Oranges and Sunshine: Empty Cradles (22 page)

Whatever their motives, time was running out for everyone concerned. Already former child migrants had missed meeting their mothers by only a few years. They were too late, death had intervened, and with each passing day, more opportunities for reunions were being missed.

Pamela Smedley had lived in Australia since she was eleven years old, but had no documentation to prove it. To visit her mother in England she needed a passport. Not a difficult document for the ordinary citizen to organize, but then, ordinary citizens have birth certificates and all the other bits and pieces of paper that define who they are and where they belong.

We managed to get Pamela a birth certificate and finally a passport.

In February, I met her at Heathrow airport and we travelled by train to Hastings. She and her mother had been speaking on the telephone and writing letters, but both were extremely nervous.

As we got out of the cab, Pamela said, ‘Margaret, you’ll have to hold me up. I can’t get to the door.’

She was almost paralysed and needed a comforting arm.

It was such a private moment, I didn’t want to be there. I felt I was intruding. I decided that when we got inside I would disappear into the kitchen, out of the way.

Betty had been waiting at the window for the cab to arrive. As we came up the drive I caught a glimpse of her at the curtain. Betty’s expression told me that she’d been waiting for more than a morning; a lifetime.

The door opened and I disappeared, along with her husband, and left mother and daughter together. I put the kettle on and chatted to Betty’s husband. We both knew we were surplus to requirements.

When I took the tea into the sitting-room, Pamela and Betty were side by side on the settee holding hands. They were totally absorbed with each other.

Betty took Pamela’s hand and led her to the window.

‘Is this your daughter, Betty?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘Oh yes.’

‘How do you know?’

Betty studied Pamela’s face the way a parent looks at a newborn baby – that intense, enraptured look as if marvelling at all creation.

During lunch, I thought of how quickly things had happened. Only weeks earlier I had told Pamela that her mother was alive and here she was sitting down and having her first meal at her mother’s table.

By mid-afternoon, the long journey and intense emotion began to show on Pamela’s face. She was tired and needed to sleep.

‘Your bed’s through there, Pam,’ Betty smiled. ‘You’ll like it – there’s lots of lovely teddies and toys. Go on in, get yourself all ready.’

She glanced at me, then called out, ‘Look, I’m going to call you Elizabeth, do you mind? Or Lizzie – do you mind Lizzie? Just give me a shout when you’re ready, because I’m going to come in and tuck you in.’

Betty brought me another cup of tea and said, ‘I won’t be a minute. I’m just going to go and tuck my Lizzie in.’

Domino Films decided to call the documentary,
Lost Children of the Empire
. It was due to go out at 10.30 p.m. on 9 May 1989.

A fortnight beforehand, the Granada publicity machine cranked into action. Press releases were sent out and I was expected to do a series of radio, television and press interviews to publicize the programme.

I went from one studio to the next, explaining the importance of the documentary. A couple of nights before
Lost Children
went out, I was booked to appear on the
Wogan
show and Granada were thrilled with their publicity
coup
.

Terry Wogan was on holiday and Sue Lawley was fronting the show in his absence. She was fascinated by the subject and even wanted to read an advance copy of the book that accompanied the documentary.

It was all arranged, but at the eleventh hour my appearance was cancelled and later I discovered that my replacement was Shirley Temple, who was in town publicizing her autobiography. Sadly, she was considered more newsworthy than the plight of the thousands of child migrants. Their stories had been sunk by the good ship Lollipop.

I felt even more disappointed when several days later I saw the BBC were broadcasting a half-hour programme on the history of Barnardo’s and the efforts of the charity to get away from their old-fashioned, nineteenth-century image.

The programme made absolutely no mention of the child migration schemes. That part of Barnardo’s history was strangely missing.

Lost Children of the Empire
was a powerful and balanced documentary. I felt it would generate tremendous anger and disbelief in the general public. Some would need counselling; others might come forward to provide vital information – teachers, nursery staff and child care officers who remembered the child migrants leaving Britain.

I talked to Granada and they immediately arranged to provide phone-in lines at its Manchester studios. These were staffed by experienced counsellors who had volunteered to help the Child Migrants Trust.

At midday all the phones were in place and a technician threw the switch to test them. Every phone rang. Granada had been trailing
Lost Children
all week, and the numbers had been published in the
TV Times
. Already people were trying to get through.

Fifteen of us sat watching the programme that evening, including George Wilkins and Harold Haig. As the end credits rolled, every telephone rang and we ran to our seats.

The response was incredible. People were distraught. There was anger and outrage at the way British children had been treated, resentment at the involvement of charities with household names, and guilt that this could have happened in the twentieth century.

Many ex-servicemen called, incensed that they had fought a bloody war only to see children treated like this in peacetime. Other callers demanded to know who was responsible for sending them. Who allowed them to be treated like this?

Mothers wanted reassurance that their children had not been sent overseas. Teachers said they remembered children going missing from their classrooms. Former child care workers said they had been assured the children were going to good homes in Australia and felt betrayed. People who spent their youth in children’s homes remembered their friends being taken away. One man said the only reason he wasn’t taken was that he had chicken pox.

We finally turned the help-lines off at about three in the morning. I felt shattered. Nothing could have prepared me for such a response.
Lost Children
had pricked the conscience of a nation.

I also felt immense relief. I had worried all along that people wouldn’t believe me; that they would doubt that this tragedy had happened.

I remember asking migrants, ‘Why didn’t you tell somebody about this?’

And often they’d look directly at me and say, ‘Who would believe us?’

Now the world did know. The world did believe them. The burden had been shared, along with the responsibility. Surely no government committed to family values could turn its back on these people. Nor could the charities deny their needs.

