General Chat

I agree Kay, apologies will not mend the harm that was done to those children all those years ago, but at least it goes a long way to saying that what happened to them is recognised as wrong.

I don't know if , after all these years, that sort of thing can be made better, the scars are probably too deep in many of those poor children, but huge lessons are to be learned from it.

Human beings are not commodities.

For years this has been asked for !!!!years.

I'd like to see the other countires including Canada who willing allowed these children some as young as 3 !!! into their countires with the knowledge what our gov at the time were doing.make public apologies.

Lots have done reasearch themselves,and been reunited with *family* who they belived they never had,also in the intervening years they lost every chance to ever be reunited with them or even birth mums/fathers,because of pudding brained bureaucratic red tape officials.

Apologies wont mend the broken..

This year will be remembered as the year of 'apologies'. Too little too late on all counts.

thanks Teresa, i dont know what has happened to my post, but half the text I put up has gone ! will delete and re post I think

i hasten to add these are the child migrants sent out by the likes of Dr Barnardo's in the 1950s and 60s....not recently.

Have just noticed there is a thread on Tips,

Gordon Brown is to apologise for the UK's role in sending thousands of its children to former colonies in the 20th century, the BBC has learned.

Under the Child Migrants Programme - which ended just 40 years ago - poor children were sent to a "better life" in Australia, Canada and elsewhere.

But many were abused and ended up in institutions or as labourers on farms.

Officials are consulting with survivors of the programme so that a statement can be made in the new year.

On Monday, Australia's prime minister will apologise to the 7,000 UK migrants living there for the mistreatment.


He will deliver a national apology to the "Forgotten Australians" and recognise the mistreatment and ongoing suffering of some 500,000 people held in orphanages or children's homes between 1930 and 1970.

As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of the children were told - wrongly - their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them.

Many parents did not know their children, aged as young as three, had been sent to Australia.

Care agencies worked with the government to send disadvantaged children to a rosy future and supply what was deemed "good white stock" to a former colony.

In many cases they were educated only for farm work, and suffered cruelty and hardship including physical, psychological and sexual abuse.