I'm not sure if this post fits in here, but maybe it isn't worth its own thread so here goes, (sorry a bit long!):-
Here are some of his comments about the current family law situation in the UK, and the policy of the Fathers 4 Justice group today, following their high profile stunts and marches of the past leading them to becoming the third largest voluntary organisation of protest group in the country with 90,000 members.
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/ju...world-in-three-years
Quote:
"Matt O’Connor, who founded the group after a bitter dispute over access to his own sons 14 years ago, admits that they hated his activism when they were younger, “and I don’t think they’ve warmed to it – Dad’s never hip, never, so it’s put your heads down and don’t mention it”.
But there was a moment when it looked as though O’Connor’s campaign of direct action, begun in 2002, might get results. Politicians expressed sympathy, not for the law-breaking protesters but for the issues they raised; so did public figures, including Bob Geldof (who fought a custody battle with Paula Yates over their three daughters). The “secrecy” of the family courts – one of the group’s angriest complaints – began to be questioned. So did the behaviour of mothers who flout court orders allowing contact between children and fathers, and in 2004 a woman was jailed for three months for refusing her ex-partner access to their son.
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O’Connor and his second wife, Nadine, who came along to a Fathers4Justice meeting and soon joined him at the campaign’s helm, hoped so. But four (now nine) years ago, Fathers4Justice received what it felt to be a slap in the face. David Cameron made a speech to mark Father’s Day calling for “runaway dads” to be stigmatised like drunk drivers. O’Connor was so angry he went on an eight-day hunger strike.
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But Fathers4Justice wants to tone things down. “I’ve got to try to win people like you over,” he says. “I was a huge fan but then I became very anti-Guardian because of its hostility to dads’ issues. But now I think we have to try to persuade people.” This shift is partly because Fathers4Justice has failed. O’Connor says he was once a naive idealist who marched for CND and against apartheid. “When I started I thought I could change the world in three years, which shows what a bloody idiot I am,” he says. “I am profoundly disappointed that we have not achieved our aims. I am more in touch with my own mortality now I am getting towards 50 and I really want this to work. Not for me, really – I’m out of it – but for my children. I don’t want my boys to go through what I did.”
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.... he thinks the tide has turned against him and that no new legislation will be passed before 2020 – which is why his campaign’s focus has switched to pastoral support and a new helpline, which is being launched this weekend.
From his own experience of going to court about once a month as a McKenzie friend – or lay assistant to a litigant – O’Connor knows the situation of those caught up in such cases has been made harder by legal-aid cuts. When he says the result is a “blood bath … wholly out of control … it’s legalised cage fighting for parents”, his choice of words may be over the top – but even those who reject his emphasis on fathers as victims agree he has a point.
“We’ve had so many people coming to us, this Siberia of the broken, people who are clinging by their fingertips to the edge of humanity,” he says.
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Reading through the transcript of our interview I stopped counting the number of times I disagreed with O’Connor. He is glib about the effects on children of residency being passed from parent to parent as courts dish out penalties for flouted orders, and says moving homes or schools is no big deal. Meanwhile, he uses the most extreme language to talk about adult experiences, at one point comparing separation from children to the death penalty. He appears to ignore the views of charities and professionals about the importance of privacy in family law.
But O’Connor is right that some men become very vulnerable following family breakdown, and right to point to suicide, along with homelessness, as problems that affect men disproportionately. He answers honestly when asked how divorce affected his first two sons – that he doesn’t know.
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