Harry's Place

Having heard some of them on the radio today and in previous broadcasts, I don’t doubt their profound grief–those of them that feel it. To have been torn away from your mum, sometimes your whole family and then find yourself consigned to the hell that many of them were sent to — an appalling fate for adults, but so much worse for children.

And then to have been lied to — to have been told that their parents were dead, when in most cases they weren’t.

We regard transportation for crime as an inhuman punishment we don’t any longer inflict on criminals. These children had done nothing wrong–they were just deemed deserving of this fate, and were punished for showing their distress and grief through bedwetting and the like.

I think the deception is the worst of it. I know many people who came to this country with the Kindertransport, and whose parents, left behind, were subsequently murdered. But they don’t show the same levels of distress even though in some cases their families’ fates were worse. I think that’s because they accept that they were transported to save their lives.

But these chlldren were simply deprived of the love of their mothers and wider family for no reason that we would find acceptable today. And they do seem to feel comforted by the apologies they are getting.

He said where they were “so often” abused, so I would say he’s apologizing for the act of their being taken away from their families.

Stolen Cradles was a heart-breaking book.

I was adopted as well, over 50 years ago. I met my birth parents when I was in my early 20’s. My birth mother told me the horror stories of her treatment at the hands of the nuns that ran the ‘unwed mothers home’ where I was born. (She was 16)

I had a happy enough home with my adopted family, but know very well the issues that an adopted child, indeed even when we become adults, face. As a Social Worker, I did adoptions for many years as well, so am fully aware of the myriad of issues facing adoptees.

I don’t think that apologies mitigate the situation for most of these people, especially the ones that suffered abuse. Unfortunately, terrible events can happen to anyone, and as sad as it all is, we must learn to focus on getting our lives in order, irrespective of the variables. Financial reparation may help some of the Australian individuals, but that too is a can of worms.
Historically, all of our collective societies (I am Canadian) have heaped the worst kinds of discrimination, abuse and exploitation on the vulnerable. We must never forget, but we have to get past it and ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

These children had done nothing wrong–they were just deemed deserving of this fate

Well true, and as I said the abused deserve an apology and possibly more. The others were sent at least supposedly with the best intentions of having a better life, so why does Brown need to apologise?

Deception (I should say) is surely part of every adoption isn’t it?

Nope..

I know its sad.. I do think this sorry stuff is more for Rudd and the others. Everyone can polish their halos. Everyone can feel good about themselves.

Whoopee..

As an aside: My dad and his brothers, were evacuees. They had the time of their lives. When we went on holiday in wales he would take us to the village. He would always say a hello. Cup of tea and a chat. We just wondered around bored.

I think we only tune in on the negatives.

Were these children actually torn away from their mother and sometimes from their whole family for no reason that we would find acceptable today, as Judy states? Were there court proceedings? Were there allegations of neglect by parents?

I don’t know very much about this latest issue, but in 2008 Australian PM Kevin Rudd also apologised to aboriginals who as children had been taken from their parents and enrolled in residential schools. The aim at the time (up to the 1960s) was to get them out of the reservations and integrated into Australian society.

A year before THAT apology there was a huge scandal about aboriginal reservations in Northern Australia with allegations of endemic alcaholism, domestic violence and child abuse. The Governent banned the sale of alcohol on reservations and restricted the powers of local aboriginal councils. This was mainly to protect the female and child victims of abuse. So the Australian Government apologised to previous victims for removing them, just after massively intervening to help those who are still living in the same conditions.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article1969109.ece

Maybe there were good reasons for removing the aboriginal children in the first place?

Re my Comment: “So the Australian Government apologised to previous [aboriginal] victims for removing them, just after massively intervening to help those who are still living in the same conditions.”

Actually I see that the Australian PM who declared the widespread sexual abuse of Aboriginal children to be a national emergency in 2007, was not Rudd, but his predecessor John Howard. The following is an extract from the above-mentioned Times article dated 22 June 2007:

Australia’s Aborigines were stripped of the right of self-rule yesterday after the Government declared the widespread sexual abuse of Aboriginal children to be a national emergency.

In what amounts to the end of a decades-long and largely failed path of self-determination for Aboriginal people, hundreds of extra police will be deployed in northern Australia to enforce the laws, which will apply on land that has been returned to Aboriginal ownership over the past 30 years.

I wonder if Kevin Rudd’s aplogy to aboriginal’s last year represents a reversal of Howard’s policy? If so I doubt if Rudd is doing victims of child abuse any good.

