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,
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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
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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
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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. whom a harm was done—a harm that might be appeased and rectified by saying sorry—the David too had rarely shared his childhood past: public apology sidesteps, dismisses, and silences the broader historical context of the Empire and There are so few people who know about of settler colonialism, which the child migrants my background. [I don’t tell] because were tasked to uphold. The apology, then, is I don’t know how. I don’t think they’d framed in a way which appears to absolve and know how to react to it. It’s beyond their write off the wider colonial project. Tom Bentley comprehension. Even intelligent people. (2016) argues that this is how colonial apologies [Once] it sort of came out in a conversation, are disposed more generally. While they offer and it almost stopped the conversation remorse for particular events and injustices, and dead! So you move on to something else may articulate more balanced versions of the quickly. And also the reason I don’t talk past, they tend to do so ‘without disavowing the about it, Katja, is, I can’t talk about it wider processes and landscapes in which the without getting emotional and I don’t want atrocities took place’ (ibid.: 172). to show that to people. Before moving on to analyzing the apology, I will begin by discussing how silence—on Louise and David’s reflections resemble what both public and private levels—has affected Paul Ricoeur (2006: 448–449) calls forgetting in the lives of the former child migrants by avoidance; a strategy of evasion motivated prior to the apology. At the end of this article, by an ambiguous will of not wanting to know I return to what public apology attempts to do, about the atrocities of one’s past. The stance particularly in terms of relational and temporal is related to what Paul Connerton (2011: reconfigurations, by reflecting on my informants’ 73) terms narrative silence—the inability or analyses and critiques of the apology, and by unwillingness to tell certain narratives. It is considering the limits of colonial apology. commonly understood that memory is in part constituted by forgetting, or to put it differently, From silence to apology that remembering and forgetting are part and parcel of the same process. And, if oblivion As adults, many of the former child migrants is viewed as a constituent part of memory in have chosen not to think and talk about their normal circumstances, it seems to become all past, and a more or less comprehensive silence the more critical in situations where the past was laid over this formative period of their is tarred by violence. Forgetting is particularly lives for decades. Louise10, one of my research magnified, Nicholas Argenti and Katharina partners who was six years old when she Schramm (2010: 8; 14) argue, by experiences of emigrated, recalls: colonial domination and political violence. At times, the intimidation or violence experienced
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may be so incomprehensible and senseless that discuss secrets, particularly secrets of the state. it simply does not allow itself for articulation. He argues that ‘knowing what not to know’ is Furthermore, in post-conflict circumstances a powerful form of social knowledge at the where the perpetrators live side by side with center of social power and the knowledges their victims, as Argenti and Schramm (2010: intertwined with those powers. Public secrets, 16) note, the effects of vocalization may not thus, refer to things that are generally known, be altogether auspicious, and the general focus but which cannot be easily articulated without may be on silencing rather than on speaking. In undoing the very sovereignty of the state (see many situations of extreme violence, the terror also Jones 2014: 55; Manderson et al 2015: may have traumatic impact on generations that S184). Secrets accord power to those who hold have no direct experience of it. In consequence, them and may decide on their concealment or silence, too, may endure across generations.11 revelation. As Louise and David’s reflections indicate, But child migration might have been in addition to being linked to painful or a better kept secret than that. Considering baffling personal experience, narrative silence the awe with which the public has responded is also about the difficulty of socially sharing to the ‘revelation’ of the phenomenon suggests a past, which others are assumed unable to that it has been a thing known to a very limited comprehend or else suspected to respond to in number of the public, rather than something undesirable ways—with confusion, pity, outrage, generally known about but kept unrevealed. It or horror. It is also about understanding one’s is, however, evident that some state authorities, lived experience with regard to public silence as well as the philanthropic organizations who and non-recognition. Except for scant archival together administered the migration schemes, records, it is hard to trace any kind of an official not only knew about the projects; they had narrative or a public memory about British child been regularly made aware of the atrocities— migration before the early 1990s. In the colonial abuse and neglect—that the child migration Rhodesian case, the silence has been further ‘care regimes’ included. Despite this knowledge, intensified by the absence of any personal the UK governments continued to promote historical documentation of the children’s and finance child migration projects until the experience. Allegedly, as the Fairbridge College 1970s, keeping the malpractices covered up.13 closed down in 1962, there was an order from Thus, rather than a public secret or something authorities in London to destroy the children’s generally forgotten, child migration, I suggest, is personal records, and their files were burnt—a a phenomenon actively, and rather successfully, callous example of what Paul Connerton calls silenced. repressive erasure; forgetting forced on people The lack of social memory and a con (2011: 41). Thus, as one of my interlocutors put comitant lack of a shared narrative about child it, many former migrants feel that they have migration have meant that there has not been a been ‘written out of history’. model for articulating an alternative representa Regarding the fact that the Rhodesian child tion—or a Foucauldian counter-memory14 if you migration scheme was partly state-sponsored will—of the past either. Thus, non-recognition, and authorized by the UK governments12, the oblivion, and the paucity of a historical phenomenon might be considered a public narrative about British child migration have secret. Michael Taussig (1999) uses this term to lead the former child migrants to respond to
