Examination of Witnesses (Questions 207
- 219)
WEDNESDAY 11 JUNE 1998
MR ROGER
SINGLETON, CBE, CHRISTOPHER
FISHER, MR
DAVID LOVELL,
MR NIGEL
HAYNES, MRS
PATRICIA MCGROGAN,
MS CAROLINE
ABRAHAMS and MAJOR
RAY OAKLEY.
Chairman
207—Good morning, colleagues, can I welcome
everyone to this morning's session of the Committee and particularly
thank our witnesses today, first of all, for their very helpful
written evidence and for their willingness to come along and give
oral evidence to us. I am aware that Mr Singleton from Barnardo's
has been delayed but he will be coming later, probably around
11 o'clock. Could I first of all ask each of the witnesses to
briefly introduce yourselves and say a little about the work of
your agency in respect of the Child Migrant scheme, both historically
and in terms of contemporary policy issues. Canon Fisher, would
you like to begin?
—(Canon Fisher) My name is Canon Chris
Fisher. I am chairman of the Catholic Child Welfare Council of
England and Wales. As you know, a number of our member agencies
were sending agencies in migration both to Canada, in the previous
history and, more recently, Australia. We have identified approximately
1,150 former migrants who went to Australia, and that is our particular
focus at the moment. We believe we have been responding very pro-actively,
including visits to Australia ourselves and encouraging visits
to England of former migrants, and have done a lot of tracing
work and introductions to family in what I would say is a very
professional manner. That is the way we see ourselves. I may state
at this stage that we feel grossly under-funded and taking a very
single line approach ourselves, and that we are having to finance
that virtually without help.
—(Mr Lovell) I am David Lovell, I am
Social Work Director with the Children's Society, a national and
voluntary child care charity working in England and Wales. The
society was established in 1881 and in its early years was involved
in child migration. The details of that are that between 1883,
two years after the society was established, and 1937, some 3,940
children were emigrated to Canada through the Children's Society.
Then, between 1925 and the early 1950s, some 400 children were
emigrated to Australia and the former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.
So that principally the society was involved largely, in terms
of numbers, in the emigration of children to Canada and only latterly,
and with fewer numbers, involved in the emigration of children
to Australia and Rhodesia. After 1909, all of the children sent
to Canada were aged over 14, and the children sent to Australia
and Zimbabwe were younger. The children emigrated to Canada were
received in Canada in one of five receiving homes that were the
responsibility of the Children's Society, and the children emigrated
to Australia and Zimbabwe were received by receiving homes run
by other organisations. So the main principal activity of the
society was to Canada. Since then, and currently, we have established
in the last six or eight years a post-adoption and care service
which deals with all aftercare matters, not just child migration,
and any enquiries around child migration are dealt with by that
service which was set up and is run by us, and costs somewhere
in the region of a quarter of a million pounds a year to run.
—(Mr Haynes) Perhaps I could reverse
the order. Fairbridge currently, today, is a national charity
which offers long-term personal development to young people aged
14 to 25 in inner cities. We equip them with the skills they need
to meet the opportunities in life, and we work from 11 inner city
centres, with some 3,000 young people referred to us by probation
officers, social services, drug and rehabilitation agencies. We
have a residential centre funded by the Home Office in Applecross,
providing residential courses and a schooner. Our current expenditure
budget is £4.3 million a year. Previously, the Fairbridge
Society, which ceased in 1982 and is now under a constitution
and re-shifting of goals approved by the Charity Commissioners,
operated a process of child emigration to farm schools in Australia,
Canada and Rhodesia. Fairbridge's policy currently towards the
former Child Migrants is primarily focused on their access to
personal records, to its archives now held and administered by
the University of Liverpool. Fairbridge cannot provide the aftercare
and counselling required but advises applicants on the strong
need for such services to take place. What I am trying to tell
you is that our constitution has changed and I have had to acquire
a lot of knowledge about the past in a very short period of time
to come before the Select Committee.
—(Mrs McGrogan) My name is Patricia
McGrogan, I am chief officer of the Family Care Society, which
is a voluntary adoption agency operating throughout Northern Ireland.