My 6 brothers ,sisters and I were taken into care for a few months in 1955,it was the best time of our lives!
If my experience is any thing to go by,I think many{but not all} of those children had a better start in life than if they were left to stay in the UK.
The Britain of 50 plus years ago wasn’t a nice place for working class kids.
I personally think you cannot apologize for the sins of your fathers,it was after all a well intention act taken at a time when Britain had many important problems to deal with

Is it not the case that the adoption agencies involved in this human trafficking were religious ones? ie principally Roman Catholic. I would be very surprised if it was a policy of the British state to ‘transport’ children to Australia. Having said that, where we grew up there was an old farm which had been used to train ‘juvenile delinquents’ in basic animal husbandry before banishing them to Australia. I do not know if they had any choice on whether to go or not, and also what age the delinquents were, but I imagine from 12 to 17. To be honest, I would love to have been sent out to Australia as a young un, plenty of opportunities there, perhaps not so many nowadays, but we are talking of the days of the £10 passage. I suppose that isn’t the point though.

Is it not the case that the adoption agencies involved in this human trafficking were religious ones? ie principally Roman Catholic.

I think that most adoption agencies in the UK up to about 35 years ago were religious ones.

I am sorry, Graham, but I think you are being slightly callous, rather than cruel. I am one of those people who well up when I see meetings of sisters who had been separated for 60 years, and what gets me is knowing they will only have a very few years left, and they have missed out on something they could never replace, even with a reunion.

So OK – I admit my weaknesses on such matters. I try to act hard and aggressive in real life, but part of me is softer than a sackful of squashed Andrex puppies.

But like people who have been adopted, and have a loving family, the need to know what their biological origins are is so important to them. Everyone has nostalgia, even for things they have never known. In etymological origin, nostalgia means “pain for home” – i.e. homesickness.

I suspect you are in your 30s, and still young. When you get to middle age, there is always room for regrets for all the things that could have been, but never were. The hopes and dreams that died along the way, the love affairs that promised so much but never had a chance. Each one of us, I believe, longs to be able to repair parts of our lives, no matter how successful or wretched our lives end up.

And for those poor people to have been dragged away from their families and deprived of familial love, it is all too painful for me to even think about. I cannot watch Trisha when there are reunions, as they do affect me (I love the ones with the drunken couples slagging each other off). The reunions touch a nerve I cannot deal with dispassionately.

I do not think you are wrong to feel the way you do – that is your natural reaction. But maybe later in life, I think you will find your attitudes may be more understanding of middle aged people blubbering about what they feel was taken from them. Perhaps our degrees of sentiment and nostalgia can only be accurately defined and measured by those who have gone, or been taken, from our lives.

I suspect you are in your 30s, and still young.

Thankyou – you may now say whatever you like about me!

Actually I am a bit older (and I have honestly gone through the loss thing very recently) but I have never been greatly troubled by the “loss” of birth parents who I never knew (although I may blubber later in life – who knows?)

BBC News 24 last night interviewed a woman with a strong Australian accent who was in floods of tears at the life she had” lost” in England. Today some of the transportees marched to the British embassy wearing black armbands. There are demands for reparations for all. Would I be cruel to suggest this is a little over-emotional and a product of wishful thinking?

It depends on what you see as wishful thinking Graham. In 2002 the Irish Goverment set up a Redress Board which invited applications for financial compensation from anyone who had been “abused” in an industrial school. The term “abuse” was defined as physical, sexual or emotional abuse OR lack of opportunity for children to develop. Since an institution is, by definition, less supportive than a family this meant that absolutely anybody who had been there could claim compensation. And so it proved. Nearly 15,000 people applied and hardly anyone was refused. The standard of proof was set at close to zero.

Comment from an essay by Richard Webster “The Chrismas Spirit in Ireland”:

http://www.richardwebster.net/irelandsfolly.html

For if a government body publicly advertises its willingness to pay sums of up to €300,000 to those making claims of abuse, and simultaneously makes it clear that there is no requirement to produce evidence to prove that the events alleged did in fact take place, it should not be surprising if the response is a mixed one.

If that is indeed the case then the Irish government has committed a protracted act of folly on a scale unprecedented in the entire history of sexual abuse compensation schemes.

Well not unprecedented for long: I’m sure that the British and Australian Governments will soon follow in our footsteps. As you British used to say when you still believed in something: “It’s a bit Irish”!

