Oranges and Sunshine: Empty Cradles (26 page)

It was not just about revealing that his mother had died; it was telling him that there was no hope. The search that had dominated his life for forty years was over and there was nothing more he, or I, or anybody could do.

I could see tears welling up in his eyes, each of them brushed aside by his shirt sleeve. He didn’t know what to do with himself.

I wanted to tell the story from the beginning; I wanted to tell Harold about Elizabeth Ellen Johnson, who died a lonely, heartbroken lady, without her children. But I knew he wouldn’t last. I said to him, ‘Harold this is the day that we all dreaded, I’m afraid.’

He looked up at me through the tears. ‘Have you found my mother?’

‘Yes,’ I whispered.

‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ he muttered.

‘Yes, she is.’

I could say no more. In a breath all hope had gone. There was no more searching; no more clutching at straws; no more turning it over and over again in my mind, trying to find the answers.

Harold had always said that there are two levels at which people search. On the one hand he talked of searching all his life for his mother, but on the other he also knew the ‘practicalities’ that prevent people looking when they live 12,000 miles away.

There are so many imponderables left by such a search. They are the legacy of the child migration schemes and the policy which sent children to the other side of the world, away from their families. Years of heartbreak and years of yearning for mothers, fathers and children. And to what end?

Harold asked me whether I’d been to see his mother’s grave. ‘That’s a journey you have to make,’ I told him.

He flew to England and I drove him to the train station.

‘I felt bloody sad,’ he said later. ‘I had desperately wanted her to be alive, after all those years of wishing for her and being told that I was an orphan. The longer I sat by her grave, the more confused and angry I became. I was illegally sent from my country and, like thousands of others, was the victim of a cruel conspiracy of silence and deceit, but I did feel some peace – the peace of mind that at fifty-two years of age, I finally knew where my mother was.’

He didn’t have a photograph. He’d give anything for that. But the urgency was over.

When the Trust opened its office in Nottingham, we had had a giant cake decorated with all the flags of the countries where child migrants had been sent. It was quite symbolic and I had cut it in pieces and sent a slice to Harold.

He kept his piece and when he came to England to visit his mother’s grave, he brought it with him and buried it in a box beside her.

Nearly four years after the Trust had started we had several thousand clients and a workload massively beyond all our expectations. We had reunited over a hundred families.

Yet it was only with the help of my anonymous benefactor that we were able to move out of my home in West Bridgford to suitable offices near by – somewhere that child migrants would feel belonged to them.

My attempts to get official funding had also started to show results, but it was never sufficient to carry out the work quickly enough. Those who held the purse strings didn’t seem to understand that we were racing against time to reunite families before elderly mothers and fathers died.

In April 1990, after several meetings and countless letters to the Department of Health, the Child Migrants Trust was awarded a one-year, £20,000 grant. We had applied for funding over three years, needing £111,000 in the first year and £92,000 in each subsequent year.

The news from Australia had been more positive. Early in the New Year, I was surprised to receive a telephone call from the Federal Government’s Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, in Canberra. A senior civil servant in Minister Robert Ray’s office introduced himself and said simply, ‘What can we do to help?’

This was the first time that anyone had approached me from any government. I didn’t need to be asked twice. ‘We need an office and a qualified social worker.’

Without hesitating, he said, ‘I’ll see what we can do.’

Within days he rang again and told me to submit an application for a grant; approval would be a formality. The Trust was given just enough to cover the salary of a social worker for three years with a small percentage for accommodation. It meant that I could start an office in Australia and appoint someone.

While I’d been in Australia before Christmas, the trustees and Yvonne had been busy looking for an office in Nottingham. Philip Bean had resigned as a trustee due to his work commitments, and a local businessman, Manfred Dessau, graciously took up the position. He had first approached me after
Lost Children of the Empire
was screened and asked what he could do to help.

Eventually, we found rooms in a large Victorian house that had been converted into offices in Musters Road, near the cricket ground at Trent Bridge.

We begged, borrowed and called in favours to get office furniture, and then loaded up my battered Renault with boxes of files and dozens of notebooks, transferring them from the house to the new office.

The premises were neither large nor lavish, but they were warm, welcoming and homely. There were two rooms set aside for meetings and interviews, neither had any office equipment, just soft furnishings, attractive lamps and many photographs and paintings. The black-and-white photographs on the walls showed scenes of children leaving Britain on different child migrant schemes.

The office was practical and conventional but I also hoped it would become a kind of spiritual home for the child migrants.

Similar accommodation had to be found in Australia so I flew out with Manfred Dessau to formalize the arrangements with the Immigration Department and to look for an office.

I decided to base the Trust’s first Australian office in Melbourne which could service the eastern states, while I would continue to focus on Perth.

It took two trips before the right location could be found, a two-storey terrace house in Canning Street, North Carlton, an old suburb with well-established gardens. Inside, it looked almost English with its comfy sofas and the landscape paintings on the walls.

I didn’t want a formal-looking office. This had to be somewhere that child migrants could feel welcome and at ease; where there was tea in the pot and biscuits in the tin.

The second priority was to recruit a qualified social worker – someone with the experience and personal qualities to withstand the inevitable emotional onslaught of dealing with so many painful stories. I knew that many of the child migrants wanted a British worker as a tangible link with the land of their birth, and eventually appointed David, who was well qualified and experienced.

David had been to Australia before and was very relaxed and easy going. He would have no support staff and could rely on my being there only three times a year. The rest of the time, aside from the telephone, he would be alone.

