Movement for Adoption Apology - mothers and children who were separated by forced adoptions in post war Britain

[stumbledin]

I heard this on the news today and it seems they have been going for some years but not been getting much response.

Update 25 May 2021

To all our wonderful Supporters – Good news at last from the MAA committee

Today a letter from the Movement for an Adoption Apology (MAA) was delivered by David Amess MP to Boris Johnson, Prime Minister asking for an apology for historical adoption practices.

[As was given in Australia by the Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2013 in the Australian Senate]
A really wonderful speech!.

There will be a news item today about this letter and our campaign on the BBC1 Evening News at 6pm from Duncan Kennedy, a BBC journalist. Another item from him about adopted adults will be aired on Wednesday during the day on the BBC News Channel

Since February Duncan has interviewed a number of birth mothers and adopted adults. He has made a documentary about them all to be aired on the BBC News Channel and BBC iPlayer on Friday 28th .

All this has happened because despite letters to MPs, a Debate in Parliament in 2018 etc. etc. it has been very difficult to get a response from Parliament.

We have been in touch with Duncan for a number of years and value his determination to make our issue public. He was in Australia when the Prime Minister apologised and made a documentary.

They also have surveys for women who had babies taken from them, for the children taken and the families who adopted.

movementforanadoptionapology.org/

For some reason the way in which women, mainly unmarried mothers or women who were too poor to keep a child, were treated in really horrific ways in the UK has not had as much publicity as the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland.

I saw this on the news earlier.

Fucking hell.

Just horrifying.

And yes this is a massive thing. Just.

I hope it gets s lot of attention.

Bet it doesn't.

How many people know the c of e were abusing children and covering it up. Not half as many as know about what the RC church did.

Over and over.

Awful stuff here just... Doesn't land. With the public.

I'm sure there's psychological reasons for that.

Or maybe as a society is easier not to dwell on it. While hand wringing about people >>> over there.

The very least they could do is acknowledge it and apologise for the historical harm done to these women and children.

What if we called it what it is, forced adoption is kidnapping/baby trafficking.

I'm not aware of this journalists work so thanks for the links.

Awful story.

I too heard it yesterday on PM, it’s just been repeated on Today. Utterly horrific and yes surely the Govt could bring themselves to make a statement acknowledging what happened and apologising for the barbaric treatment of these women and babies.

Read about this on the BBC website yesterday and just saw a report on the news channel a minute ago. In tears listening to the stories.

Absolutely horrific and the fact these women and their children haven't already received an apology is shameful.

I absolutely agree that their treatment was barbaric, but I cannot for the life of me see why Boris Johnson or the current government should apologise for something they had nothing whatsoever to do with?
You cannot take responsibility for a crime you didn’t commit.
There seems a silly trend for virtue signalling at the moment, “apologising” for things like the actions of Cecil Rhodes or David Hume - completely pointless. We cannot apologise on their behalf and have no way of knowing if they would have regretted their actions later.
No doubt the forced adoption people thought they were giving the babies a better life than being the stigmatised “bastard child” of an unmarried mother. They probably would double down on that and be unrepentant, not apologise- and we can’t ask Boris and co to issue a meaningless apology on their behalf. All you can legitimately do is officially say that, yes, it was abhorrent and we don’t approve of it.

That's a good point @Babdoc ; I suppose really the apology would be meaningless unless made by those responsible and genuinely meant.

An acknowledgement from the government of how barbaric this was would be more appropriate perhaps. Our PM has made some interesting comments in the past about single mothers though- perhaps he ought to apologise for that!

No doubt the forced adoption people thought they were giving the babies a better life than being the stigmatised “bastard child” of an unmarried mother.

You mean that every time the state enacts violence on women and denies them their rights its okay because the state thought what they were doing would be better than what the mother could do.

Seriously? Every abuse of women is based on patriarchy. FFS! Women who were sectioned in late victorian times for having sex outside of marriage. some of whom stay incarcerated for over 50 years.

