Read The Forgotten Children Online
Authors: David Hill
The Forgotten Children (30 page)
Other reports in the early 1950s, including the Moss report, identified a number of problems with the various child-migrant schemes, including Fairbridge. Overall the Moss report supported a continuation of child migration but it argued more children should be fostered out in Australia rather than being kept in institutions. Moss also observed that 90 per cent of child migrant were ‘backward for their age on Australian education standards’ and recommended further assimilation of child migrants – particularly Fairbridge children – into the Australian community.
Then in 1956 the British Government sent a fact-finding mission to Australia to investigate the child-migrant institutions that took British children. The British Government had been funding Fairbridge and other child-migrant schemes under the Empire Settlement acts since 1922. Prior to the expiry of these acts in May 1957 the government gave consideration to the appropriate levels of future funding. As part of its policy review it proposed to send a fact-finding mission to Australia to investigate the child-migrant institutions. The Overseas Migration Board (OMB) advised the British Government’s Commonwealth Relations Office in July 1955 that ‘The information at present available about child migrants was not sufficient on which to base long term decisions on Government assistance.’
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In agreeing to send the mission to Australia the British Government warned that ‘Continued Government funding should be conditional on child-migrant organisations adopting more enlightened child care practices, including a shift from institutional to foster care.’
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Approval for increased grants for societies concerned with the migration of children and the extension of the existing schemes beyond 1957 should be dependent upon their acceptance of the new doctrine that the selection of children for unaccompanied migration needs to be carefully done, from the psychological as well as other points of view, and the aim should be that such children are placed in family homes and not in institutions.
The British Government made the Australian Government aware of its intentions and of the fact that the British authorities had for some time been attempting to persuade the child-migrant institutions to modernise.
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Australia House and presumably therefore also the Department concerned at Canberra, are aware of the difficulties about child migration as a result of a softening-up process on which we have been engaged for some time and that they would probably welcome any mission which might lead to results which could be helpful from their point of view.
The fact-finding mission had three members: chairman Mr J. Ross, under secretary of state of the British home office, Mr W. J. Garnett and Miss G. M. Wansbrough-Jones. Garnett was, of course, familiar with child migration to Australia, having written a report on farm schools more than ten years before, when he was secretary to the British high commissioner in Canberra. Wansbrough-Jones was considered to be the childcare expert in the party, having worked in child welfare with the London County Council. The secretary of the committee was Mr E. H. Johnson of the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO).
The mission arrived in Australia in February 1956, and visited and reported on twenty-six child-migrant centres operating in Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland. In their report they said: ‘We were received everywhere with kindness and consideration, and were given every facility during our visit to acquaint ourselves with the arrangements for the care of the children.’
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The generosity of the comment disguised the considerable tension their visit caused at a number of institutions, only revealed in the secret addenda to the mission’s report, which were never made public.
Prior to the arrival of the mission to inspect Fairbridge at Molong, W. B. Hudson wrote to Principal Woods explaining that he had met the mission in Sydney and outlining the arrangements for their inspection of the farm school. The party, which included the three members of the fact-finding mission and other government officials, was to arrive at Bathurst airport at 8.45 a.m. on 15 February and then drive to Orange. There they would be taken to Fairbridge for lunch and be shown round the village and school in the afternoon. Hudson wrote: ‘I would like all seven of them to have their tea separately with the children in their cottages. Breakfast with the children in the morning and then go over the farm.’
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He added that the children should be instructed to wear shoes for the duration of the inspection: ‘I have a feeling that barefooted children would have a very adverse effect on the visitors and suggest that if you agree it would be advisable to see that they wore their shoes and socks.’
The mission travelled around the six states of Australia over a six-week period and in March delivered a highly critical report based on what they had seen.
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The main body of the report did not mention any of the institutions by name: they were named only in the secret addenda.
As a starting point, the mission said that it had adopted the modern standards of child care as the basis for measuring the performance of child-migrant establishments.
As the report is concerned with children from the United Kingdom, we have thought it right to take account of child care methods as developed there since 1948, when the Children Act was passed into law, namely, boarding out wherever possible, and failing that, residence in small children’s homes in preference to large ones.
The mission argued that child migrants deserved special sensitivity.
We think that it will be agreed generally that the desirability of enabling children deprived of a normal home life to be brought up in circumstances approaching as nearly as possible those of a child living in his own home applies with particular force to migrant children, who, in addition to the basic need of children for the understanding and affection that lead to security, have experienced disturbance arising from the transfer to new and unfamiliar surroundings.
This sensitivity to the needs of children was totally alien to Fairbridge. Indeed, the entire thrust of the report was fundamentally at odds with the Fairbridge model. While the Fairbridge farm schools provided institutional accommodation for up to 300 children the mission recommended that child migrants be fostered out to Australian families. The report noted, though, that Fairbridge and the other establishments they visited had not given ‘serious thought to boarding out migrant children in their care’. The implementation of this recommendation would have required a total reconstitution of the Fairbridge Farm School Scheme.
The fact-finding mission rejected arguments made by child-migrant institutions that their Spartan conditions were acceptable because they were comparable to some English boarding schools:
We think that this point is not a valid one; those suggesting it overlook the fact that the migrant children, unlike most children attending boarding schools, have no home for the time being other than that provided by the organisation caring for them.
