‘This House Believes That A Bad Law Deserves To Be Broken’

Thank you Madam President and many thanks to the members of the establishment and political aristocracy sitting opposite me tonight who seem to labouring under the impression that we live in a working democracy when I contend that we do not.

Firstly, let me introduce myself. My name is Matt O’Connor and I am a terrorist.

At least that’s what Counter Terrorism Command told me when they came down to visit me a few years back after I had temporarily retired from front line campaigning to focus on a new Ice Cream brand I was developing.

I told them I could tell them about Madagascan Vanilla, Tahitian Vanilla, but terrorism? According to them – and the law – because of my penchant for encouraging over weight men to dress more like the Michelin Man than Superman, I was regarded as serious threat to national security.

Sure, I might be a threat to sartorial elegance and good dress sense, but terrorism?

Under the definition of The Terrorism Act 2000 I was ‘a lycra clad terrorist ice cream man’, i.e. I was using threats (read lyrca and now ice cream) to influence the government or to intimidate the public for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. The cause is called ‘Equal Parenting and Fatherhood’. Clearly, two very dangerous ideological ideas that could destabilise the country.

In reality the closest I came to an act of terrorism was making an ice cream bombe that required the evacuation of hundreds and thousands. Boom, boom.

As a result of that I that incident I am often asked by people, ‘Matt, why aren’t you in jail?’ Well I am a man of convictions, too numerous to mention here. But one of the reasons why I am not in jail is that I haven’t actually broken many laws. In fact, in majority of the jury trials we faced, most resulted in a ‘not guilty verdict.’

So, there are several dimensions to this proposition. Does a bad law deserve to be broken? I say yes. But law and justice are two very different things and we should remember that.

Is the rule of law paramount? I also say yes – but that if you choose to break the law you must accept your punishment. However, whilst the rule of law is paramount, it is not static. Law reflects societies conditioning and thinking, but it often takes time for the law to catch up creating a time lag where injustice can breed. Slavery, workers rights (The Tolpuddle Martyrs) and women’s right to vote are just three examples of where the law failed to keep up with social change. And sometimes when democracy fails, new laws are made by breaking old laws, restoring balance and justice to society.

In fact, I would argue that in the context of civil disobedience, it is law-breakers who demonstrate the greatest respect and understanding for the law.

On that point, lets consider some honourable law-breakers who really don’t receive enough credit for their law-breaking ways: Tony Blair,  George W Bush and Rupert Murdoch. When I say that those of us who break the law in pursuit of a cause or belief, we do so demonstrating the utmost respect for the law. These three however represent an unholy trinity of the worst pathological crooks and law breakers who have ever graced this land. Let us consider the laws they broke, supported by my honourable members opposite.

They engaged in Illegal torture, sanctioned illegal extraordinary rendition, allowed illegal execution without trial (drone killings), fought illegal wars with money we don’t have, are busy dismantling Habeas Corpus and introducing more secret courts alongside bankrupting countries economically, socially and ethically. So before the people opposing the motion get all ‘holier than thou’ about law breaking, lets see the real pros in action; Lets start at Scotland Yard, lets start at News Corp, lets start at the Banks, lets start at the Palace of Westminster.

The Police are increasingly militarised and have become the enforcers for the crime bosses. The press are corrupt (bribery, hacking), the Banks that put the bank in bankruptcy are corrupt having staged the biggest bank job in the history of the world – but not a single arrest – whilst pickpocketing the little people to pay off the big people. The Politicians are corrupt (expenses, press relationships) and our government has been shown to be rife with systemic bribery and corruption on an unprecedented scale.

These are the same crooks that produce hundreds of new laws each year designed to keep you and me in check

You couldn’t make this shit up.

And what happens to these law-breakers? Are they on trial? Are they doing bird? No,  they turn into money-spinning Comedy double acts; Blair and Brown, Cameron and Clegg, Murdoch and Murdoch, Boom and Bust and they earn gazillions off the backs of us, the British taxpayer who keeps paying out. And what’s happened to the people we employ to enforce the law?