There were 100 children who went from Northern Ireland throughout
the scheme, so the number is relatively small, and we endeavour,
when we get enquiries—most of them would come from the CCWC—to
respond to them. We work with the sending agencies in getting
information, in tracing families and providing counselling and
arranging for reunion work. The service which is provided is within
our aftercare service for all children we have been associated
with who were in care, so it is very much based on professional
social work principles. We also offer help to any enquiries which
arise when the original families of the migrants might have come
from the South of Ireland, we can liaise with agencies there,
so we do have extra work in that area. We do not have any direct
funding for the work, hence our service is often based on what
we can actually do as opposed to what is needed. In many of the
enquiries, while there may be one named migrant, there can be
anything up to six, eight or 10 family members associated with
that person, and a lot of work is often needed to provide all
the migrants would like. We are not able to give as much as we
feel would be professionally acceptable. Also, perhaps, as we
do the work today we are learning about the background information
on why the migrants went from a family point of view, which is
very sad, as well as the actual circumstances of what the migrant
experienced when they were away, so it is very labour intensive
work. Historically, it is difficult to always get the sort of
information and get the responses which migrants would like, because
of the historical distance but also there is the distance working
with them if they are not able to come to Ireland if they are
in Australia. We are very committed to helping but it is the old
story, we are very limited. We work closely with the CCWC in terms
of trying to be as effective and efficient as we can because there
can be a lot of duplication, and the more agencies there are the
easier it is.
—(Ms Abrahams) I am Caroline Abrahams
and I am head of public policy at NCH Action for Children, which
was founded in 1869 as the National Children's Home by a Methodist
Minister. We were then and remain now constitutionally part of
the Methodist Church. Most of our involvement in child migration
took place in the years leading up to the First World War. Up
to 1931 from our foundation, we sent about 3,600 children to Canada,
and that was really under the auspices of the links within the
international Methodist Church. So what happened was that they
went to Methodist Children's Homes in Canada via a reception centre
and there was somebody there also to supervise placements and
try to make sure that the children's welfare was adequately cared
for. After the First World War, child migration for us never achieved
the levels it had before. In the 1930s, between 1937 and 1939,
we sent 39 children via the Fairbridge operation, which you have
already heard about, and then after the Second World War, in the
years 1950 to 1951, we sent 90 children to Australia. All but
12 of them went in 1950 on one boat. Again, on that occasion,
two of our sisterhood—we operated a sisterhood of Christian
women with a vocation to care—accompanied the children to
a reception centre before the children were then sent again largely
to Methodist Children's Homes, except for 15 who went to a Barnardo's
establishment. Today we acknowledge our continuing responsibility
to those children, those former migrants, and indeed to their
families, and our efforts to date really are concentrated on ensuring
that they should have appropriate access, full access, to the
records so they can piece together the details of their lives,
but we think it is very important that that should be supported
access because of the understandable trauma which can ensue to
them when that process is undertaken. We have also from time to
time co-operated with the Child Migrants' Trust if people wish
to use their services, and again we are very keen to continue
to do so.
—(Major Oakley) Ray Oakley from the
Salvation Army. I am director for social services development.
I will try to keep the comments relevant to the subject. The Salvation
Army was founded in 1878, formerly as the Christian Mission. Its
social work was really based on a book by William Booth called
Darkest England and the Way Out, published in 1890. The
principles of that have spread throughout the Salvation Army's
work in over 100 countries. The Salvation Army very early on,
because of the concepts that William Booth had about the importance
of environment in helping people, were enthusiasts for migration
and formed a migration policy very early, but the object of that
was to assist people, particularly families, to move from this
country principally to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. By 1930
something like 250,000 people had used those services, and the
services, which were to arrange the voyage, helping find jobs,
accommodation, advising on skills, were the main bulk of the work.
There were additional schemes which were particularly aimed at
young boys when they left school at 14, if they went into dead-end
jobs or they could not find any work they went to one of the Salvation
Army's training farms at Hadleigh which sought to prepare them
for farming particularly in Australia and New Zealand. There was
great concern in these receiving countries that the Salvation
Army would be bringing in the waifs and strays from England and
dumping them on their doorstep and therefore the Salvation Army
had to vet their health, the moral quality of their character
and even then obtain the approval in the main of their parents.