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the public silence by active personal silencing a public impetus to examine the shameful and and a dismissal of memory. However, in the embarrassing moments in national history. early 1990s the public silence surrounding Political apology may be considered a prominent British child migration began to break. Within paradigm of such ‘post-heroic modes of social a few years several popular histories, reports, memory’ (Bentley 2016: 177)18. As a symbolic and documentaries on child migration came and ritual site for constructing and articulating out15. They were followed by a series of divergent historical narratives, it has become alarmed newspaper articles and commentaries a standard tool in processes of political proclaiming that a ‘shameful secret’ and a ‘top- transition and a response to past injustices. level cover-up’16 in British post-war social (Celermajer 2013: 291)19 history had been revealed. For example, on The production of a satisfactory apology, July 13, 1993, a bewildered journalist of the however, is delicate and precarious, as Nicholas Independent wrote: Tavuchis (1991: vii) notes in his seminal consideration of mea culpa (through my It is a story that defies belief. It seems fault). By apologizing properly, he writes, ‘we inconceivable that a British government acknowledge the fact of wrongdoing, accept would order the migration of tens of ultimate responsibility, express sincere sorrow thousands of its children to far-flung and regret, and promise not to repeat the corners of the globe, severing, at a stroke, offence’ (ibid.) Thus, while political apologies all connection with family, country, and have become increasingly common, Danielle past.17 Celermajer (2013: 292) notes, they have also become widely critiqued. The critics dismiss In the broader frame of public memory, the early apologies as ‘mere words’ which can never 1990s was also an era of epochal transformations, adequately compensate for past violence and such as the collapse of socialist rule in Europe grievance. In addition, words are not considered and the end of Apartheid in South Africa, a sufficient guarantee of the sincerity of the which were intertwined with an intense concern speaker and the authenticity of the expressed with the past, materializing in various forms sentiments. Further critique questions whether of nostalgia, re-memorialization, restoring guilt and responsibility for past violations may rituals—and public apologies. While states have be inherited from one generation to the next— conventionally used tools such as statues and and consequently whether apologies offered for the naming of sites, national remembrance days, wrongdoing one has not personally committed museums, and the like to commemorate what may ever be felicitous and sincere (e.g. Trouillot are considered as national achievements, this 2000; Ricoeur 2006). era has seen a shift in how the past is grappled Celermajer, however, is critical about with (Bentley 2016: 2). Indeed, Didier Fassin the emphasis on emotional authenticity of and Richard Rechtman (2011: 273) argue that the actors and acts involved in such forms of within the contemporary mnemonic landscape, analysis. ‘Sincerity’, she writes, is ‘something the way in which we relate to time has markedly of an odd criterion for assessing the efficacy changed: ‘Once almost arrogant, it has become of a representative political act’ (2013: 292). painful and anxious.’ Rather than focusing on She suggests that rather than reflections of the victorious and heroic, there is at present genuine sentiment, political apologies should
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be examined as rituals of transition with from the Prime Minister’s address to the House potential transformative effects (see also Horelt of Commons. 2014). Interestingly, these two ways of critically assessing public apologies—emphasizing either Until the late 1960’s successive UK gov their sincerity and credibility, or their symbolic ernments had over a long period of time and political effects—are reflected in the ways supported child migration schemes. They the former child migrants themselves judge the involved children as young as three being apologies, as I will discuss at the end of this transported from Britain to Australia, article. But before that, building on Celermajer’s Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, suggestions, I will turn to examining Gordon and Zimbabwe. The hope was that those Brown’s apology to the child migrants. children (…) would have the chance to forge a better life overseas, but the scheme Apology to British Child proved to be misguided. (…) When they Migrants, February 24, 2010 arrived overseas, all alone in the world, many of our most vulnerable children Gordon Brown’s apology to the child migrants endured the harshest of conditions, neglect, followed what has, over the past few decades, and abuse in the often cold and brutal become a standardized form of political institutions that received them. Those apologies. By and large, they are offered by an children were robbed of their childhood, official representative of the perpetrating state, the most precious years of their life (…) nation, or institution to the representatives of Some still bear the marks of abuse; all still the wronged community, often in the presence live with the consequences of rejection. of members of the media (Celermajer 2013: Their wounds will never fully heal, and 291). Indeed, apologies are usually highly for too long the survivors have been all mass mediated events, which means that their but ignored (…). It is right that today we felicitousness and emotional sincerity, as well recognize the human cost associated with as their efficacy in bringing about political this shameful episode of history and this change—such as recognition, social repair, and failure in the first duty of a nation, which is national inclusion—will be judged by the public to protect its children. To all those former along with the recipients of the apology. child migrants and their families (…) I say Brown’s apology to the child migrants today that we are truly sorry. We are sorry was a performance in three acts. He first that they were allowed to be sent away at delivered a formal statement at the House the time they were most vulnerable. We are of Commons.20 He then gave a second, more sorry that instead of caring for them, this extensive declaration at an event organized country turned its back, and we are sorry at Westminster Palace, in which he directly that the voices of these children were not addressed hundreds of former child migrants always heard and their cries for help not who were invited to the event both as recipients always heeded. We are sorry that it has of the apology as well as its audience.21 Finally, taken so long for this important day to this address was responded to by a representative come and for the full and unconditional of the child migrants.22 The following excerpt is apology that is justly deserved to be
