Unit study goes to the root of "shame"

Much in the Research Unit evidence archive resonates with this week’s promise by PM Gordon Brown to make a formal apology to all children who were shipped between the UK and Australia, Canada and other former colonies in the post war period.

The separation of children from their families and the significance of return and home featured in many Unit studies during the 1980s and 1990s. And the forced migration of children to Canada in the colonial period between 1867-1917 is the focus of a meticulous study by founder trustee Roy Parker, published last year.

Parker’s Uprooted considers the plight of some 80,000 British children – many under the age of ten – who were shipped from Britain to Canada by Poor Law authorities and voluntary bodies during the years following Confederation.

He examines the motives and methods of the people involved in both countries, why the policy ended, the effects on the children involved and their fate. He also explores the economic, political, social, medical, legal, administrative and religious aspects of the story.

He concludes with a review of evidence from more recent survivors of child migration, discussing the lifelong effects of their experiences with the help of modern psychological insights.

Such survivor testimony has provided a moving accompaniment to the Australian soul-baring that prompted this week’s UK announcement.

British Children's Secretary Ed Balls said the child migrant policy was "a stain on our society".

"The apology is symbolically very important," he told Sky News television. "I think it is important that we say to the children who are now adults and older people and to their offspring that this is something that we look back on in shame."
Uprooted can be purchased online from the Unit's Publications Page.