The Police used to be noble servants upholding the law – now they are above it – or should I say, beneath it. They are wining and dining suspects, enjoying free hospitality at health spas, knocking off the former Home Secretary’s wife, sleeping with campaigners (what I call ‘deep’ cover) and banging out sprogs whilst padding their pensions with jobs at National Newspapers. In the halcyon days it was ‘Evening Officer’, today it’s ‘Is that a truncheon in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me.’

All the same people, are in the same jobs, committing the same crimes, whilst introducing their new laws to control us. I wouldn’t let them run a bath – let alone a democracy. Our country has been hijacked by the venal, the corrupt and the despicable, so please at the next election don’t vote for these fuckers, because it only encourages them.

This ladies and gentleman is an Age of Hyper-Hypocrisy. An age where our government demonstrates an absolute contempt for the rule of law. Unlike members of the establishment, true law breakers have the utmost respect for the rule of law, but when WE break the law the establishment uses fear, it uses violence and it uses draconian methods to contain protest. Our right to protest is being trampled on and inevitably as new laws are introduced to contain us, they will be broken.

Whilst our government praises the protestors of the Arab Spring we are caged, children are kettled, we are unlawfully detained, we are denied a right to a jury trial and we are denied our basic rights.

An iron curtain brought down over centuries old liberties, liberties we fought 2 world wars to defend. And where are have our leaders led us? From riches to rags, from first world to third world, a country where defensive walls have become prison walls, where they have raised the retirement age until after you’ve died.

I predict that in the next few years many of you will become law-breakers as the struggle for social and political justice becomes a populist movement. It is we the people who are the ultimate arbiters of the law because what faith can you place in our lawmakers themselves when they have demonstrated utter contempt themselves for the rule of law? Think about it. How long is it going to be before you start breaking the law? When the CSA start knocking on the door? When your bank goes bust? When the cashpoint stops working? When they restrict your freedom to the internet?

They say Britain is just ‘nine meals from anarchy’ and the tectonic plates of capitalism are wobblier than Lindsay Lohan in rehab. How long will it be before you are criminalised like the rest of us?

We have a long and honourable tradition of law breaking in this country; The Tolpuddle Martyrs, The suffragettes and gay and human rights protestors like Peter Tatchell. Internationally we have seen tremendous courage from the likes of Ai Wei Wei, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther-King…

Wayne David opposite (Labour MP) seems to have forgotten that without the brave law-breaking men and women like my namesake Fergus O’Connor in the Chartists movement, there would be NO Labour Party. He stands on the shoulder of others who broke the law to give him a right to free speech.

Why do people place themselves at such risk? Because you cannot crush or contain the human spirit. It is not only right to break unjust laws, it is our duty to break unjust laws.

Unlike my friends opposite, I don’t believe in doing nothing when my children, my family and my country are at risk. For me the political is personal. A police officer once said to me I have the greatest job in the world, you are seeing your children – why risk it all?

Because my country doesn’t recognise me in law as a father. It treats me like a cashpoint not a dad. It treats me with utter contempt and disrespect. It condemns my children to share the same fate as their father. And we send those fathers off to fight phoney wars on behalf of a country that doesn’t afford then the right in law to be a father. When that changes, when that changes – I will stop campaigning.

But it is not just about breaking laws, but about creating new and just laws. Imagine, one day, somebody tries to snatch your child from you. Just imagine. There is no wall I wouldn’t climb to stop me seeing my children. No bridge I wouldn’t scale. No law I wouldn’t break. No bullet I wouldn’t take.

Joshua Rozenburg says we should ‘tweet’ our problems or convince the pit of vermin that is our parliament and try to persuade them of the validity of our argument by which time our children will be trapped in the Devils Labyrinth that is the family courts. I say to him that is madness. If I must pay a price for pursuing a higher moral imperative then I must pay that price. There are a few of us who are prepared to sacrifice our lifestyles, incomes, liberties in pursuit of justice, unlike the tyrants who hide behind the wall of parliament, sheltered by our scam democracy.

