Gordon Brown offered an apology this Wednesday to a group of an estimated 500,000 people who were sent over to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia in a program in the 1920's up until the 1970s. British children from ages 7 to 14 were forced to leave their families for a new life. The children were often from impoverished families benefiting from welfare. In some cases the children were told that their parents were dead and were promised a "better life", and the parents were told little about where their children were going. These post-WWI migration programs were set up to relieve Britain's social services. It also gave the British colonies a workforce.
When the orphans arrived to the new country, they were separated from siblings, forced to work as laborers, encountered brutality and sexual abuse from their "caretakers".
One survivor reports:
"Hennessey said his stutter began with a particularly violent and harrowing assault at the orphanage when he was 12 years old. He was stripped naked and nearly beaten to death by the headmaster for eating grapes he had taken from a vineyard without permission because he was hungry."
During WWII, Australia feared Japanese invasion and immigration so their immigration policy favored British and white immigrants until the 1970s.
"The Archbishop met us at Fremantle (in Western Australia)," Hennessey said. "I can still remember his words. He said: 'Welcome to Australia. We want white stock because we're terrified of the yellow peril.'"
A 1998 British parliamentary inquiry, meanwhile, noted "a further motive was racist: the importation of 'good white stock' was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies." ( http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/breakingnews/australia-apologizes-for-child-abus.htm)
Web article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/gordon-brown/7298874/Gordon-Brown-to-apologise-to-British-child-migrants.html
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