I have to say that in this country our records are greatly hampered
by the fact our headquarters were bombed in the Second World War
but the receiving countries have very detailed records and those
are available. This information is in my submission and this includes
details of the children who went to New Zealand, (also our heritage
centre has details of the NZ people) taken from the UK. So there
is difficulty here in obtaining that information but it is held
in the relevant territories. Right from the start, in fact from
1885, the Salvation Army had a missing persons' bureau and that
still exists in virtually every country the Salvation Army operates.
In this country it is called the family tracing service and it
is very much used as a link to try and link young people or any
relative who has been separated by war or for whatever reason
including the Child Migrant schemes. We successfully unite about
4,000 people with their families each year. That is about 85 per
cent of the enquiries we get. Sadly, we have never kept separately
the number of Child Migrants in that number. It has always been
brought into the investigation. We had discussions with the Child
Migrants' Trust way back in 1989, two years after their foundation,
as to how we might help and we do very much support any efforts
to re-unite children or any other relatives with their families
and that is an integral part of our work. Like my colleagues,
I do rely on information which is historical. Most of the Salvation
Army migration schemes were in the 1920s, particularly relating
to boys who went for training on farms, but I do have the agreements
between the Governments and the Salvation Army in Australia about
this and they set out the standards which were required, both
in terms of their placements, their training, and the placement
on the farms and the support and how they should be monitored,
and removed if it was not successful. So there is some information
which is specific but a lot of it is quite general. I am very
happy to answer any questions I can as to how we can help now
and in the future.208 Do you as agencies have any kind of collective
organisation that brings you together to discuss common areas
of concern in respect of the former migrants and the issues that
many of you have raised already?
—(Canon Fisher) Yes, we have a sending agencies
group which meet regularly to discuss policy and how the current
needs of former migrants can be met.209 Does that offer a collective
view of relationships, for example, with the Child Migrants' Trust?
—(Canon Fisher) I think all of us have a healthy
relationship now with the Child Migrants' Trust. They were invited
to join our group but are reluctant to do so, for whatever reason;
I am not sure why. Our remit is to give the former migrants choice
but as sending agencies we feel we have a responsibility for our
clients ourselves, that part of their history is tied up with
our history. Whether that has been a good experience or a negative
experience we still feel that the relationship needs to be established
at that level.
—(Mr Haynes) We also agree there needs to be consideration
of a clearing shop or an agency which has, if you like, the powers
and authority to enable the process. The voluntary sector itself,
however committed it is to the work it does, does not actually
have the enabling powers to be able to work between governments,
and in this case you are aware we are working between Canada,
Australia and this Government. Also, if you take into account
the aspect of access to records and, more important than that
perhaps, recognition and identity of former migrants which comes
into the business of owning passports, you are looking at, I suggest,
some sort of agency which has government authority.210 One of
the questions I put to the other witnesses in the two previous
sessions has been a personal concern, that as somebody who personally
worked in your area of work, social work, for many years, it is
frankly amazing to me that I knew absolutely nothing about this
scheme, which ran until 1967, until 1992 when I was a Member of
Parliament. Why is it that so little is known about this issue?
—(Mr Haynes) I put it to you, was it an issue or
has it become one? If you look at primarily Fairbridge's records,
and we are dealing with some 3,770 so a potential of 6,000 people
who went through the processes, the main concerns at that time
were access of information and the processes which needed to be
in place to establish the access of information; that was the
important aspect. It was not, as it has become, re-unification.211
So what you are saying is that it has become an issue in more
recent times?
—(Mr Haynes) I think it has been brought to the
attention of a large number of agencies and people in more recent
times, yes.212 Can I put to you, not just you, Mr Haynes but the
other witnesses, what has been put to me by one or two people,
that there has been a positive attempt to cover up this scheme
in the contemporary interests of the agencies? I accept, and some
of you were very clear in your evidence, that you are faced with
difficulties in dealing with the matter now as a consequence of
financial pressures, and if you work with former migrants now
that would be resources which will not be used in your day-to-work,
very valuable work, which I am sure we all accept is being done
with children, young people or others who come within your remit.
Is this an issue that it is fair to say there is some concern
about, that there has been a cover up?
—(Mr Haynes) If I may deal with the first point
from Fairbridge's perspective. There has never been any need to
cover up. If you take the whole of Fairbridge's associations which
are healthy organisations and representative organisations which
exist in Australia and Canada, if you take the establishment of
the records for Fairbridge in Liverpool, and if you take our response
to the press going back to the films which sensationalised it,
like The Leaving of Liverpool, I cannot find any indication
of a cover up, nor can I really understand why there needed to
be one.