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given. (…). Although we cannot undo possible material compensations accompanying the events of the past, we can take action the speech act (both of which are established now to support people to regain their true ways of evaluating public apologies), Celermajer identities and reunite with their families suggests a view in which the ritual action’s and loved ones and to go some way to referent is neither the individual psyche (sincere repair the damage that has been inflicted. sentiment) nor the distribution of benefits [F]or many, today’s apology will come too and punishments (material compensation) but late for them to hear it. We cannot change rather the system of meanings that patterns history, but I believe that by confronting both of these dimensions of social reality. In the failings of the past we show that we reforming relationships, the apology is thus are determined to do all we can to heal the about re-affirming a broader understanding of wounds. what is good and virtuous in a society. The apology aims to do this first by Brown’s apology has a distinct, selective scope. acknowledging that a moral wrong has been It is directed at migrant children, presented as committed. That is, the apologizer identifies a the cruelly treated victims of a misguided state deed in the past, which is judged as unacceptable policy. While it asks forgiveness for suffering from the present standpoint. Accordingly, that the migration projects caused to the Brown first identifies the assumed benevolent children and offers to allow voices previously intent of past governments in creating better silenced to be heard, it masks the conditions lives for the children by their migration, and that enabled and enforced such projects to then declares that those intents ‘proved to be begin with. misguided’. Following this assertion, Brown, as With this critical observation in mind, let a representative of the state, takes blame and me now decipher what it is that the apology accepts responsibility for the violation. Against purports to do. How does it seek to rearticulate the political figure of a ‘vulnerable, suffering, and potentially reconcile previously silenced and innocent child’, the apology portrays pasts? I focus on two interrelated questions. past governments as responsible for acts that First, how does the apology aim to amend should have been viewed ‘cruel and misguided’ relationships between the apologizer and even at the time of their execution. Brown the recipients? And second, what kinds of acknowledges a continuity of such blame by temporalities does the apology sketch? underlining that the nation needs to face its uncomfortable past. In his direct address to the Reforming relationships, former child migrants Brown states: enacting moral transformation No-one can fail to be untouched by the According to Danielle Celermajer (2013), terrible human suffering that sprang from public apology is a ritual act which orientates the misguided child migrant schemes and towards the other and may potentially alter the mistakes that were made by successive the relationship between the apologizer and United Kingdom governments. This is the recipient of the apology. Thus, rather than an ugly stain on our country. It’s harder measuring public apology through the emotional still to grasp that these terrible events state of the speaker, or even through the happened not in the opening chapters of
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our history but in the living memories of notion of trauma—understood as the ‘scar that most of us here today. Child migration violent events leave on individual bodies and didn’t happen in the dark ages so long minds’ as well as an ‘open wound in collective ago that we weren’t expected to know any memory’ (Fassin and Rechtman 2009: 2) comes better. (…) As nations, we need to know to play. As Fassin and Rechtman point out, the these uncomfortable truths (…) [and] to audience is familiar with this universalized recognize this shameful episode for what it matrix of trauma and thus able to empathize was in our history. with the sufferers in a kind of a ‘communion in trauma’ (2008: 18; see also Robbins 2013). Celermajer (2013) suggests that the apology Further, Brown brings the child migrants and rearranges the relationships of the parties the audience together by emphasizing that involved through recognition of pain and their experiences of abandonment and abuse memory. The acknowledgment of suffering is happened concurrently with the lifetimes of extensively articulated in Brown’s direct address the members of the audience. ‘These terrible to the former migrants: ‘[T]oday your pain is events happened not in the opening chapters recognized, your suffering is understood, your of our history but in the living memories of betrayal is acknowledged by the apology I make most of us here today’. This proximity in time on behalf of our whole country.’ Pain thus accentuates the discrepancy of memories of a becomes a recognized element of the process partially shared recent past of the participants of re-addressing silenced memories. Jennifer in the ceremony. Cole (2004) argues that this is an important Saying sorry is obviously the crux of part in the ability of rituals to relieve pain. apology. The saying sorry allows Brown, as Paying attention to how memory operates the apologizer in the name of the nation, to as a mechanism that links individual bodies reposition himself within a new normative with wider social narratives, Cole suggests, stance in which he breaks away from the might be a way to think about ritual efficacy transgression and confirms his commitment in social healing and its connectedness to to a shared moral principle. He acknowledges broader ideological projects (2004: 88–89). In that children’s deportation violated a moral Brown’s speech the betrayal by the state does norm for which the community stands for (see not refer merely to the pain of abandonment Cels 2015: 353): the safeguarding of a nation’s and the predisposition of vulnerable children children. The violation of this norm is presented to institutional violence, but also to the state’s as a betrayal by the state. ‘Today your pain is failure, and even refusal, to remember. recognized. Your suffering is understood, your In addition to re-orienting the relationship betrayal is acknowledged’, Brown pledges. Such between the apologizer and the recipients, the betrayals, argues Gabriella Turnaturi (2007: 8; apology also readjusts the relationship between cited in Crapanzano 2010: 13), presuppose a the recipients and the broader national public. By shared experience—‘a We relationship’. Betrayal reiterating the children’s pain, Brown’s narrative occurs when the relationship is attacked intends to awake a sense of empathy and from within the confines of the We. Thus the moral mutuality in the audience. ‘No-one can displacement of the nation’s children may be be untouched by the terrible human suffering’, seen as a ‘more of less intentional act aimed Brown appeals. Here the popularly shared at destroying that relationship or withdrawing
