ORANGES AND SUNSHINE

From the late 1940’s up to 1970 the British Government surreptitiously ‘deported’ 130000 children placed in their care to Australia for  reasons I still cannot fathom.  This movie is the true story of how Margaret Humphreys, a Social Worker from Nottingham, uncovered the scandal, and almost single-handedly and against overwhelming odds and even threats against her own life, went about reuniting thousands of families.  Children as young as four had been falsely told that their parents had died, and un-wed mothers had their babies whisked away without their consent on the premise that their child would have a better life.

The children were promised that Australia was a land of oranges and sunshine, but many were subjected to hard labor and life in appalling conditions in desperate Institutions, and the boys that ended up with the Catholic Brothers where subject to widespread abuse.

This heart wrenching highly emotional story is given real strength with a powerful performance by Emily Watson in the lead. I will confess that the reason that it  ended up on my list is because being an Orphanage boy myself at that time I could easily have been a candidate for migration. I guess this fact alone gave the film a powerful personal resonance to me as I watched these adults who had been abandoned as children clutch at straws trying to locate any living blood relatives (although strangely enough that is not something that I have ever wanted to continue to do after my reunion with my birth mother that ended so very badly).

This is the feature film-directing debut of Jim Loach (son of director Ken Loach) and the fact that his past is in directing for Television speaks volumes as possibly this is where this film beings.  Having said that, as a well made record of particularly such an important and disgraceful part of recent social history that the UK hid for decades, it deserves a wide audience. Particularly one that has stocked up on Kleenex tissues so they can bawl their eyes out like I did.