Transformative Intentions and Selective Silences in a Public Apology to British Child Migrants

Katja Uusihakala REVISING AND RE-VOICING A SILENCED PAST: TrANSFORMATIVE INTENTIONS AND SELECTIVE SILENCES IN A PUBLIC APOLOGY TO BrITISH CHILD MIGRANTS abstract Focusing on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s apology to British child migrants in 2010, this article proposes that public apology, as a moral and political act, is a compelling site for examining attempts to redefine and redress previously silenced pasts. Postwar child migration has been something of a silenced chapter in British history. In my research I examine one such child migration scheme, namely a project which sent select British children (aged 4 to 13) to colonial Southern Rhodesia—today’s Zimbabwe— between 1946 and 1962. Through this case, I discuss two intertwined aspects of the transformative intentions of apologizing. First, the apology aims at amending the relationship between the apologizer and the victims and at remodeling the recipients’ political subjectivities. Second, the apology discloses distinct, but contradictory, understandings about the relationship between past, present, and future. It emphasizes the continuous effects the past has in the present, but simultaneously purports to create a temporal break with the past, marked by a moral transformation of the state. However, although the apology aspires and has potential to give voice to those previously silenced and to re-articulate a more legitimate version of the past, its framing eliminates the broader historical context of the Empire. Thus, while partially overcoming silences, the article suggests, the apology also reproduces and reinforces others. KEYWORDS: Silence, public apology, memory, forgetting, British child migration, colonial Rhodesia 1 INTRODUCTION of 130 0002 British children to the colonies a ‘shameful episode’ in British history (BBC On the 24th of February in 2010, Prime News, February 24, 2010). Despite the fact Minister Gordon Brown made a public apology that this form of social policy, which combined to former British child migrants on behalf of imperial migration with child welfare, had the nation. Brown called the transportation lasted from the late 17th century until the 1970s, suomen antropologi | volume 44 issue 1 spring 2019 51 Katja Uusihakala it has been largely publicly unknown and more in the late 1930s. The scheme appeared to or less excluded from the standard narrative of fit the colony’s population policies perfectly, British social history.3 and quickly attained influential support in My ongoing research focuses on one the country. Sir Godfrey Huggins, the Prime such child migration scheme, namely a small- Minister of Rhodesia from 1933 until 1953, scale project which shipped and permanently was a powerful advocate for the project. He relocated British children (aged 4 to 13 at the considered the Fairbridge College scheme a ‘very time of their migration) to colonial Southern necessary adjunct to the birth rate’, as well as an Rhodesia—today’s Zimbabwe—between 1946 opportunity to refine the fabric of the colony’s and 1962.4 The selected children emigrated European population. He much preferred the unaccompanied by their parents, but mostly idea of bringing out ‘pure bred youngsters’ to with their approval and consent. The children schooling the (local) ‘poor whites’.6 were placed at Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial This case reveals how eugenic influences, College, a boarding school and children’s home, which played a significant part in metropolitan established in a disused Royal Air Force airbase class politics of the time, were reflected in the outside the town of Bulawayo, and became wards colonies as concerns about the vulnerability of of the Rhodesian state on arrival. In my research white rule and as a need to secure European I examine the creation of a white colonial child prestige. Such political and moral sensibilities, subject and reflect on the effects and imprints Ann Laura Stoler (1989: 645) argues, ‘colored of this philanthropic, state-sponsored migration imperial policy in nearly all domains with fears scheme on the lives of former migrants today. of physical contamination merging with those I ask how the child migrants make sense of, of political vulnerability: to guard their ranks, reconcile, or reject the ambitions of the project; whites needed to increase their numbers’. But, how they understand their past and come to as Huggins’ musings suggest, mere numbers grips with the uncertainties, disruptions and were not enough. What needed to be secured silences that mark it.5 most firmly was the quality of whites and The research thus explores how the of whiteness, which were thought to be migrants’ experiences of their past are formed threatened from the outside as much as from and recounted in relation to official or within. While the white Rhodesian community institutional historical narratives—or rather, feared competition from educated Africans, it the lack thereof. While similar schemes had also felt imperiled by degeneration and loss previously been established in Australia of civilization