As you British used to say when you still believed in something: “It’s a bit Irish”!

Ah! I must also point out that having never bothered searching for anything on my background in my 40 (cough) odd years while my adoptive parents were alive I did last year see an adoption social worker and get the name of my birth mother – and a very Irish name it is too!

If you have the name of your birth mother, please seek her out. If just to say hello and no more. Maybe she may not want to be reminded of a period in her life when she had few options. However, if she is still alive and knew you were fine, then it could be of benefit to her. It would reassure her, perhaps, that she did the right thing.

I am now projecting my sentimentality onto you (sorry!), but if she is still alive she would not be young any more. Speaking as someone who is middle aged, there are few things worse than regrets.

If you leave it too late, you would have to harden yourself further. If she is alive, then perhaps a brief connection could help both you and her to be more confident about where you are in the world. Give you another perspective on your identity.

The clock is ticking, and the Grim Reaper is waiting in the wings, if he hasn’t struck already…….

Graham.
Welcome to the club. My own name is close to that of the last High King of Ireland who made a very poor attempt at defending my ancestors against your (adopted) English ones. “Weak, vascillating and of unhappy memory” is how my first year secondary school history book described him. Well you know kids can be cruel and I had to put up with a certain amount of ragging. I wasn’t very tough then but I got over it and made it through worse experiences later in my life. This compensation industry only serves to infantilise everyone.

against your (adopted) English ones

My Welsh adoptive father would not like that!

Adrian. I really have no desire at the moment to seek her out – I was offered the chance to see the care report/pre-adoption report or whatever the court called it then but never went back. I really think that people have different reactions to the idea of turning up cans of worms from the past. For me, when you have built your own identity why would you want to undermine its foundations?

What do you think?

I can’t put my head in the right space to look at it like you can.

All things considered, would these kids have been worse off in an institution in Bristol London or Birmingham over Brisbane, Sydney or Adilade, I’m not so sure.

I saw that woman with the Ausi accent, my gut reaction…and I fully admit it was no more empirical than that…was that I had the distinct impression that there was rather more pertinent context relating to this woman’s background and her clear baggage than the clip fronted with; but I could easily be wrong. It was just a very strong impression.

My Welsh adoptive father would not like that!

Actually most of the rank and file soldiers who invaded us in 1169 came from Wales. Their leader was Richard de Clare (aka Strongbow) Earl of Pembroke. “Invaded” is not quite the right word since they were invited in by the King of Leinster who was at loggerheads with the High King, my own possible ancestor.

This event gave rise to the “800 years of British oppression” – or so say the people who try to blame all our problems on someone else. Maybe that’s why we Irish set up one of the first Child Abuse Compensation Rackets in the world; we have such experience in the “I am a Victim” game. I would be sorry to see the Brits following in our footsteps. You can’t say you haven’t been warned!

Cool Graham. I respect your choices. You are a grown up (very grown up for someone in his 30s!) and I hope I wasn’t too intrusive to project on to you what I would have done. I think I retreat into a sort of infantilism of my own, longing to see happy endings, even though such things rarely happen. I think that in a previous life, I must have been addicted to, or written for, Mills & Boon novels.

As I am not too wrinkly at present, maybe I should start dressing in peach organdie and chiffon, clutch a pekinese to my sagging manboobs, trowel my face with pink and blue make-up and start writing a good racy cum syrupy romance novel (with less emphasis on the cum – a Freudian slip).

PS: I hope my editor doesn’t see this…..

While I don’t regret meeting my birth parents, the experience is certainly not for everyone. Graham, I would not do it either given your hesitation. My brother, who is adopted too, was not interested in meeting his birthparents until he was in his early 40’s. It was an emotionally devastating experience for him.

One never knows what they will unearth in this venture. I do think that the information should be available for every adopted child though, so that they can make that choice for themselves.

I was glad to learn the information that I did when I met my birth mother and then my birth father, and it did reinforce my birth mother’s belief that she did the right thing by relinquishing me for adoption, insofar as it was clear to her that she could never have provided the relatively advantaged life that I had with my adoptive family, both emotionally and physically.

I too was rather ecstatic that I was not raised by her. She is a nice enough person, but…..well thats’ another story. Suffice to say, while I see her rarely, it is not a relationship that I view with any tenderness. Sentimentality perhaps. There is an inexplicable draw there.

I have always been interested in reducing the need for adoption in the first place, and have been drawn to women’s health issues vis a vis feminist politics since I was very young, as one process that enabled me to work towards that goal.