Mr Austin213
Can I ask you why you used the word "sensationalised"?
—(Mr Haynes) If you take the context of the film,
which was a drama, which actually provoked a large amount of press
enquiry into this matter, it was not based on fact.
Chairman214
I think it is fair to say as a Committee are dealing with fact
and evidence and, as you appreciate, we had before us last week
people who had been placed by various agencies in Australia, who
felt very aggrieved about this matter. It is people like that
who feel there has been a deliberate attempt to suppress information
by some of the agencies for various reasons. You have answered
that, Mr Haynes. Does anybody else wish to respond? Canon Fisher,
do you wish to respond to that?
—(Canon Fisher) I would like, first of all, to say
that we do not believe there has been a cover up, certainly speaking
on behalf of the Catholic agencies. The matter was covered quite
fully in The Times on 19 April 1938 and, since then up
until 1992, our agencies dealt with some 171 enquiries from individuals
who were former Child Migrants some 30 enquiries specifically
from Australia. These were dealt with in the normal professional
way of being referred from the Catholic Child Welfare Council
to the sending agency, the sending agency then used their current
procedures of follow up and aftercare they would normally invoke.
So we felt from the earliest days we were being slightly castigated
by some of the accusations made in the press. I must say that
I think the media hype has been less than accurate in terms of
numbers, in terms, for instance, only last week talking about
migration to Canada and showing children arriving in Perth as
the film background. I think there has been an inconsistency in
the press coverage. None of us, I think, in light of hindsight
and in terms of present day understanding of abuse, would want
to cover up any of the abusive things which happened to young
people in their transition from England to Australia or while
they were there. We are not in the business of cover-up at all.
We would like particularly to focus on present day help which
can be offered to people in Australia who are trying to trace
their roots. You may recall we met when you were a member of the
Opposition in this House, when we pressed very heavily for a Government
inquiry both here and in Australia. Thankfully, this one is now
taking place, but it has taken a long time since the first time
we met in order to overcome this idea of cover up. Within our
agencies we certainly have had no cover up, from the roots of
our agencies, right up the hierarchy in the church. I was speaking
to Cardinal Hulme just a few weeks ago when a group of visitors
came from Australia and he immediately was trying to express his
personal feeling for the experiences that people had had in Australia
which they had no choice about. What we are keen about now is
that the former migrants do have choice in coming back either
to ourselves or via a clearing house which would be able to offer
them advice on where to go. We do feel the sending agencies have
a specific role in that insofar as, as I said, we are part of
the history. Since 1946 and up to 1998 we have dealt with 343
enquiries involving some 1,500 to 2,000 people. The Catholic Child
Welfare Council is only a federation, as you may know, and its
total income is subscriptions from its member agencies, so our
funds are very limited. We have been helped in our funding of
this to a small degree by donations from the Christian Brothers
in Australia and from the Sisters of Nazareth who, between them,
were the main receiving agencies in Australia, but we have had
no support or help at all in England.215 On this issue of a cover
up, and I say this as somebody who has a great deal of respect
for the agencies within your remit and as you know have worked
with them. One of the witnesses last week, and I have got the
transcript here, talks of the response from one particular institution
in respect of why it was not possible to access records, and that
was a Catholic institution, and the term he used was, "How
can you deal with a former child migrant and explain why he or
she was in the position they were in because their father was
a priest?" That was one witness last week that put that to
us, and that is why certain people believe there has been a certain
degree of cover up not, I would hasten to add, just by your organisation
or organisations but by the agencies in general because of a concern
about some very difficult parts of our history.
—(Canon Fisher) I cannot answer obviously for that
particular enquiry.216 Of course.
—(Canon Fisher) If I could give evidence from a
more representative range of witnesses, I visited Australia myself
in 1995 and I visited every single institution either past or
present to which those former migrants went and I visited heads
of homes, staff, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, everybody involved
there, and I interviewed approximately 100 former migrants out
of our 1,147 which I think was fairly representative. I would
suggest to you, and I do not want to mitigate in any way the abuse
that some of those former migrants experienced, that I met far
more people who were happy with that migration than were unhappy
with it in order to get what I would call an unbiased opinion
of the whole thing. In hindsight, and I speak for myself but I
probably represent everyone here, I do not think any of us would
support such a scheme today. You know what I mean? We would all
consider that it was misguided but we would not take, as voluntary
agencies, responsibility for that misguidance. I think that has
to be shared with the governments of the various nations that
were involved.