Although Canning Street wouldn’t be opened officially until January 1991, David went to Australia earlier to make the final plans. I flew out in the New Year and we met in Perth so he could watch me working with former child migrants. We’d talked a lot about the problems, and he seemed confident, but I don’t think anything could have prepared him fully for the emotional impact of what he had to face within a few weeks of his arrival.

The Child Migrants Trust was finally on a firm footing – at least while the funds lasted. As it turned out, this was not to be for long. In March 1991 I received a letter from the Department of Health in London. Our application for a further grant had been refused.

This was a major blow. I had already appointed Joan Kerry, a qualified social worker, to counsel and prepare mothers and families of former child migrants. She had travelled thousands of miles in England, Scotland and Ireland, helping mothers deal with their sense of confusion and betrayal when they learned that their children had not been adopted in Britain but had been shipped to children’s homes in Australia. This work was vital but I had no idea where I would find the money to keep it going.

In the meantime, another unforeseen development had arisen: I received a call from an Australian television producer called Penny Chapman. The name meant little to me, but Penny explained that she was coming to England to try to arrange a co-production deal for a drama that she was very excited about.

‘It’s about the child migrants. We’re going to dramatize their story, the voyage, the abuse, the anger. Can I come and see you?’

Penny had already sold the idea to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and was hoping to talk with the BBC about a joint production deal.

The writers, Sue Smith and John Alsop, wanted to consult with me for the programme but my commitments were already daunting. I was dealing with reality. The people who could tell them what really happened were the child migrants themselves.

I had other, more urgent, matters to worry about. Thankfully, my frosty relationship with the charities and agencies was beginning to thaw. After being initially very antagonistic and uncooperative, there was a definite move to mend bridges.

Over time it became easier to ask them for information about individual child migrants. There was a recognition on their part that it was a situation that would not go away. Those agencies that employed professional social workers began to change their policy. Gradually they grew to recognize the needs of the child migrants, and to appreciate the work of the Trust.

Unfortunately mistakes were still made and some charities found it difficult to change their attitudes and develop more flexible policies.

Joan Corby is a child migrant who first wrote to me in July 1988. Born in 1936, she was eleven years old when she left a children’s home in Birmingham and was sent, on board the
SS Ormonde
, to the Fairbridge Farm School at Molong, NSW.

Joan was told her mother had died in a bombing raid during the war and that she had no brothers and sisters.

She wrote:

My chief grievance is that I was sent from my native land after the war, when there was no longer any danger of England being occupied by the Germans. Therefore, unless there was another reason for migration, I needn’t have been sent away. I still passionately love my native land and I feel as if I have been exiled unnecessarily and through no fault of my own, and I wish to return to the land of my birth
.

Another grievance is the fact that we were torn from our relatives and never had the chance to maintain family ties. Consequently I have walked through life as an orphan under great hardship, mainly spiritual hardship. I am grieved also that it is forty years now since I was exiled and till now nothing has been done to right what I see as a wrong. And, in fact, the wrong until now has not even been acknowledged
.

I cannot make head or tail of the reasons why I should have been sent away in the first place and ask you if you know of any reason for this, legally or socially, bearing in mind that England’s doors have been open to refugees from all parts of the world and yet we child migrants have never been invited back officially. This seems unjust to me
.

If you can help me, please do so as I don’t know where to turn. This exile lies very heavy on my heart
.

I wrote back to Joan, assuring her that I would do what I could to find her family, but that it could be a long search and I needed her help. She had to give me as many details as possible about her childhood in England – names, dates, addresses, etc.

Unbeknown to me, Joan had already approached the Fairbridge Society and asked for her personal file. When I heard from her again, the inconceivable had happened. Fairbridge, despite my warnings, had simply sent Joan her file through the post. Their only effort at minimizing the impact was a crude and cruel blacking out of important information.

Joan was faced with a censored file, attached to which was a letter from the Fairbridge Society which stated: ‘I hope you find this interesting rather than upsetting.’

Joan quoted from the censored letters. One line read: ‘… as you say —— point in disclosing all the facts —— would not help Joan to know that —— had six illegitimate children by —— others.’

It made no sense, but the implications were obvious. The Fairbridge file gave the unmistakable impression that Joan’s mother had six illegitimate children by different men.

Joan also learned that the maiden name she had kept until her marriage was different from that on her birth certificate. Instead of being Joan Haymes, she was Joan Haynes.

Her devastation was not surprising. She wrote to me: ‘I fear there is insufficient time to right the wrong done to my mother – I can only pray that she or some of her other children are still alive …’

In the subsequent months, the Child Migrants Trust could find no evidence of Joan having any brothers or sisters. Although the search continues, I seriously doubt that her mother had six illegitimate children. I think Joan is probably an only child.

Perhaps there was a mistake due to poor record-keeping, or a clerical mix-up. Similarly, her details may have been deliberately falsified, years earlier, to prevent Joan ever finding her mother. Whatever the reason, it was cruel blow to a very vulnerable human being.

On Australia Day, 26 January 1991, I flew to Perth, arriving in the early hours of the morning. The receptionist gave me a smile and a stack of telephone messages from former child migrants who were eager to see me. Some simply said, ‘Welcome to Perth, call me when you can.’

I couldn’t sleep. Perhaps my body was telling me that it was the early evening in Nottingham. I decided to order a pot of tea from room service and unpack some of my clothes until the tea arrived. I would need a jacket, blouse and skirt in a few hours’ time and I could see that they would need pressing. I always feel awkward calling housekeeping at three in the morning for an iron and ironing-board. By the time the tea arrived, I had fallen asleep on the bed.

Australia Day was to be one of the hottest on record in Perth and when I woke, I could already sense the furnace being stoked by the early-morning sun. There was one particular child migrant whom I had to see that day, Michael, who first wrote to me in November 1989.