That’s very interesting Catherine. have you written anything about the women’s health issues and adoption?

All things considered, would these kids have been worse off in an institution in Bristol London or Birmingham over Brisbane, Sydney or Adilade, I’m not so sure.

Well that’s kind of what I was trying to get at. Is the apology (for the not abused and perhaps not lied too anyway) just because of the distance? That they were taken from London to Sydney rather than London to Edinburgh?

I can’t help wondering about the rationale underpinning these apologisers of last resort.

On who’s behalf do they apologise?

It can’t be the public in either the UK or Australia, because they were never made aware of this at the time that it was happening. It has to be specific national and local governments. People with oversight of this situation. People, who let it happen.

If you are apologising for the misconduct of the MacMillan regime, you should say so.

As for me, I still believe that no one will abuse or treat you bad if you wont tolerate these stuff. in the end, its all your choice.

Graham, to answer your question, my focus professionally in my early career was as I said before, in adoption and child protection. (As a government social worker). Politically my efforts were around the pro choice abortion movement. I later worked in an abortion clinic for a number of years. I have in fact extensively written and spoken publicly, on the abortion issue, which of course touches very much on the adoption issue as well.

I am not one of those adopted people who feels threatened by abortion. In fact I was pleased to hear my birthmother tell me honestly, that if the abortion option would have been available to her when she was pregnant with me, she would have chosen it. I wouldn’t like to think that I came from someone who thought suffering through an unplanned pregnancy, especially in those days, at the abusive hands of nuns, was a preferable situation. We don’t have any control over our conception, so why concern ourselves with such esoteric concepts?

I have taken some grief from of course anti choice organizations and various religious groups for my opinions, but that is to be expected, and doesn’t concern me in the least.

@Lesley Smith
I am not always sure this is true for adults, but children rarely have the training, life-skills or support networks to either resist, challenge or report what happens to them. Especially in the time-period that these children were transported.

I’d just like to point out that growing up with your natural parents isn’t all hunky-dory. especially when they are rotton parents with their own problems. Many parents provide no emotional support or financial support, so it would be wrong to imagine that all families are happy. I can appreciate the need to knowd where one’s roots are, especially difficult if one is from a mixed background or a minority group.

Catherine thanks. I don’t have your expertise on the subject but I’m in total agreement with you about abortion and the pointlessness of dwelling on “might have beens”.

Sue R I agree. Perhaps we should seek an apology for people with bad biological parents!

Lesley it is a bit difficult “not tolerating” abuse if you are in an institution.

I think you are all under-estimating the level of violence and abuse that was common in most institutions dealing with children for the greater part of the twentieth century – be they in England, Australia, Ireland or Canada. My uncle still has a busted face and a stammer as the result of a mass beating by masters and my mother still cries when she talks about the lives of the girls who worked in the laundries. They are both products of Irish institutions (whose crimes Kilbarry is so keen to dismiss). In England, an
Afro-Caribbean friend of mine recalls having her head shaved as the “carers” could not be bothered with the tedious task of plaiting hair.Not approving of “cultures of victimhood” should not blind people to the fact that in an unfair world there are plenty of actual victims.I think it is a bit of a cheek to assume that the obviously deeply distressed, Australian survivors of what, at best, was a thoroughly deceitful system are simply wallowing in an unwarranted sense of misplaced nostalgia.

Well Moritz I’ll agree with you about the institutions. And having had a friend who was for years beaten as a child by the catholic brothers in Cork and who eventually turned out to have been beating his own wife I wonder about the continuing (and later) effects of such abuse. But I still have trouble working out how (apart from the distance travelled) there was much different about this system than normal adoption.

How about the racial aspects. It is said that the system came about because the colonial governments wanted “good white stock” to populate Australia and Canada.

I think there were a number of motives -some well-intentioned and “normal” -but the whole thing does seem to have an unsavoury air about it – as early as 1956 a parliamentary report was deeply critical and suggested suspending the programme because of the unsatisfactory nature of the receiving institutions

this is quite interesting
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmhealth/755/75504.htm

Thanks for posting that link Moritz. I am very familiar with the history of the transport of the children from the UK to Canada. It was scandalous and unforgivable. I have nothing but empathy and compassion for the victims of this horrendous policy.