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from it’ (ibid.). Finally, Brown’s apology seeks a continuity—even if a dubious one—between to amend the relationship between the nation past and present subjectivities, sentiments, and the former migrants by symbolically and responsibilities, as transformative rituals, reversing the displacement and the destruction apologies seek to break such continuity, and to of that relationship. He ends his address to the signal a temporal transformation. As temporal migrants by re-establishing their membership in markers (see Trouillot 2000: 174; Celermajer the nation, and expressing it in terms of shared 2013) they aim to create a new era or register kinship: ‘So, I say to you our sons and daughters that one has been launched. ‘Today is a turning here: Welcome home. You are with friends. We point’, Brown announces. With the apology, will support you all your lives.’ Brown detaches his government from those of the Imperial and post-Imperial past, marking a Temporal paradoxes of public critical junction in the course of national history. apology The symbolic act therefore seals child migration off to a concluded past as a ‘shameful episode In making a clear break between the then and in history’. Paradoxically, Brown is forced to now, Brown takes us to the second element admit that this, in fact, is not possible. The past I want to consider, namely the kinds of and the present are never fully detachable. The temporalities that the apology sketches. There is, ignoble events of the past are irreversible and first of all, an assumption of intergenerational their effects seep into the present as ‘ghosts continuity and sameness between the that haunt us to this day’ and as ‘wounds that collectivities of perpetrators and victims in the will never heal’, as he states. Manifestly, by the past, and the apologizers and the recipients very act of apologizing, Brown authorizes the of apology in the now. Thus, apologies extend continuity of guilt and responsibility across questions of guilt, forgiveness, and atonement generations. beyond first-hand experience of the events These temporal paradoxes reflect broader suffered or perpetrated, thereby also extending understandings about how the past is under memory beyond experience personally stood to matter in the present. That is, whether encountered. Some authors, such as Ricouer one emphasizes the many ways in which (2006) and Trouillot (2000), have critiqued the the past continues and has a bearing in the possibility of stretching subjectivity and sincere present (Coicaud 2009: 100; cited in Bastian emotion across time and generations. But 2013: 98), or whether one views the past as sincerity, as Celermajer (2013: 292) observes a ‘foreign country’23, intrinsically so different and as I have also suggested, is perhaps not from ours that it cannot be understood but the most relevant criteria for the efficacy of on its own moral terms. These perceptions a political act in terms of which the apologizer have consequences for whether an apology is speaks in a representative, public role. considered a legitimate solution for dealing with In addition to the temporal paradox past violations. For a comparative example, in of equating apologizers and the recipients refusing to apologize to indigenous Australians of apology with perpetrators and victims for the forcible removal of children from their of past wrongdoings, there are other families, the former Australian Prime Minister temporal dimensions in the act that deserve John Howard claimed it was ‘anachronistic attention. Whereas the former view suggests to judge those who sanctioned and carried
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out the removals in the past according to of genuine sentiments. It was ‘just words’, and present values’ (Bastian 2013: 99). In Howard’s thus an apology he rejected. Jim evaluated the reasoning, there is a distinct break between the public apology with the same criteria we use past and the present; they are two separate and for interpersonal ones: in order to be felicitous, irreconcilable temporalities with distinct sets they need to be authentic and sincere, express of values pertaining to their times. Taking an genuine regret and a changed moral stance of opposite view, Australian Prime Minister Kevin the apologizer. These aspects, he felt, were not Rudd, in his decision to make the said apology, accomplished by Brown’s performance and the emphasized continuity and interconnectedness apology was not credible. between the past and the present. In this Joyce, for her part, believed that Brown was view, within a political community guilt actually genuinely sorry in declaring the apology, and responsibility are transgenerational but she doubted the worth of the apology in the and governments have a responsibility for first place. ‘So what?’ was what she thought: attempting to amend the failures of their predecessors. In making the apology both Prime I was like, well that’s good but what is that? Ministers Rudd and Brown therefore proclaim So that absolves you of anything? And so a double temporal logic (Bastian 2013: 103). On what you’re sorry? People say they’re sorry the one hand they underline the continuity when they break a cup but it doesn’t really and inseparability of the past from the present mean much unless you go out and buy as well as the transgenerational persistence of another one and say: Here’s a replacement. suffering, guilt, and moral responsibility. But, Anyway, political apologies are just politics. on the other hand, they both see apology as They don’t have any meaning. Even though a transformative historical event: a temporal I believe Gordon Brown did feel it. But dividing break and a marker of a new beginning. you know: So what?
