HISTORICAL

50-year-old records opened: Unease over UK's child migrants policy

There was unease in Whitehall over the policy of sending thousands of child migrants to Australia, Canada and other British dominions, files released at the national archives in Kew yesterday reveal. There was particular concern over the management of the Roman Catholic-run “boys' towns” in Australia, yet little was done to deal with the problem, despite reports by Home Office inspectors.
More than 150,000 children, with an average age of eight or nine, were shipped from Britain between 1929 and 1967 in a programme organised by voluntary church societies.

It was only four years ago that the Roman Catholic church in Australia formally apologised for abuse, including rape, whippings and slave labour, that children experienced on its homes and farms. For the Australians, the real motivation behind the scheme was revealed in a speech by Sir John Norris, the representative of the governor of Tasmania, in Hobart in 1951. “In this vast country of ours we must populate or face the possibility of losing it to some of the millions of Asiatics that menace us,” he said. “We must include in our scheme migrants from European countries, but as far as possible we want migrants of British stock, with whom we share a common culture.”
By the late 1950s, the files show, there were complaints about the low quality of the British child migrants — poor physical specimens, lacking in intelligence and undisciplined — and suggestions that Australia's “whites only” policy should be abandoned to increase the quality of migrants.
In fact, those to be sent to Australia included boys like Arthur and Derrick, nine and seven, who had become unmanageable at home and bedwetters after the death of their mother from TB. The London county council complained they were being “dumped”, but the Home Office feared it was powerless to stop this.

The files show that Whitehall officials as early as 1955 had particular concerns over the St John Bosco Boys' Town in Glenorchy, Tasmania, run by the Salesian brotherhood. A Home Office inspector who visited the home in 1951 was deeply concerned that there were no women involved, and recommended that it should not be approved unless a matron was employed.
Officials voiced concerns privately about the “preventive policy” adopted by the Salesian order at St John Bosco and other boys towns. This involved the boys being deprived of contact with the outside world and never being let out of sight of one of the Catholic brothers.

Alan Travis
1 June 2005

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1496397,00.html

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