Australia is to Apologise to British Migrant Children

[ladyDeWint]

An apology is to be made to the victims of child migration schemes who were shipped from Britain to Australia, where many suffered abuse and neglect.

Telegraph

[valk]

I can't see the point, unless every individual receives a written apology.

[Barryoneoff]

This is getting to be a ridiculous habit lately.

[ladyDeWint]

I think an apology is the least they can expect, I don't know about anyone else but we weren't very affluent when we were growing up, plenty of love but not much money at times just like many other children in the area. So what if some social worker busybody had decided we should be shipped off the the other side of the world for a 'better life' just as happened with hundreds of these children, and could have happened to any of us would we then just shrug our shoulders and say 'who needs an apology' somehow I don't think so.

[valk]

An apology is just words, they should give compensation.

[ladyDeWint]

An apology is a way of recognising that they aren't just names on a piece of paper whose chilhood abuse has been ignored but of acknowledging that as a country they were guilty of ignoring that abuse. Words are powerful and can have a healing effect.

[Grumpy Geez]

I'm waiting for the Romans to apologise to us for invading us way back.

[ladyDeWint]

Seeing that we, the English, are descended from the Anglo/Saxons who invaded this country after the Romans had left perhaps they can keep their particular apology in their pocket for a while longer. This thread however isn't about who invaded who but about the thousands of British children, some no more than babies, who were taken from here and taken to Australia/Canada/South Africa in fact anywhere where Britain had a foothold, and once there used as slave labour, and I just can't understand how anyone thinks they're not worth an apology.

[Barryoneoff]

What good will an apology do, so many years after the event? It's not going to change anything. It just seems that this apology lark has become fashionable.

[ladyDeWint]

Surely it's up to to those who were affected by the events as to whether they needed the apology, and by their reaction it seems they did

What good will an apology do, so many years after the event?

Because it's part of their lives and they needed recognition that their treatment was wrong.

[Barryoneoff]

But it's not an apology from the actual people who did it, it's just a token from someone who was a child himself at the time. It's similar to the apology issued in 1986 by the Bakers Company, apologising for causing the Great Fire of London. It means nothing. It's someone else trying to get rid of any guilt they feel for something they had no part in.

If I feel that I upset you today, and that I was in the wrong, I will apologise to you in the morning. I won't let one of my grandchildren make the apology in forty years time!

[ladyDeWint]

I won't let one of my grandchildren make the apology in forty years time!

That's no quite the same though is it, true that the people responsible for the abuse have probably passed on, but at the same time it was the state that put the children in the position to be abused which has the ultimate responsibilty. So the Prime Minister as representative of the state is the perfect person to issue the apology.

I really can't understand why this bugs some people, surely if an apology helps them come to terms with their past then why not.

[Barryoneoff]

It doesn't bug me, I just think it's jumping on the bandwagon.

[jo]

im waiting for an apology for my great grandparents ending up in the workhouse and dying there . how can we go on apologising for past events terrible events , things that happenned way before any of us could have done anything about it .
this was a terrible thing that happenned and the worse thing is that while they were shipping them to all 4 corners of our once empire , we were taking in children from europe , goes to show nowt much changes we look after others and neglect our own .

[Barryoneoff]

...we look after others and neglect our own .

Yeah, when do we get an apology!