Critical reflections Although the authenticity of the sentiment on apology behind the apology as well as its ability to grant absolution might well be suspected, for So, does the apology do what it intends in terms some of my informants its symbolic, ritual, of relational and temporal transformation: and even political force lay elsewhere. It rested does it amend, heal, recognize, form a closure, fundamentally in the explicitly enunciated and mark a new beginning? And what does acknowledgment of the child migrants’ it leave unsaid? When I have discussed the existence and their plight, and particularly apology with my interlocutors, many have in its documentation. Ted acknowledged the been dubious. Jim, for example, was not too underlying relevance of public recognition, but impressed: ‘I’m not sure about the apology part’, he, too, took it with a pinch of salt: he said. ‘What’s a politician’s apology worth anyway? It’s just words. To me, unless you really I thought [the public apology] was a bit are sincerely sorry and I doubt he was. He was of a cop out myself. What I felt was this: just saying things. I wouldn’t have accepted that I think a lot of Rhodesian children (…) as an apology.’ Clearly, Brown’s apology did not I think they felt abandoned. And although convince Jim as a sincere act of atonement, one that came across as the fact that they [the
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authorities] accepted it, I don’t think they the child migration operations contained. This do enough about it. (…) In saying that, makes the apology appear forced and feigned, an I’m glad they [apologized]. Because at insincere act which perhaps speaks more about least it showed that there was some kind the state’s need to reaffirm its ‘liberal, normative of recognition that this had happened. complexion’24 (Bentley 2016: 171), rather than But. The same had been said in the an act that genuinely acknowledges the people Australian case, the Canadian thing, and it addresses and the moral wrongs it repents. the Rhodesian thing. They knew about this And further, in addition to avoiding years ago. Why didn’t they apologize then? a rigorous confrontation with the sediments of Were they pushed into a corner where they state silencing in regard to enabling children’s had to do something? It should have been migration to endure for decades, the public free will. ‘We’ve done this. We’re sorry.’ apology relies on broader, structural silencing. Rather than, ‘Oh, just bury it. It’ll come out, It fails to scrutinize and challenge the political let someone else deal with it.’ And that’s structures that enabled the harnessing of the impression I got. (…) I don’t think children as builders of the Empire. The apology anybody knew what to do. To be honest. If does this by narratively constructing an you’re hit with a major problem, and this individualized child migrant, who is presented was a major problem, I mean consider the as at once a relatable, suffering victim, a resilient amount of children involved, it’s a major hero, and a happy home-comer. While each one problem irrespective of whether you like of these figures in themselves might be difficult it or not. Silence is sometimes a cover for for the former migrants to recognize and saying: ‘Oh God, what do we do now?’ embrace, there is also a peculiar out-of-timeness in the construct. This is reflected in the way Ray had a privileged perspective to the apology, the apology a-historicizes family relationships; because he was one of the invited former it assumes the possibility of return, and the migrants present at Brown’s address. For him resumption of relationships that might never the words meant nothing, they were irrelevant. have existed. At the same time the apology Neither did he consider the possible material erases time and eliminates the complexity of compensation the key. The meaning of the child migrant subjectivities by equating the apology was in the fact that he was not alone. In historical circumstances of their experience and the ceremony he was surrounded by hundreds of the social and political positions into which the others whom he could imagine had experienced migration placed them. the same. For him the meaning of the act was the public recognition of being part of a larger Conclusion community and of history subdued until then. Ted and Ray’s mistrust about the apology In this article I have examined the political boils down to the decades of deliberate state apology to child migrants as an attempt to silencing—denial in the face of confusion readdress and redress previously silenced pasts. and disquiet—while the state authorities I have discussed the possibilities and limits of were repeatedly made aware of the adverse apology, focusing in particular on its temporal, circumstances and outright abuse that some of relational, and affective effects. Despite
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shared skepticism about the genuineness of family as an immutable constant of enduring, sentiment behind the apology, for many of affective relationships obliterates the passage my informants its fundamental essence rested of time and invalidates the child migrants’ on its documentation—the putting on record, experience—particularly their senses of loss and which could be taken as an evidence of guilt and abandonment by the family. potential recommitment by the government. On a wider scope, the apology assumes Thus, as Zohar Kampf (2013: 158) writes: ‘hollow, continuity and similarity of subjectivity between humiliating or insincere apologetic gestures and 19th century child laborers on Canadian farms remedial acts, once expressed in public, may and the post Second World War white nevertheless have meaningful social value.’ By Rhodesian migrants with prophesied middle- publicly documenting, by recognizing histories class futures, thus taking the subjects out of their previously obliterated, and by giving voice to time and out of the political, historical realm. The those previously silenced, apology may therefore apology takes part in re-narrativizing the past have the potential for transforming national in a way that avoids addressing or denouncing discourses and understandings about collective settler colonial migration or colonial policies as historical experience (Das and Kleinman such. It therefore conforms to Tom Bentley’s 2001: 21). It attempts to do so by validating (2016: 7) analysis on colonial apologies in more the historical existence and subjectivity of the general: ‘The core modality by which apologies child migrants and by taking responsibility for discursively sanitize the colonial past is by the transgression. It further aspires to mend addressing only certain aspects of the project.’ and heal relationships by providing a moral They frequently target particular incidents narrative for a previously silenced experience. cutting them off from the wider processes This emerging narrative, however, is inevitably and outlines of the colonial endeavor (ibid.: selective. There is a risk of establishing a rather 172), suggesting that nothing was inherently narrow victim-position for the former migrants, wrong with colonialism itself (Gibney 2002: in addition to which certain voices are turned up 280). Colonial apologies, Bentley (2016: 20) while others are muted (see Ross 2003), which further argues, do this by reformulating them as may push some migrants to the margins of the narratives that are analogous to core legitimizing nascent hegemonic storyline. tenets of the colonial enterprise. For example, At the same time, the responsibility and Brown’s way of applauding the former migrants guilt of the state becomes confined to the moral for their ‘bravery, courage, and endurance’ in his wrong of ignoring and as such supporting direct address is suggestive of such a stance in children’s maltreatment for decades and even re-affirming and glorifying the standard settler centuries, which paradoxically a-historicizes colonial plot rather than renouncing it. In this and decontextualizes the endeavor. As sense the apology is a narrative of the wrongdoer a narrative, the apology flattens temporality.25 which might say more about the apologizer On a personal level, the apology conveys than the recipients of the apology. Thus, while ambiguous assumptions about family and Brown’s apology overcomes silences it also belonging by offering to help the former reproduces others. While it aims to assure that migrants to ‘regain their true identities’ and to past atrocities should never again happen in the ‘reunite with loved ones’. Such portrayal of the future ‘that no one should ever again journey in
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sorrow without hope’, it leaves untouched the emigration as part of the Victorian child rescue colonial policies and powers that authorized movement, which attempted to improve the lives of ‘Britain’s homeless, exploited, or neglected child migration in the first place, one successive youth’ (2009: 917). The charitable movements government after another. involved in child migration were grounded in modern concepts of childhood; on a conviction that children needed to be nurtured, educated, Notes and freed from the burden of labor, and that these ideals should be extended across the classes 1 Acknowledgements: I would like to express my to the laboring poor (ibid: 917–918). sincere thanks to the participants of the panel 4 Altogether 276 child migrants were sent out ‘Silence, secrets, forgetting’ that Henni Alava to Southern Rhodesia. According to unofficial and I organized at the Finnish Anthropological student lists compiled by the former child Society’s biennial conference in Jyväskylä in migrants themselves, boys outnumbered girls May 2017, as well as to the participants at the throughout the history of the Fairbridge Anthropology seminar at the University of Cape College—no more than a quarter of all the Town in August 2018, in which earlier versions children were girls. Intended to be brought up of this article were presented. I am also grateful into committed Rhodesian citizens, few ended for the two anonymous reviewers and the editor up staying in independent Zimbabwe, thereby of Suomen Antropologi, Elina Hartikainen, whose following the migration streams of other white generous, insightful and constructive comments Rhodesians, the largest numbers of whom greatly improved the article. Finally I am emigrated in the early 1980s. Most former especially grateful for the time and the thoughtful Fairbridgians currently live in the UK, in South and perceptive analyses that my interlocutors Africa, and in Australia. Almost 30 % of the have shared with me. former migrants are known to be deceased. 2 The exact number of child migrants is difficult 5 So far I have conducted in-depth ethnographic to ascertain. Boucher (2014) and Harper and interviews with 24 former child migrants in the Constantine (2010: 248) estimate that from UK and in South Africa, with some of them on 1869 until the late 1960s roughly 95 000 several occasions and over a few years. I have children were permanently relocated in the participated in social get-togethers and reunions, settler dominions and colonies. A higher number, where I have also met with the migrants’ families. 