Women who had forced labotomies because their lives were so miserable they became depressed (not unnaturally) but male standards said they were the problem.

A lot of this was based on notions of women's roles, and the fact that it was done so brutally, including women (some in the NHS) whose role it was to care but went out of their way to make them suffer.

And not this wasn't about offering a better life. This was effectively baby farming. This was about forced emigration to places like Australia and South Africe to create a pliant work force in terrible conditions because nobody who thought of emmigrating would go and do the work many of these children were forced into.

Haven't you seen the film Oranges and Sunshine? Nothing like the British for covering up its real history.

Some of these children were left to be looked after while the mother set up a home and got a job. And when they returned they found their child had been "disappeared".

It was also of course not just out and out sexism but the awful legacy of a class ridden society that felt entitled to disrespect anyone from the working class, especially women.

And of course the state, as currently represented by Boris Johnson should say nobody under the care of government systems should be treated like that. Nobody should have their lives destroyed like that.

The only problem is that who would believe BJ would do it with any sincerity.

Its worth noting that the Australian Government owned up to their part in this baby snatching. Why do you think there is a link to the speech by Julia Gillard 8 years ago.

This feels very close to home. My mum was pregnant with me in 1961 as an unmarried teenager. Had my dad not done the right thing and married her (they celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in a few months' time), I could easily have been forcibly removed from her and our lives would have been very different indeed. It's a sobering thought.

I saw this on BBC, heartbreaking. It's possible that for some women an apology would acknowledge their suffering and that it was wrong.

The poor, poor, women crying as they recalled what happened. Incredibly moving.

ITV news did a story on this a few weeks ago and the drama, Call the Midwife, had a very moving story recently.
This is fairly widely known now and when discussed on social media, people always say how awful it was.
Ireland and Australia have apologised for forced adoptions and the UK apologised for child migration. Far more people have been affected by adoption than child migration, so it is about time this Government apologised.
The Catholic church has apologised but not the Church of England so it is time they also apologised, as churches mostly ran the mother and baby homes and employed the moral welfare officers/social workers.

I know someone affected by this type of situation and it’s affected their whole life. I worry that the bond between mothers and babies is consistently underestimated (or what loss of the bond does to them both is underestimated). It worries me this is only a few decades ago that men in power supported all this. It’s all rooted in misogyny.
Still we have the family separations at US border, the debate around enforceable surrogacy contracts, universal credit not being enough to live on, we could all name various policies severely curtailing women’s lives and their choices around maternity.
I can’t articulate this well but having thought hard about the pro choice on abortion issues I realise I have thought a lot less hard about being pro choice on motherhood. And this is always something that we need to monitor and lobby on for all time if we want women to have genuine choice and control over their bodies and fertility and their children to have the best start possible (whoever is doing the parenting of the child)

I’m happy to see Parliament is going to be looking at it now:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57274323

I watched the BBC segment on this this morning, DH and I were in tears. It’s just horrifying how these women, and their babies, were treated. They are owed so much more than apologies, they are owed something they can never get back, a life with their children 😢

Forced adoptions: Former MP Ann Keen recalls no dignity and no say

... you know, he is going to be adopted, but you can have him for 10 days.

Ms Keen continued: "Of course I knew every day, every hour of those 10 days. And on the eighth day, I went to the nursery and he wasn't there...

"And I said, 'well what's happened? Where is he?'.

"'Oh,' she said, 'he's gone now - you were getting far too close, we were watching you, if you look' - and she pointed to a window - 'he's in that building there and that's where he'll stay until his new mummy comes for him, and you'll never see him again'."

She said she was then put in a bath where her breast milk was expressed and she was told "you will have no need for this now".

"I felt so humiliated, no dignity no rights, no anything, and I was 17 - so I just, I just was forced to go along with this practice."

"You're a bad girl, you're a bad person, you should be ashamed of yourself and you were treated in that way," she said.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-57251782

It seems odd that we are highlighting historical adoptions whilst babies are still being taken from their birth mothers (surrogacy) and donor conceived fertility is accepted as being a good thing.

