Gordon Brown apologises to child immigrants sent to Australia.
The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has finally given an apology to the Australian immigrants sent from Britain as children from the 1920s to as late as the 1970s.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologised to the child migrants, nicknamed ‘The Forgotten Children’ in November of last year for the part Australia played in the mistreatment of thousands of children.
At the time Downing Street said that Mr Brown would issue an apology this year. Some might question the timing of his apology as it comes as a time when Mr Brown is desperately trying to rescue his reputation from allegations of bullying.
Some estimates say that around 130,000 children were sent from Britain to Australia between the 1920s and as late as the early 1970s as part of The Child Migrant Programme, aiming to give children from impoverished or orphaned backgrounds a better life and to fulfill the controversial plan by the then Australian Immigration Minister Arthur Calwell to bring “good white stock” into Australia.
However many of the children were used as free labour whilst others were beaten and abused. Many children were wrongly told that their parents had died when in fact, the parents were alive and well, having given their children up for what they believed would be a better life in Australia.
Mr Brown used the popular daytime television programme GMTV to make his public apology: “I have to apologise on behalf of a policy that was misguided and it happened right up until the 1960s. You will see when you meet people who have been affected by this, it has ruined many of their lives.”
Mr Brown also made a statement to the House of Commons saying: “To each and everyone I say today we are truly sorry. They were let down. We are sorry they were allowed to be sent away when at their most vulnerable. We are sorry that instead of caring for them, this country turned its back.”
Forty former child migrants flew to the UK to listen to Mr Brown’s apology, they were then taken to Westminster to meet the PM personally.
Canada also received many of the UK’s children and similar stories of abuse and neglect have been told from those child migrants, however the Canadian government have refused to say if their Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, will issue an apology for the part Canada played in The Child Migrant Programme.
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