Crisis in UK Government responsible for forced adoptions in the 1950s to the 1970s

Credit Allan Cash Picture Library / Alamy Stock Photo
P38TDK 1950s, historical picture of a mother outside with her baby and her little girl sitting on top of their Royale coach-built pram holding her teddy bear, England, UK. The Royale was a luxury coach built pram made by the ‘Royal Baby Carriage Co’ of Nunhead Grove, London, founded by brothers Alf & Frank Saward, who claimed to make the ‘world’s most beautiful prams’.

Research Fellow and Director of Widening Participation at Lancaster University Michael Lambert said “My research into UK governmental archives shows that forced adoption could not have happened in scope or scale without the state. The UK government transformed adoption from a cottage industry to one of mass production.”

This is a particularly important statement because the UK government has denied any responsibility for the scandal, saying it took place independently of any government efforts to promote forced adoptions during that time.

The comment follows a report by the UK’s Joint Committee on Human Rights which also found the government was responsible for forced adoptions spanning at least 30 years and called on the government to apologise.

Th researcher has said that the UK government is responsible for forced adoptions which took place in England and Wales from the 1950s to the 1970s in an article he wrote for online magazine The Conversation.

In its report the committee said the Government had “ultimate responsibility for the pain and suffering caused by public institutions and state employees that railroaded mothers into unwanted adoptions.” It also urged the Government to do more to to support people dealing with the life-long consequences of those adoptions.

The government issued a statement denying responsibility on March 3, 2023 following pressure from campaigners – many of them mothers who had been coerced into giving up their children during this time – to make a formal apology for the practice.

The Irish government has also apologised for forced adoptions which took place during the same period, although it was criticised by several campaigners at the time. Ireland’s Children’s Minister Roderic O’Gorman made an official apology in 2022 to the more than 20,000 people who had been illegally adopted in the country, a practice which involved forced adoption.

The government said, “whilst we do not think it is appropriate for a formal Government apology to be given, since the state did not actively support these practices, we do wish to say we are sorry on behalf of society to all those affected.”

Several counties in the UK have already apologized for these forced adoptions. Not east Sussex, Kent or Norfolk.

Lambert researches a range of issues including housing and homelessness, child protection and social work, and non-recent forced adoption. He also submitted evidence to the 2021-22 Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry into the forced adoption of children of unmarried mothers from 1949 to 1976.

You can access Lambert’s article here.