—(Mr Lovell) On your point about the fact that for
a long time this was an issue you were unaware of and why, I think
you need to remember that all of us in the agencies we represent
are dealing with something that we were not personally involved
in.216 Of course, we appreciate that.
—(Mr Lovell) So we come into our agencies and deal
with contemporary and current issues around children and young
people, and this is something that we accept the responsibility
for in the past, and there has been a developing and growing awareness
of this. I think the question you may have is, how pro-active
have we been, why has it taken so long for some of us to get into
this and recognise it. That is not a cover up but it may be an
issue about what we have been doing and what we are doing. I certainly,
from my agency, would categorically deny there has ever been such.
The emigration scheme we were involved in has been in a lot of
our literature that is public, enquirers have had access to reports.
Certainly in my experience over the last decade or so there would
not have been cases where people would have been denied access
to the records we hold. The other thing you may wish to consider
is that over the last decade or so, there has been, not in the
area of child migration but in the area of adoption, a growing
development of the issue about people tracing their past. In adoption,
we now have the notion of open adoption. So I think there has
also been a growing issue and awareness of how important links
with the past are. I think that has been developing. I would certainly
deny that we have been involved in any cover up, either ourselves
or with others.
—(Ms Abrahams) I think it is important I say from
the NCH Action for Children point of view that we too categorically
deny that we have been involved in any kind of cover up. We have
not received any accusations of abuse concerning any of the children
who migrated under our scheme, but that is not to say we are complacent
about that, it does not mean to say there will not be one tomorrow
or next week or next month, because it takes people a long time
before they have the courage to be able to express that. Also
I would like to say that no one in their right mind today would
seek to justify child migration. It is frankly incomprehensible
to people today and I think one of the great tragedies of this
situation is that during the lifetime, say, of people who migrated
from our establishment in 1950, we have had two different time
spans. We have the time span of the person's life and we have
the revolution in social work understanding about what children
need. Sadly, in those days, in many ways a good thing, there was
lots of emphasis on children's prospects and doing well and what
we now understand is that many of those people who made a material
success of their life in Australia or Canada still feel a deep
sense of loss because of what happened to them and the way they
went. What we feel now is that they should have the right, not
only to have full, supported access to their records—that
is a start but it is not enough—but very often what they
are seeking is to be re-united with relatives. Whilst we feel
Governments in Australia, Canada and Britain must play the lead
there, we have a part to play too and we would be the first to
acknowledge that.
—(Mrs McGrogan) I would like to support the view
that perhaps we were not aware in the earlier days of the effects
of child migration on children, in the same way we were not aware
of the effects of adoption on young people, and as we now know
it has become much easier to get access to information. There
was never any question of a cover up. There may have been indications
of people making enquiries and there may have been passive responses
like, "We are unable to help you because we do not know where
to find it", but now there is a much more pro-active approach
and more expertise in dealing with that. So what could be construed
as a cover up is perhaps lack of awareness.
—(Major Oakley) I would like to say
in support of colleagues that as far as the Salvation Army is
concerned, there is no policy of a cover up. When you have a huge
organisation and many individuals, I cannot put my hand on my
heart and say that when someone criticises an individual in an
organisation there is not a defensive reaction, it is quite natural.
I can see the cumulative effect of that could be construed as
a policy cover up but can certainly say there has not been one.