from its own ranks. Measures and Canada (Boucher 2014; Harper and were taken to guard against poor-whitedom, Constantine 2010), the Rhodesian project since it was felt to compromise the standards differed significantly from those projects. The of Europeanness of the colony (Lowry 2010: white-ruled Rhodesian government pursued 124); its middle-class morality and respectability. to battle what they considered a ‘demographic Thus, fears of physical contamination and imbalance’ and a source of racial vulnerability degradation, as Stoler has shown, merged with by strongly encouraging the immigration of political vulnerability. the ‘right kind’ of white migrants. The first The political context sketched above had plans to set up a project for the migration of a decisive effect in determining a desirable select British children to Rhodesia were made child migrant. Whereas the much more suomen antropologi | volume 44 issue 1 spring 2019 52 Katja Uusihakala extensive and diverse child migration projects institution resulted also in experiences of loss, located in Canada and Australia may be abandonment, hurt, uncertainty, and insecurity. considered moral projects seeking to benefit In this article, my focus is on the public underprivileged children ‘deprived of a normal apology given by the British government to family life’ (Lynch 2016: 3), it was pivotal former child migrants in 2010.9 I suggest for the Rhodesian scheme that the selected that the apology is a compelling site for children had a ‘reasonably secure and happy’ examining attempts to redefine, rearticulate, family background, as stated in the project and potentially redress previously silenced outline.7 The overall requirements regarding the pasts. As a performative and symbolic act, it child migrants sent to Rhodesia were also much has a transformative intent. I concentrate stricter and reflected the personal characteristics on two aspects of such intended effect. First, assumed necessary for maintaining ‘white I examine the way the apology aims at amending prestige’ in the colony. In addition to the stated the relationship between the apologizer and preference for children from emotionally secure the victims of transgression. This revision home environments, the children needed to rests on a proposed moral transformation of have a sufficiently high IQ, and to be of sound the state, in which the state acknowledges its physical and mental health. These qualifications responsibility for past policies it denounces as were considered essential for the kinds of lives atrocious, heinous, and wrong, and from which that the child migrants were envisioned to lead it dissociates itself. Second, I suggest that the in the future; they needed to be suitable to be act is transformative in its temporal dimension; educated into managerial positions in a racially it re-addresses the relationship between past, segregated colonial society. present, and future, although in ways that seem Thus, by explicitly combining physical and contradictory. On the one hand, the public social mobility, the migration scheme aspired apology reveals a previously subdued past and to rescue the chosen children from what were underlines the continuous effects that past has predicted as undesirable futures in Britain, in the present—such as transgenerational guilt and to offer them instead a ‘better life’ in a and responsibility for wrongdoing, as well as settler colony—one with potential for social hurt and grief caused by past experience. And advancement. At the same time, the advantages yet, on the other hand, the apology purports to of the migratory project were to reach beyond mark a temporal break with the past; it signals the individual children; regarded as ‘Imperial the closure of a previous era and the beginning investments’8, they were a means for rescuing of a new one. The public apology, therefore, does the Empire by keeping it civilized and British have transformative potential in reframing how (for further discussion, see Uusihakala 2017). pasts are narrated and whose voices are heard But while the migration project’s aim was in the emerging, more legitimate, and befitting a promise of a ‘better life’ in the form of upward narratives. These reorientations and revisions, mobility and social standing, related not only to however, are conditional and selective in their making, but improving and refining whiteness, scope. The apology invokes an alternative, yet for the child migrants this came at a cost. The partial version of the past. removal from their homes and families and In essence, despite its intention to give re-settlement into a colonial, educational voice to those previously silenced, as well as to suomen antropologi | volume 44 issue 1 spring 2019 53 Katja Uusihakala articulate a version of the past which has thus Fairbridge was something that I had far been obscure and unknown, the apology, pushed aside. I didn’t want to think about I argue, itself reproduces and reinforces silences. it. I’d never heard of anyone else whose By focusing on individual suffering and by mother had abandoned her child like that. presenting the child migrants as victims to I was embarrassed.

Load more