I was wrong.

Five weeks later, I finally sat down at a table with the major organizations involved in child migration and asked for their help. The Trust had written regularly to each of the charities, keeping them informed of our work, but it was obviously the documentary that spurred them into action. A director of Barnardo’s invited me to attend a meeting at the Commonwealth Institute in Kensington, London.

The charities represented included the Salvation Army, Barnardo’s, the Fairbridge Society, the Children’s Society, National Children’s Homes and representatives from the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church. An observer from the Department of Health also attended.

The 16 June meeting began in the morning, but David and I had been invited to join them in the afternoon. This didn’t fill me with confidence. I wondered why it was necessary to exclude us from the morning’s discussion. Instead of feeling welcome, I felt as if I was about to be given a dressing down for having blotted their copybooks.

It seemed bizarre really. These charities are all about ‘families’. They promote themselves on a Christian family model. They should be delighted that child migrants were finding their families after so many years. They should have been thanking the Child Migrants Trust for pointing out this tragedy.

But as David and I travelled down to London on the train, I felt this would not be the case.

‘I feel like a lamb going to the slaughter,’ I said to him.

When we arrived, everybody present was sitting down around a large conference table. There was a studied avoidance of eye contact and much shuffling of papers.

Mike Jarman of Barnardo’s was chairman and as he showed us to our seats he tried to introduce a note of joviality into the proceedings.

‘We’ve been talking about you,’ he said with a tone of mock reproach.

I sat and stared at them, my face expressionless. I didn’t say a word.

After an interminable silence, Mr Jarman began the meeting by telling me that there were people around the table who felt very hurt. He looked at me and there was silence. I looked around the table at each face in turn. At the two representatives from the Church of England. At the Monsignor from the Catholic Church. At Lady Dodds-Parker and Miss Judy Hutchinson from the Fairbridge Society. At the Colonel from the Salvation Army and the director of the Children’s Society. All of them.

I said nothing.

David ended the silence. He began to give a report on the enormity of the problems we’d discovered.

Afterwards, I briefly tried to give them a sense of the desperation and isolation that the former child migrants were feeling. They needed help to find their families; they needed a professional post-migration service. But – and it was a very big but – this service had to be neutral and totally independent of the charities and agencies that had sent them away.

I felt the shudder around the table. Yet those present who were professionals should have fully understood and endorsed the position of neutrality. They knew, just as I did, that you do not send abused children back to their abusers for help.

I felt there was no acknowledgement or support for my stand.

It was not a formal meeting and, one by one, those around the table began putting in their tuppence worth, telling me exactly what they thought of the Child Migrants Trust.

The Children’s Society representative was keen to indicate that his agency had only sent a small number of children and should not be confused with schemes run by the Church of England.

Fairbridge seemed dismissive of any need for a service at all. When David pressed the point about funding, the Fairbridge response was that there was nothing they could do to help because the properties in Australia had been sold and the proceeds put in trust. The terms of the trust dictated that any income could only be spent on children – and the former child migrants were now all of adult age.

David continued his questions. He wanted to know first of all whether the charities had records on individual child migrants, what the files contained, and whether they would be made available to the Trust.

‘I’m sure you all appreciate,’ he said, ‘that this information is very sensitive. These migrants have no knowledge of who their parents are, or if their parents were married, or how they themselves came to be separated from their families. Many need counselling before, during and after they are given this information which has been kept from them for so long.’

The Salvation Army representative responded: ‘We’ve been at this for over one hundred years now. We know what we’re doing, we have the most experienced people.’

I wasn’t convinced, as I had scores of letters from people who had tried to use the Salvation Army’s tracing bureau, only to have their applications turned down and their money returned.

The meeting broke up after two hours without reaching any satisfactory conclusions.

I was disappointed. It was time for everyone to pull together and ensure that the Trust had the funds to carry out its primary goal, but instead people were arguing about the past.

As I was about to leave, the Salvation Army colonel approached and said that she could see I was a well-meaning person, but it was unfortunate that I had talked to the press. She told me to let the whole matter drop. I would never get the Child Migrants Trust off the ground.

‘Go back home to your family, dear, and leave it alone.’

Then Mike Jarman took me to one side and asked for a word in private. We went into another room while David was politely saying goodbye to the others.

‘Barnardo’s would be prepared to give your trust a small amount of money,’ he said, ‘but in return for that we would want trusteeships. I could be one of them. It is a way to add funding to the Trust.’

‘It would also be a way for you to control it, which could potentially compromise the Trust’s neutrality,’ I replied.

I agreed to consider the proposal but knew that I could never accept it on such grounds. Barnardo’s may genuinely have wanted to help, but I felt it also sought control. How would the child migrants view an offer with strings attached?

* * *

The workload was horrendous. Yvonne and I battled through in the little office upstairs in my house, with no promises of funds and the mounting expense of each certificate we ordered.

We needed help and it arrived on my doorstop in a very unexpected way.

John Myles had seen an article about
Lost Children
in his dentist’s waiting-room.

‘I couldn’t get out of there quick enough when I realized that you lived in West Bridgford!’ he told me, waving the magazine. ‘I want to help. It would be too easy to write a cheque – I really want to do something.’

John was very persistent. He explained that he had trained as a lawyer and had experience in tracing family trees. His girlfriend, Penny, was also skilled and both wanted to work for the Child Migrants Trust.

‘I can’t pay you,’ I said, but money wasn’t the issue. I really had to be sure that both of them had the understanding and the expertise to tackle the work. As it turned out, they both had these qualities in abundance.