Few with whom we spoke seemed to realise that it was precisely such children, already rejected and insecure, who might often be ill equipped to cope with the added strains of migration.
It found that the establishments they inspected were ‘institutional in character’ and that many of the children ‘were disturbed by reason of separation from their parents’.
The mission was made aware of the child-migrant schemes’ difficulty in attracting suitable cottage mothers. It was sceptical that: ‘those engaged in the work had sufficient knowledge of child care methods to be able to give migrant children the understanding and care needed to help them adjust themselves in strange surroundings’ and found that there was ‘no specialist scheme of training in Australia for child care work’.
They were especially critical of the children’s ‘segregation in large measure from the life of the community’, lack of homely atmosphere, lack of personal privacy, and the children’s difficulty in adjusting to normal life on leaving the institution to go to work. They were frustrated that the establishments they visited ‘were not persuaded of the benefit to the children of having all meals as a family group in their cottages’.
The report struck at the heart of the Fairbridge model by recommending that children not be kept to run the farm when they finished school but be found outside employment. In a clear reference to Fairbridge they observed:
We gathered at one place that the work done in this way by the boys was essential to the running of the farm. It seemed to us that these arrangements were unsuitable for boys and girls who did not intend to follow farm and domestic work.
Children should not ordinarily remain in an establishment between leaving school and entering outside employment, except for the purpose of receiving training for the occupation they intend to enter.
Finally, the report dropped a bombshell by recommending that in future the consent of the home secretary should be required for any child to migrate. The implications were clear: if Fairbridge did not fall into line with the recommended modern childcare practices they would not receive authorisation to send more children to Australia.
The report of the fact-finding mission caused considerable heartburn in London. The OMB, which had initiated the mission in the first place, was embarrassed by the findings and recommendations and moved quickly to distance itself from the report. In a report to the government’s CRO in May 1956 M. K. Ewans of the board said:
The Overseas Migration Board yesterday discussed the report of the Child Migration Mission. It was quite a stormy meeting and it is clear that the Board are now rather sorry that the mission was sent at all.
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The board indicated that some of its members wanted the report hushed up but accepted that it would inevitably be leaked if an attempt were made to keep it secret.
A minority of the Board urged very strongly that the report should not be published but it was eventually agreed that publication was inevitable in view of the certainty of leakage in one form or another.
If the mission’s report were to be made public the board wanted to have the opportunity to say that they viewed the report with ‘extreme disfavour’.
Costley-White of the CRO, who received the report, told his superiors:
The Overseas Migration Board would like the preface [of the report] altered so that they escape responsibility for being instrumental in the appointment of the mission whose report they do not approve … They wish to put their own independent comments on the report.
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The government was happy for the OMB to criticise the mission’s report but was concerned that it would then be forced into declaring its own opinion. An internal memo written by a home office civil servant said:
I see some advantage if the Board comes out, on the date of its publication, with a refusal, so far as they are concerned, to accept its terms. The trouble will be that as a result the UK Government will presumably be pressed to declare their own opinion about the Report.
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There was a continued campaign to keep the report secret. Sir Colin Anderson, a member of the OMB and a director of the Orient line, whose ships carried many of the child migrants to Australia, argued against the release of the report. His rather original argument was that the Australian child-migrant organisations were likely to ‘close their ranks to resist criticism’, hence publishing the report may in fact defeat efforts to get the organisations to raise their standards.
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G. E. B. Shannon of the home office agreed and in June wrote to the department’s under secretary, Sir Saville Garner, saying:
I am concerned at the controversy likely to be engendered in the press and Parliament in both countries when the report is published. A further difficulty is that, once the report is published, the United Kingdom Government will be pressed to say whether they accept it. They may reject the Mission’s recommendations but, having sent the mission to ascertain facts, it would be difficult to maintain the facts are not what the mission says they are.
But in the face of Australian susceptibilities, it would be just as difficult for the UK Government to agree with the Mission’s report on the facts. We are hoping to get around this dilemma by saying that we are consulting the Australian Government about the action to be taken on the report, without saying whether we agree or disagree with it. But we could avoid the political and public dilemma altogether if the report is not published.
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But far more damning and potentially damaging than the general report of the fact-finding mission were the secret addenda, which included highly critical comments about individual child-migration centres in Australia, particularly Fairbridge.
On 9 June 1956, Costley-White of the CRO sent a complete copy of the report, including its highly sensitive addenda, to R. J. Whittick of the home office. He made it clear that the addenda were to be kept secret, even from the OMB and the Australian Government.
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The Home Office have not hitherto received a copy of the confidential Addenda to the report of the fact-finding mission on Child Migration. A copy is enclosed herewith, which as you will see, is extensive.
These Addenda have not hitherto been seen by anyone outside the Commonwealth Relations Office. It is not our intention to publish them at the time that the report is published; we are not intending to give them to the Australian Government, to the Overseas Migration Board, or the Voluntary Societies. You will understand that it is therefore important that they should not be quoted or referred to in dealing with outside persons or organisations.
