evan Jones discusses his research on John Cabot, a project that is likely to reveal some radically new conclusions about the English discovery of America. To listen to Evan's lecture and see his slides click here. To watch a short news broadcast on the same subject click here.

To read more about the Cabot project including links to copies of some of the original materials that Evan is working with click here.

When was the industrial revolution?

In this podcast Professor Christine Macleod, author of the recent prize-winning book Heroes of Invention: Technology, Liberalism and British Identity talks to BBC History Magazine. Along the way she challenges many of our popular views about exactly when, and what, the industrial revolution was. Click here to listen