130 000, is often quoted in newspaper articles, Further fieldwork will be carried out with former which is also the estimate the Child Migrants migrants who currently live in Australia. My Trust, a registered charity addressing the effects informants have provided me with personal of British child migration, refers to. https:// materials such as letters, photographs, diaries and www.childmigrantstrust.com/our-work/child- autobiographic texts. I also draw on published migration-history/. memoirs, films, documentaries, popular histories, 3 British child migration had originated in the newspaper articles, and museum exhibitions. In th 17 century, when orphaned ‘apprentices’ were addition, I have conducted archival research sent to the North American territories (Boucher in the UK at the National Archives in Kew as 2009: 914; Bean and Melville 1989: 1). In the well as at the University of Liverpool Special th late 19 century, the motivations and modes of Collections and Archives. child migration changed; it became something 6 D 296/K2/1/2, University of Liverpool Special of a mass movement as various religious and Collections and Archives (ULSCA). philanthropic societies sought to rescue children 7 Proposed Establishment of a Fairbridge Farm from poor conditions, which were thought to School, 3 September 1938. DO 35/697/5, The be disadvantageous to their physical, social National Archives (TNA), Kew. and moral development (Lynch 2016: 7), and 8 ‘This is not a charity, it is an Imperial Investment’, to transplant them in the colonies and white declared the Prince of Wales in 1934 as he dominions to the service of expanding Empire donated £1000 and endorsed subscriptions to the (Sherington and Jeffery 1998: xi). Historian Fairbridge Society (ULSCA D296/B4/1). Ellen Boucher regards this modern form of child
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9 The apology was addressed to all British child fact that the government was repeatedly made migrants sent to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, aware of such atrocities from as far back as in and Southern Rhodesia—of whom about 2000 1875, when the first concerned report on child are estimated to be alive today (IICSA: Child migration projects in Canada had come out. The Migration Programmes Investigation Report 2018 IICSA Report concludes: ‘This was a deeply 2018: 150). I analyze the apology particularly flawed policy (…). It was badly executed by many from the perspective of those migrants who were voluntary organizations and local authorities, but sent to Rhodesia. was allowed by successive British governments to 10 I use first name pseudonyms for my informants remain in place, despite a catalogue of evidence in order to protect their identity. which showed that children were suffering ill 11 The issue of intergenerational trauma (Argenti treatment and abuse, including sexual abuse. and Schramm 2010: 26) is often discussed in (…) Her Majesty’s Government could have reference to the Holocaust survivors. For example, decided to bring it to the end (…) but it did not Nadine Fresco, in her analysis of the relationship do so’ (IICSA: Child Migration Programmes: to violent past in the lives of Holocaust Investigation Report 2018: viii). survivors’ children, depicts an intergenerational, 14 Michel Foucault (e.g. 1977) examines memory mutually protective gap of silence—‘silence that from the premise that remembering and had swallowed up their past’ (1984; cited in forgetting are at the center of power relationships Connerton 2011: 73), which has separated the in any given society. Where multiple, antagonistic parents and the children. The children grew up versions of the past co-exist within a society (and ‘in the ambiance of the unspeakable’; the parents they always will), some memories, it is argued, could only pass on the wound, not the memory. In tend to become subdued, silenced, or excluded other cases, a violent past, a past that is otherwise from the dominant national narratives. The mostly in-articulated, may become compressed notion of counter-memory attempts to capture into a few repeated iconic notions, which come precisely the kind of experience and remembering to symbolize an entire historical narrative. For which is pushed to the margins and devalued example, Vincent Crapanzano explores the effects from the perspective of hegemonic discourses of intergenerational silence in his research on the but which may break or oppose the standard, Harkis—Algerians presently living in France normative versions of the past. who sided with the French during the Algerian 15 Perhaps two of the most influential books were War of Independence. He argues the Harkis have Lost Children of the Empire: The untold story of lived in ‘abject silence’ (2010: 2); what little they Britain’s child migrants (1989) by Philip Bean have articulated has been expressed in terms of and Joy Melville and Empty Cradles (1994) abandonment and betrayal by the French. These by Margaret Humphreys. Humphreys was two notions—abandonment and betrayal—have a Nottingham social worker working in child become icons of their wounds, which their protection and post-adoption counseling who children have adopted as well, and by which they began to investigate child migration after being too articulate their identity. contacted by a former child migrant in Australia, 12 The child migration scheme was designed, who wanted help in finding out where she had administered, and financed by three parties: come from. In 1987 Humphreys founded The the Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial College Child Migrants Trust, a charitable organization Council/Society (a charitable organization based which helps in unifying former child migrants in London), the British government, and the with their families. Her book was followed by government of Southern Rhodesia. a TV documentary, a BBC mini-series, and the 13 According to the topical, and very critical, book’s subsequent dramatization as a feature film, Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Oranges and Sunshine (2011). (IICSA) Investigation Report on Child 16 For example: BBC News. UK Politics: Uncover- Migration Programmes (2018), it is the UK ing ‘Britain’s most shameful secret’, May 19, 1999 government which is mainly to blame for http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/poli- neglecting to take action to put an end to tics/348001.stm children’s maltreatment and abuse within various 17 Braid, Mary: The Shameful secret of Britain’s lost child migration schemes. This, despite the children. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/
