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  Britain Says Sorry to Children Shipped to Australia

Earth Times
February 25, 2010

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/311144,britain-says-sorry-to-children-shipped-to-australia.html

AUSTRALIA -- British children shipped to Australia from 1947-67 gathered as adults Thursday to receive an apology from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for what he called the "deportation of innocent lives."The formal apology, to a group of 150,000 children ages 3 to 14 who sometimes refer to themselves as the Orphans of Empire, was delivered by Brown to the House of Commons Wednesday in London and is being relayed at British missions in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa and Zimbabwe, which was then called Rhodesia.

Brought up in orphanages where neglect, brutality and even sexual abuse were commonplace, child migrants to Australia received a formal apology last year in the Canberra Parliament.

As many as 10,000 children that Britain didn't want because they were born to single mothers or into poor homes were shipped to Australia as "good, white stock."

Often falsely labeled orphans and not told they had brothers and sisters as well as mothers and fathers, they were dumped in institutions run by the church or the state. The migration programme has no parallel in history, anywhere else in the world.

Many Orphans of Empire say their lives were ruined by abuse and neglect while in care in Australia.

"As children, we were a commodity," London-born George Walden, 82, said before attending a ceremony at the British consulate in Sydney.

Others hold no grudge.

David Hill, who was sent to Australia with his twin brother at the age of 12, rose to become head of public broadcaster ABC and chairman of Australian Railways.

"That says what a fantastic country Australia is despite all its flaws," he said. "At least that aspect of the great egalitarian Australian tradition prevails."

 
 

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