Will someone eventually be asked to apologise for this?

I absolutely agree that their treatment was barbaric, but I cannot for the life of me see why Boris Johnson or the current government should apologise for something they had nothing whatsoever to do with?

The stories are incredibly distressing and no doubt this practice destroyed lives. But what is the government link? These were church-run homes, and it was wider societal attitudes that caused parents to send their daughters away. Unless I am missing something and there was government policy contributing to this, then a government apology seems off the mark. I think the Irish govt did eventually admit they colluded in the Magdalene laundries system.

Some of the replies on here are really disappointing considering this is a Feminist forum.

I found the following comment on Facebook, and it explains perfectly why the Government should apologise.

“For those saying “what good is a government apology” The government at the time made the laws and this was legal and policy. They didn’t do anything to stop it and the fact that social workers, midwives and religious organisations were allowed to take the babies without consent is appalling. It has left those women traumatised their whole lives. It’s something of deep shame to the country and the church who pushed this from an ideological stand point. So yes, they should apologise.”

And found these comments on Twitter (handle states she is a Rad Fem). Thank you to whoever wrote these-

“I really can't dumb this down any more for you. Multiple factors were at play. The government is not solely to blame. The government is, however, responsible for policy and legislation.”

“the government are responsible for adoption legislation, the provison of social care and safeguarding. They are responsible for the protection of citizens, including women”

This Tweet was in relation to factors that led to these adoptions-

"Their socio-economic circumstances
Their families
Social services
Health professionals
The church
The fathers
The state
Social pressures and prejudices"

There was also the issue of married couples being seen as ‘more deserving’. Social workers would work on behalf of the adoptive parents. The mothers did not have anyone ‘on their side’.

And let’s not forget that some of the babies’ fathers pushed for their babies to be adopted, in some cases because the father was married. Nowadays we would call that coercive control. Nobody was protecting these mothers and babies from this form abuse from men.

These mothers were coerced by social workers, hospital workers. These were government employees. It wasn’t just religious institutions.

The laws changed in 1989 to keep children (if possible) with biological family. So as you can see, the government did have the power to prevent these adoptions. But adoption was encouraged by the government, social services etc

I can’t imagine how upsetting it must be for these brave mothers, who have so much trauma and pain and finally speaking up, to then be gaslighted further by society with ’that’s how it was back then’ and invaliding their request for an apology.

It’s not a literal apology. It’s a recognition of what happened and acknowledging it was wrong. It’s putting a proper name to what happened, like in Australia it’s called the Forced Adoption Era. They also set up a fund for counselling for mothers and adoptees.

If you watched the news reports, one reason for the apology is that it would exonerate mothers who were labelled as having ‘given up’ their babies. They want to have their names cleared. Adoptees were led to believe that their mothers ‘gave them away’, and this would go towards healing them too.

Anyone who doesn’t understand should just watch the Australian apology. It’s all there. It was the same system and culture as ours. They explain in the apology why it’s important. If they can do it, I don't see why the UK government shouldn't 't give an apology too.

What needs to happen is a full enquiry, like what happened in Australia. As in the news report, there's evidence of forged signatures, so some adoptions were not only coercive and unethical, but also illegal. Adoptees also deserve to learn the truth.

I also suggest you watch this radio phone in with Kaye Adams, it’s so compassionate and gives more of an explanation of why an apology would be healing. (Notice one of the mothers speaks about the social worker who sent her that nasty letter. These were government workers.)

www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=980674639347256&ref=search

Yes, many of the mothers were in Mother and Baby homes, but the governments facilitated the actual adoptions. But not all of these mothers were 'sent away'. These adoptions also happened through hospitals and through government institutions and through home visits.

Luckily there are compassionate MPs who understand what actually happened, who are pushing for a full enquiry and apology and recognition of how wrong it all was.

Claiming it was a ‘society wide issue’ absolves individuals of their wrongdoings. And the government was part of that society and oversaw these institutions.