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the-shameful-secret-of-britains-lost-children- an expression of shame, where shame marks tens-of-thousands-of-child-migrants-were-sent- a recognition of ethical flaws in the identity abroad-1484622.html of the collective, or rather its failure to live up 18 Some relatively recent public apologies include to its ideal self as defined in its constitutional two state apologies for child removal and principles. In this formulation, apology becomes assimilation politics in 2008: the Australian a rehabilitation for the perpetrators and their government’s apology to the ‘Stolen Genera descendants rather than the victims (Celermajer tion’—indigenous children removed from their 2013: 17). Similarly, Paulette Regan (2010: 50; parents and relocated to white foster homes cited in Rask 2018: 11) discusses the processes and institutions (Bastian 2013; Moses 2011) of reconciliation in the case of Indian residential and the Canadian apology to indigenous schools in Canada. She views that the residential children removed from their families and placed schools should be addressed as part of a broader in residential schools (Funk-Unrau 2014). decolonization process, which entails that settler One example of the ambivalence of colonial Canadians would recognize and come to terms apologies is the 2004 German recognition of with the legacy of colonial violence of the country. its responsibility for the genocide of the Herero This may be challenging as it asks people to and Nama people in Namibia (although refusing resituate themselves in national history: ‘We to literally call it such)—a case that remains may resist hearing such stories partly because open, and is still under negotiation between the they challenge our own identity as a nation of German and Namibian governments ( Jamfa benevolent peace-makers.’ 2008). 25 I thank Professor Fiona Ross for this comment 19 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission set (August 14, 2018). up in South Africa in 1995 to help to reconcile Apartheid era human rights violations may References be considered a foundational space for many subsequent political apologies. Argenti, Nicolas and Katharina Schramm 2010. 20 House of Commons 24 February 2010. The Prime Introduction: Remembering Violence: Anthropolog- Minister Gordon Brown’s statement
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Bentley, Tom 2016. Empires of Remorse: Narrative, Cole, Jennifer 2004. Painful Memories: Ritual and Postcolonialism, and Apologies for Colonial Atrocity. the Transformation of Community Trauma. Culture, London and New York: Routledge. Medicine and Psychiatry 28: 87–105. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315746722. https://doi.org/10.1023/ B:MEDI.0000018099.85466.c0. Boucher, Ellen 2009. The Limits of Potential: Race, Welfare, and the Interwar Extension of Child Connerton, Paul 2011. The Spirit of Mourning: Emigration to Southern Rhodesia. Journal of British History, Memory and the Body. Cambridge: Studies 48 (4): 914–934. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1086/603596. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511984518.
Boucher, Ellen 2014. Empire’s Children: Child Crapanzano, Vincent 2010. The Contortions Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, of Forgiveness. Betrayal, Abandonment, and 1869–1967. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Narrative: Entrapment among the Harkis. The https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139649582. Association of Social Anthropology of the UK and Commonwealth’s Firth Lecture 2010. Braid, Mary 1993. The Shameful Secret of Britain’s https://www.theasa.org/downloads/publications/ Lost Children: Tens of Thousands of ‘Child firth/firth10.pdf.
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House of Commons Hansard Debates for 24 Lowry, Donal 2010. Rhodesia 1890–1980: ‘The February 2010. The Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Lost Dominion’. In Robert Bickers (ed). Settlers and statement. Expatriates: Britons over the Seas. Oxford: Oxford http://www.publications.parliament.uk/ University Press. pa/cm200910/cmhansrd/cm100224/ https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof: debtext/100224-0004.htm.
ITN News. Brown Apologises to Child Migrants in Rask, Hanna 2018. A Call to Remember: Local Commons. Negotiations over the Memory of Indian Residential https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFfLbFebUxY. Schools in Canada. Unpublished MA-thesis, Social
Kampf, Zohar 2013. The Discourse of Public Sherington, Geoffrey and Chris Jeffery 1998. Apologies: Modes of Realization, Interpretation Fairbridge: Empire and Child Migration. London: and Mediation. In Daniël Cuypers, Aline Remael Woburn Press. and Pilar Orero (eds). Public Apology between Ritual Stoler, Ann Laura 1989. Making Empire and Regret: Symbolic Excuses on False Pretenses or True Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Reconciliation out of Sincere Regret. Amsterdam: Brill th Morality in 20 -Century Colonial Cultures. Academic Publishers.
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American Ethnologist 16 (4): 634–660. Uusihakala, Katja 2017. Rescuing Children, https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1989.16.4.02a00030. Reforming the Empire: British Child Migration to Colonial Southern Rhodesia. In Karen Valentin Taussig, Michael 1999. Defacement: Public Secrecy and Karen Fog Olwig (eds), Mobility, Education and and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford Life Trajectories: New and Old Migratory Pathways. University Press. Abingdon: Routledge. Tavuchis, Nicholas 1991. Mea Culpa: A Sociology Katja Uusihakala of Apology and Reconciliation. Stanford: Stanford Academy Research Fellow University Press. Social and Cultural Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 1995. Silencing the Past: Anthropology Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon University of Helsinki Press. [email protected]
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 2000. Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 2 (2): 171– 186. https://doi.org/10.1080/136980100427298.
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