There is in every land in which the Salvation Army operate published
procedures for complaints of sexual and other abuse and those
are published and followed. In terms of supplying information,
when we first met the Migrants' Trust in 1989, and I am not aware—and
I could be corrected—of more recent contact, we made two
offers. One was that we would certainly try and help the migrants
trace their families and relatives and, secondly, if there were
Salvation Army children who went out and were not happy about
using the Salvation Army, we would be quite happy to fund another
agency to do it for them. I would like to say that in my view
the Salvation Army have to come to the enormous conclusion that
we are not the answer to everybody's prayers, and in terms of
helping child migrants in the future in tracing families, they
do need options. I read very recently a book published in Australia,
Orphans of the Empire by Alan Gill. There are four complaints
of abuse, mainly physical abuse, in some orphanages, which were
actually reformatories at the time, and it was said they were
not followed down, but they have not been followed down because
they have never made a formal complaint to us. It does say that
there is a view in trying to trace their relatives that if one
organisation takes control of the information and releases it
to them, there is the same kind of concern about somebody having
power over them which they had originally. So I do feel in this
age in which we live it is important to have very clear guidance
about how people can get help, whether it is counselling, whether
it is family tracing, whatever, that there are a number of ways
in which that can be given because I do feel if it is all channelled
in one single agency, whoever that is, we may be creating the
same kind of feelings which were in the child migrants when decisions
were made on their behalf. I say that, having reflected on some
of the issues relating to that particular point.218 Before I bring
in some of my colleagues, can I welcome Mr Singleton. I appreciate
you have had some difficulties this morning. Would you like to
introduce yourself and could I specifically say that I was particularly
interested in your evidence where you indicated that your organisation
was constrained from apologising by the requirements of your insurers.
I would be interested in a little more information about that
and whether any of the other agencies have felt the need to consider
this area of apology which, of course, is something which has
been raised with us by a number of other witnesses.
—(Mr Singleton) Thank you very much. I do apologise
on behalf of London Underground. Very briefly, Barnardo's current
policy is to seek to mitigate as far as possible the heavily adverse
impacts of being migrated on people individually. Very briefly,
we have a section which is committed not only to work with people
who were migrated but other people who were in the care of Barnardo's,
and that is constantly providing antecedent information, helping
tracing relatives, organising reunions, picking up the pieces
when those reunions do not work out in the way one hopes they
will—photographs, birth certificates, personal ephemeral,
and so on. That is done face to face, either in our offices or
in the migrants' own homes if they are resident in this country.
In Australia it is done by our sister organisation, Barnardo's
Australia, whom we grant-aid to the tune of £50,000 a year
to do this work on our behalf. It has to be done largely by post
in relation to the pre-war migrants to Canada, where we do not
have an operation, but where some work is done on our behalf by
voluntary organisations, and I believe Mr Lorente has already
given evidence to the Committee. Also we have a programme of annual
visits by our staff to Canada. May I comment on the cover up point,
Chairman, because I was just coming in as that point was being
addressed? I think I stand in the same stream as my colleagues
on this. We have spent months going through files to prepare for
this inquiry and we can find not one shred of evidence that Barnardo's
colluded with either the fact that migration was occurring when
it was occurring, or that in fact it happened retrospectively.
On the contrary, the evidence points in the opposite direction.
I am a little ashamed, I am very ashamed, to have to say that
if you look at the promotion literature at the time, if you look
at the collecting devices, if you look at the annual reports,
the promotional films the organisation made by itself, it was
actually rather proud to be participating in child migration.
The BBC films that feature the history have, some of them, referred
to the migration programme and the organisation's official history,
published in 1987 and which was independently written, contains
a highly critical chapter on migration. As someone who worked
in local government services in the 1960s I can understand the
puzzlement about why many of us have not heard of child migration,
but I have to say, having looked at it more carefully from the
perspective of voluntary organisations, I do not think the conclusion
logically follows that that is because the organisations participated
in a cover up. I think there are other explanations. On the insurance
matter, we are here acting on legal advice. You will be familiar
with the fact that risks are insured. The present position of
our insurers is ultra cautious, to put it mildly, on anything
which would remotely resemble making a public apology, and I do
not think we need to dwell on speculating on why that is so. We
have taken legal advice on the position of our insurers and the
legal advice to Barnardo's and its trustees is that we should
continue to be cautious although we are continuing to press our
insurers to try and ease their attitude where it is absolutely
clear that by the standards of the time a particular migrant had
a rough and difficult time. We want actually to be able to formally
say sorry on behalf of the organisation. The only resources that
the organisation would have to be able to meet, for example, any
compensation claims which flow from that would be in relation
to money donated for today's work, and that does mean that the
trustees have to take very careful account of the legal advice
they receive.
—(Canon Fisher) Ditto.
