With the welcome apology from the Labour Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd Canberra, November, 16th 2009 for it nations part in the scandal of forced child migrant labour from Britain.
We would do well to examine the plight of the seven thousand plus children who passed through the doors of the Padcroft Home, Yiewsley, West Middlesex between 1902 and 1949.
While a significant number of the children remained in Britain, many from Yiewsley (one of the poorest areas of West Middlesex) were sent to farms in Wales or as colliers around South Yorkshire, (Silverwood Colliery or at Pilkington Glass at St Helen's, while thousands of other children were sent to Canada and Australia as child migrants.
As many as 150,000 British children aged between three and 14 are believed to have been sent overseas in the post-war years to populate the colonies with what was described at the time as "good white stock" and to be used as cheap labour on farms.
Many children came from broken, poverty-stricken homes, others were simply taken from their young mothers. The Children when old enough were told they would enjoy a much better lifestyle overseas. In truth, they were often abused, treated as cheap labour and forced to live in poor and over-crowded accommodation.
We must never forget the plight (not all bad) of the child migrants from the "correction" facility" Padcroft Home at Yiewsley and the thousands of Hillingdon residents who were forced to leave their home country to seek a life abroad because of poverty and the neglect of a nation that at the time was the wealthiest nation in the world. While ensuring today that child protection and care in Hillingdon is given the resources and status it so urgently requires.