This paragraph basically sums up what happened-

"Instead of being briefed about the financial support to which they might be entitled, they were warned that keeping the baby would bring great hardship on their families. And while some consented to adoption under this kind of duress, others say forms were simply signed on their behalf by parents or so-called “moral welfare workers” supervising adoptions. They became, in effect, an unwilling human production line of babies for adoption by couples considered more deserving by virtue of their wedding rings."
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/27/uk-forced-adoption-state-sanctioned-abuse-unmarried-mothers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Please, before making comments like ‘Why should the government apologise’ etc. Please do some research.

And this attitudes towards not just unmarried mothers but children of poor parents was about the colonial practice of helping increase the number of British people in occupied countries.

Quote:

Britain is the only country in the world with a sustained history of child migration. Only Britain has used child migration as a key part of its child care strategy over four centuries rather than as a last resort during times of war or civil unrest.

The reality of this policy was to remove children, some as young as three years old from their mothers and fathers, from all that was familiar to them, and to ship them thousands of miles away from their home country to institutions in distant lands within the Commonwealth. Many of these children were removed without their parents' knowledge or consent.

www.childmigrantstrust.com/our-work/child-migration-history

Also:

Many Child Migrants, British boys and girls, were sent overseas by specialist agencies such as the Fairbridge Society, established specifically for the purpose of migrating young children to populate the empire with "Good White British stock". Well known national charities such as Barnardos, which provided a wider range of child care services, along with the Church of England, the Methodist Church, the Salvation Army and the Catholic Church played major roles.

publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmselect/cmhealth/755/8060403.htm

So the harsh treament of mothers wasn't just about different attitudes of those times, but about finding enough children to fulfil the British colonial objectives.

If anyone's been following this in the news today about the decision and wants to know more, the full report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights is here.

committees.parliament.uk/publications/23076/documents/169043/default/

However, public authorities were responsible for the way that their employees treated unmarried mothers. The Government is responsible for the conduct of employees of the State as well as, ultimately, for the conduct of employees of public bodies such as the NHS, who were involved in these practices in the course of their employment. The Government is also responsible for the policies and laws of the time, as well as the omissions of policy and law, that allowed these practices. The Government therefore bears responsibility for what happened to these mothers.

It's really good news that this Committee has confirmed the Government bears responsibility.

If only we could learn from history, eh?

I know you are in Scotland now but did you grow up in Scotland?

I do wonder if attitudes in Scotland, or certainly rural Scotland were different. I was born in 1959 in rural Scotland. Town was small enough that everyone knew everyone's business. There were children being brought up by single or extended family with no husband around. No body seemed to care. Some families did that thing of pretending mum was a big sister (although everyone knew and it always came out in the end) or as with my grandparents, who never pretended, weren't bothered and just got on with it, and let my mother continue with her travels for a few more years. I suppose money always helps

Obviously I have no way of knowing if children were forecably adopted but on the other hand families clearly were not forcing this.

This was about forced emigration to places like Australia and South Africe to create a pliant work force in terrible conditions because nobody who thought of emmigrating would go and do the work many of these children were forced into.

A friend told me about her grandfather who was transported to Australia as a child. By age 12 he’d been put to work on the land in the Outback, left at a basic hut in the middle of nowhere with a horse for ploughing and a supply of horse feed and canned food for him that was refreshed every few weeks. ☹️ What we call child or modern slavery these days. In living memory. Many of the children fared worse, subjected to appalling physical or sexual abuse. It is shameful.

It happened in Scotland too.......

I heard Harriet Harmann speaking about this on LBC today and listened to some of the callers, although it was mainly the children. She spoke well.

I struggle with the attitudes of some on this thread, especially when this is such a big issue that has affected a significant number of women. It could be our mum, aunt, grandmother or friend.

The govt knew this was going on. Even just a simple apology to say that how women were treated was awful and they did nothing wrong.

It's the kind of subject that sets off all sorts of deeply rooted fears and pain. I find a range of responses unsurprising.

I hope the recent developments bring some peace to those affected.