In Nottingham, the County Council had stripped down its nuclear bunker, brought in furniture and installed phone lines, ready for the broadcast of The Leaving of Liverpool. A computer system was ready to log every in-coming call.
Joan Taylor rang me: ‘Margaret, it’s ready, come down and have a look. The phones are in. You’ve got free-phones. We’re not having anybody fail to call because they can’t afford to.’
The Christian Brothers’ statement could not have been better timed to help generate publicity. It pushed the child migration scandal from the review sections onto the news pages.
The charities and agencies reacted quickly. David Skidmore, of the General Synod of the Church of England, wrote to The Sunday Times, arguing, ‘At the time, emigration to countries of the former British Empire was seen as the best alternative for children who otherwise faced a bleak future of poverty or institutionalized care.
‘With the benefit of hindsight, those who engaged in this response to the children’s plight can be seen to have been acting out of the best intentions but misguidedly.’
Michael Jarman, of Barnardo’s wrote in a letter to the press: ‘At the time, Barnardo’s believed that it was providing these young people with an enormous opportunity, as well as expanding its capacity to help more children in Britain. This idea is greatly at odds with our emphasis today on working to keep families together.’
The City of Liverpool Social Services had an entirely more helpful response. I had a letter and a telephone call from Councillor Cathy Hancox who wanted me to confirm that child migrants from Liverpool had been sent to Australia.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Quite a number.’
Mrs Hancox, along with an officer from Liverpool’s Department of Social Services, came to see me to discuss how they could help, and eventually The City of Liverpool Council provided the Trust with funds to pay a social worker’s salary for eighteen months.
I spent most of those last few days before the broadcast in the bunker, dealing with last-minute telephone interviews. The setting mirrored my mood. What better place to be during a siege than deep underground behind walls of steel-reinforced concrete?
I had heard from Western Australia that police had begun investigating complaints filed by child migrants against the Christian Brothers, and there had been calls in Parliament for a full judicial inquiry. Australian lawyers were preparing to lodge claims by more than 250 men who alleged they were abused in Christian Brothers institutions.
Similarly, I had heard that lawyers in the UK were preparing writs against the British government on behalf of child migrants, along with applications for legal aid.
On the afternoon of Thursday, 15 July, before the first episode of The Leaving of Liverpool, we did a final test of the telephones. A switch was pulled and all of them rang simultaneously. Rather than wait for the programme, people were already calling, having read the numbers in newspapers and magazines.
We logged 700 calls that first evening and 10,000 over the next five days.
Counsellors struggled to comfort callers and take down their details. We had tearful mothers wondering if the children they gave for adoption could possibly have gone to Australia; brothers and sisters who remembered seeing siblings taken away; and even calls from abusers ringing up to confess that they had molested children and needed help.
My only disappointment was the discovery of just what the BBC meant by ‘further editing’. There is a very moving scene in the first episode that shows a ship arriving in Australia and the children disembarking. They are shepherded into a holding area and made to line up beneath large signs naming the charities who were receiving children off that ship.
This brief incident was taken out by the BBC. There was no reference, by name, to any of the charities or child care agencies who participated in the child migration schemes. This could well have left British viewers with the impression that it was only the Catholic Church which played a major role in child migration.
First the BBC had refused us phone lines; then it refused to screen the help-line numbers and finally it decided to edit the mini-series. I wrote immediately to John Birt, the Director General, requesting an explanation.
His reply, drafted by the ‘Appeals Secretary’ of the BBC, totally failed to address my concerns of bias against the Catholic Church.
‘… following transmission in Australia, the Fairbridge Trust contacted the BBC to emphasize that they were no longer associated with this kind of work. In deference to their concern, this small cut [in the film] was made, and included a similar sign to Barnardo’s since they were the only other organization identifiable in the scene.
… we certainly do not agree with you that to remove the reference amounted to editing the production with bias.
What bizarre logic! Would the BBC edit Schindler’s List on the basis that the German army is no longer involved in the persecution of Jews?
The second half of the mini-series, on the following night, was even more demanding. Within the bunker we were fighting to stay awake in the early hours of the morning and answer the continuous stream of calls. Amid the commotion, a journalist from Perth managed to get through.
‘I just heard on the national news that the Australian flag is flying over Nottingham,’ she said.
‘Yes it is,’ I told her. ‘It’s flying alongside the Union Jack as a mark of respect for the child migrants.’
The journalist became very emotional. As her voice faltered, she told me that she had never heard anything like it.