As I noted earlier, humanity knows no boundaries when it comes to dehumanizing, exploiting and mistreating the vulnerable in our society. One can only hope that we have all learned from the multitude of horrors inflicted on these people.
The Canadian First Nations people are a case in point. They were literally snatched from their parents and put into residential schools, far away from their families, with many of them suffering untold abuse at the hands of the the Catholic and Anglican institutions who took it upon themselves to “whiten up” these poor kids.

The Canadian government has made apologies and financial reparations to the now adult individuals, but as most of the world knows, the damage done to them is an ongoing tragedy that seemingly knows no end. We have made financial reparations and apologies to the Japanese, the Chinese, and Indo Canadians as well.
I still am unsure as to the psychological benefits of all this retroactive brow beating, especially when the target group of said, are mostly descendants of the actual victims. I just don’t know.

I was born to Jewish parents. Raised by Catholics. I suppose I missed out on a great deal regarding my heritage. I think that I’ve helped make up for it quite satisfactorily though as an adult. And the point made by Sue R is well taken. Children raised in their own biological families have no guarantee against abuse either.

This was a great article and I’ve enjoyed the comments. Most of the sites for adoptees, focus only on the obsessive need to find ones birth parents, without a broader conversation of how to put the adoption experience into a context of moving forward and healing whatever wounds one feels has been generated upon them.

Thanks Catherine. I hope that you will comment here again (or even do a guest post if you felt like it.) I feel I went off on a bit of a speculation that was perhaps a bit far for most non-adopted people and they may have felt a bit reluctant to comment but hey ho!

One of my sisters had a baby at seventeen and gave him up for adoption. He turned up 30 or so years later. She has no other children, they are now very close and she is delighted to become a grandmother. It was strange to meet this young man – to see shared family traits and looks come out of nowhere. Both the young man and my sister are sane and sensible people but I know that this kind of story could end very badly.

Another friend was adopted by Scottish parents. I’d always thought this guy looked like Phillip Roth. He waited till his adoptive parents died then tracked down his parents – turned out his mother was Irish and his father Israeli. His Israeli brother looks exactly like him.

I would be overwhelmed by curiosity myself. On the other hand, I’ve heard that adopted children can build up a fantasy life of this wonderful person out there who will love them, and can be crushingly disappointed. It’s quite common for children to have the fantasy that they must really be the child of someone grander than their ordinary parents, the by-blow of a prince or something, or that they are a foundling whose real aristocratic parents will one day claim them.

Well KB being the student of literature that I know you are or have been you will know how easy it is to construct a narrative around the smallest things. In my adopted mothers house there has always been a small bowl marked “Ireland” and a Virgin Mary music box. My mother, a methodist, never really liked the Irish (I don’t mean she was overtly racist but she generally turned away from Irish things if you know what I mean) .Only when I found out about my birth mother did these objects make any sense (though I don’t want to build a “comedie humaine” around them. When I wrote the above I considered putting in the overwhelming feeling I got when when my parents died (apart from the genuine grief- I’m not a monster) was the feeling that I was no longer acting a part in someone else’s drama (even if, since the age of 14 or so it had only been a bit part) I didn’t put it in because I felt I’d already talked enough about me – but make of it what you will. I guess that however bad or good birth parents turned out to be should I find them I’d be worried about just entering stage left into another play.

Its all a bit Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead really isn’t it?

Wow. What an excellent way to describe this entire phenomenon! …”entering stage left into another play”. Best analogy I’ve ever heard. My adoptive mum is still alive at the age of 94, and I love her to death, but “the feeling that you’re acting a part in someone else’s drama”….nothing else to say!

Thanks for your offer. I always read ‘Harry’s Place’, but primarily pieces on the middle east, and when I came upon your article was pleased to digress from my obsession with all things Israeli/Palestinian. Thanks.

It’s quite common for children to have the fantasy that they must really be the child of someone grander than their ordinary parents, the by-blow of a prince or something, or that they are a foundling whose real aristocratic parents will one day claim them.

In my experience its more common for friends and partners to have this fantasy about you than for adopted people to have it themselves!

The following is a priceless example of the ideology of victimhood created by these stupid apologies – from a letter published in the the Irish Independent on October 24 last

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/government-salving-its-own-conscience-1923517.html

My heart bled for Jim Beresford former Artane child prisoner from Huddersfield, England, when he wrote “Monument to abuse victims is an insult” (Letters, October 23).

As if any monument could alleviate the pain and memories.

Deception (I should say) is surely part of every adoption isn’t it?

Not in modern adoptions.

You are quite right that they have made great efforts recently X.

But not during the timescale of the transported children.