THERE'S a dark chapter of the British empire which history often overlooks — the deportation of children for systematic economic and sexual exploitation on an industrial scale.

But the album The Ballads of Child Migration: Songs for Britain’s Child Migrants, released a few years ago, sheds light on that shameful era and it's about to go on tour in a concert featuring songs, narration, slides, audio and film clips.  

Narrated by Barbara Dickson, the line-up includes leading folk musicians John McCusker, Michael McGoldrick, Boo Hewerdine, O’Hooley & Tidow, Chris While, Julie Matthews, John Doyle, Jez Lowe, Andy Seward and Andy Cutting.

It's to their credit that they're confronting such a harrowing and disturbing subject head-on.

Between 1869 and as late as 1970 over 100,000 British children, some as young as three, were uprooted without their parents’ knowledge or consent and deported to Canada, Australia and southern Africa only to suffer a lifetime of abuse, trauma, loneliness and an enduring sense of rejection and not belonging anywhere.

This intensely immoral trade in children was a peculiar crime of British imperialism due to the sheer size of its empire and the need to populate it. Unsurprisingly, like all imperialist projects, the mass deportation of so many vulnerable people was dressed up by church and state as a moral crusade to give children a better life.

The truth of course was very different. These depraved schemes were simply designed to feed the empire and rid taxpayers of those in most need. Initially, they simply cleared the workhouses of the young, separating them from parents and lying to many of them that they were orphans.

Following world war two and the introduction of many socialist policies, destitution levels dropped and the trafficking moved on to the children of unmarried mothers and by persuading the poorest families that their children would have a better life abroad.

Yet these children were routinely and relentlessly overworked and even deprived of basic education by those who perceived them only as sources of labour or worse.

In one of the most disgraceful episodes of this woeful story, the British government suppressed a critical report in 1956 into the institutionalised rape and abuse of children that did not surface until 1983, allowing this despicable slave trade to continue unabated.

Amazingly, testimonies reveal that a lucky few did find happiness but these are few and far between.

The Ballads of Child Migration is a masterly collection of songs and it's a suitable reminder of heart-breaking cruelty. They are all stand-outs but Julie Matthews Devil’s Heart, alluding to the diabolical sexual proclivities of a priest and Jez Lowe’s Tainted Blood, describing the lifelong stigma suffered by many, encapsulate what the collection is all about.

Although beautiful, this is not easy listening and it will take you out of any comfort zone, but then the best art does that — go and listen.

The Ballads of Child Migration tours Canterbury, London, Cambridge and Nottingham from November 12-16, details: ticketline.co.uk