Mr Gunnell219
I would just like to add a comment on the whole cover up issue
which we have discussed. It seems to me that Ms Abrahams actually
pinpointed one of the reasons for the way in which we perceive
things differently, and that is the whole way in which we perceive
the relationship between parent and child is now so different
from the time in which these migrations occurred. We find it very
hard to take what we know at present out of our thinking when
we think about the sort of evidence which we received last week,
because we did receive very dramatic evidence. We now have the
view that separating a child from its birth family and breaking
those relationships is enormously damaging in a variety of ways
which perhaps were not seen at the time, therefore we do take,
in a sense, a much more negative attitude of the work of the agencies
now when we look back at that with hindsight than perhaps people
did at the time at which these separations occurred. I think it
is very difficult when you hear evidence from people who speak
about their personal pain, and one of the pieces of evidence from
someone last week who went on to achieve a great deal as a migrant
in Australia was that he would give up all that he had achieved
for ten minutes with his mother. It was something which clearly
he felt very deeply. One could not help looking at it in the light
of what we now know about those sorts of relationships, and we
actually tend to feel the whole work of migration, which you were
all part of—or which your organisations were part of—was
totally misguided and a wholly inappropriate way in which to treat
children. For that reason, and because the current view of child
care is so much that present view, therefore the activities which
your organisations took part in at the turn of the century into
the 1960s are activities which now we feel extremely negative
about and so do those who in a sense have experienced the pain
as a result of it. I do not think we can put that easily out of
our minds when we come to look at the present situation, which
is why we perhaps judge you rather more harshly today than might
have been the case in the past. When one comes to the question
of cover up, again to quote a bit of evidence from last week which
comes a bit further in the same evidence that the Chairman quoted
to you a little while ago but I think puts it perhaps even more
dramatically, and this is one of the people who is working for
the Child Migrants' Trust: "How can you explain if you work
for an agency to a former Child Migrant that you have spent 30
years deceiving members of their family who have enquired about
their whereabouts by telling them they had been adopted,"
when clearly they had not. We had people last week who were explaining
why they were not able to trust the sending agency, because the
question was one of trust, and that was why they felt they were
unable to go to what one thought was desirable in terms of a one-stop
shop to find out about the past, because they thought there were
some members of that one-stop shop who would be people who were
part of the sending agencies and therefore had an interest in
not telling them the truth because there were up-to-date examples
of them not being told the truth. So we have in a sense a burden
from the past which makes it difficult to proceed with the focus
of the work now in the present and in the future which I understand
you quite rightly want to focus on, but that is why it is very
hard to focus on the future for people particularly who have suffered
the pain they have suffered. Let me move on to a different issue.
The evidence which you as agencies gave was that the Government
played a very active part in establishing the migration schemes,
and I wanted to ask you as agencies what evidence you have that
successive British Governments actively instigated child migration
as opposed to simply providing a legislative framework in which
you could operate that policy? Did your organisations lobby strongly
after the Second World War for the continuation of child migration?
It clearly was a Government policy to support the process of child
migration, and some of your evidence suggests that was the most
important factor in terms of your policies as sending agencies.
Can you comment on that?
—(Canon Fisher) Certainly the Government departments
funded the actual departure of children, they picked up the tab
for the boats which were loaded with children to Australia. So
I would see that as rather more than tacit approval. Today the
Government would not be financing something they were not in favour
of, so clearly the Government here was involved. As far as the
receiving governments were concerned, they actually paid the weekly
maintenance charge for the children in the homes that received
them, so I would say that they were more than tacitly involved
in the reception. I would suggest that in the 1930s and 1940s
the majority of residential child care in England was carried
out by voluntary organisations anyway, so that the sending agencies
at the time were bound to be the voluntaries; it could not have
been anybody else. The child care system in England was largely
run by voluntary organisations and we were the ones with bulging,
inadequately-provided for children's homes. With the greatest
respect for the Government at the time—and I am not sure
what colour they were—the funding of child care in England
was not of a high amount and I would suspect that at the time
it was seen to be quite a good financial decision to actually
unload some children elsewhere into another responsibility. I
may be speaking out of turn, but that would be my considered opinion,
that we were all involved in this, that it was not just the voluntary
organisations or a matter of our policy, but that it was the understood
social care policy at the time and was seen to be in the child's
best interests. I think the bottom line of the professional decisions
that were made at the time is still the bottom line that we use
today, whether it is in the child's best interests, and I rest
my case there.
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