Until the age of five George Bowley spent his days on the streets of Brighton, but when his mother was imprisoned in 1943, he and his four siblings were sent to an orphanage where they were split up. Five years later George Bowley was selected by the The Fairbridge Society to be included in their mission to relocate disadvantaged children around the Empire. He was sent to what was then known as Rhodesia. Years later George embarked on a search for his lost family that became the subject of a BBC radio documentary. In 2010 he and other victims of the policy of forced child migration received an official apology from the British Government. This is his story.
About the Author: George Bowley's was born in 1939 on the eve of the Second world war.. When he was five years old, his mother was imprisoned for petty theft and he and his four siblings were sent to an institution for orphaned and destitute children. In March 1948 George and his brother became victims of the British policy to encourage child migration to the colonies and became wards of the Fairbridge Society on a journey to Southern Rhodesia. There followed eight years of unimaginable excitement and abject cruelty. At the age of sixteen, armed with a G.C.E, he was considered suitable to help fulfill the Fairbridge vision. For nearly ten years he was passed from farmer to farmer to do with as they pleased. For a pittance he weathered a storm of hard slogging, abuse, racism, brutality and deceit. His luck changed when he found love in 1967 and married the woman of his dreams, turned his back on the soil and entered the Corporate world. After two years of study and hard work he became manager of the pulp plant. Alas the euphoric life was to be short lived as the bush war intensified and he became embroiled in a conflict he believed was a lost cause. As the situation grew worse, he like many of his fellow migrants had that yearning for identity and one day after having survived an ambush, memories flooded back. This brush with death was a catalyst that led him that led him on a search for the family of his memories and the father he had never known. In 2010 George was invited to represent the Rhodesian migrants at the Palace of Westminster to receive an apology given by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown. There were migrants from Australia, Canada and New Zealand. George has one daughter, a step-daughter and step-son. He lives with his wife and daughter in Johannesburg. South Africa.