We do so openly, we do so proudly and we do so without fear.

One of the reasons why bad laws come to pass, is that there is precious little scrutiny of the law making process in the media. That is a consequence of the democratic collapse with little or no assessment or scrutiny of new laws. In the middle of this depression we must seize the law making apparatus back from the political and legal aristocracy and place it back in the hands of democratically, elected and accountable citizens – not an unelected, unaccountable and unsackable judiciary.

As an individual I would rather break a bad law than live by a broken one. Without challenging laws – and in some cases breaking them – we cannot create new ones. You don’t shape the world by following bad laws and as we see time and time and time again, law breakers become law makers

Of course, if you want to live like a dog, obeying his masters house rules that is your prerogative.

If you want to engage in political coprophilia by accepting every word and wish of our Lords and Masters as they dump on you, then my name is Mark Oaten. If you want to bend over whilst somebody shafts centuries old liberties without blinking an eye or even extending you the courtesy of a jar Vaseline, good luck to you. That is not the country I want my children to grow up in. For me law-breaking, like campaigning, is not a spectator sport. They say if you stick your neck out, you going to get it cut off some times. But as MLK said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.’

As a campaigner and law breaker, I don’t want to occupy, I want to electrify.

The fact is bad men, break good laws. And good men, break bad laws and I’d rather die on my feet in jail, than live on my knees under a bad law.

Finally this morning members of F4J received court summonses after handcuffing themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace last September whilst protesting for equal parenting rights. I’d handcuff myself to the gates of hell if it meant we would rid this country of the monstrous and secretive regime we call the family courts in this county and that’s why I support the motion that bad laws deserve to be broken.

Matt O’Connor

AN OPEN LETTER TO DEBORAH ORR IN RESPONSE TO HER ARTICLE ‘THE FAMILY COURTS ARE HERE TO HELP CHILDREN’ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/11/family-justice-review-norgrove-report?newsfeed=true

Dear Deborah,

I cannot let your comment piece (‘The family courts are there to help children, not get ‘justice’ for parents’) in the Guardian go unchallenged. But hey, ‘Comment is free’.

And so apparently is ill-informed bigotry and prejudice masquerading as informed comment.

You warmly describe the Norgrove Report in glowing terms saying it is a “sober, intelligent and sensitive document…the family court system is there to act in the best interests of the children…it is wise.”

Firstly, I would ask you to direct me to the empirical evidence you rely on to support the claim that the secret family courts act in ‘the child’s best interests.’

Neither David Norgrove (the report author), the panel, the government nor the judiciary have any evidence whatsoever to support this claim. I know, I have asked them all. I asked David Norgrove again when we met at the BBC last week, for the evidence he used to support this claim in the report and he simply said (and I quote verbatim), ‘judges think they are acting in the child’s best interests.’

Think? Are you fucking kidding me? You are in a court and you are relying on what a 70 year old judge ‘thinks’ to make a life-changing decision? What happened to evidence in a court? What sort of report is it that can’t even stand up it’s core claim?

The fact is Deborah, nobody knows if the courts have acted in the child’s best interests because nobody has bothered to keep any records on the outcomes for children who have been through the court system.

The entire premise of family law, and in turn your article, is based on this wicked deceit. If you had conducted even the most rudimentary research to support your article, you would have understood this. That is why we branded the report a ‘monstrous sham’ because the ‘child’s best interests’ myth is the biggest lie ever perpetrated in the history of British Justice.

All the evidence concludes that the outcomes of a fatherless nation are this: rioting children, the highest rate of young offending in Western Europe, an explosion in anti-social behaviour, the highest rate of teen pregnancies etc. I could go on, and on, and on. No doubt you will dismiss any possible link between fatherlessness and these social ills or the fact that 1 in 3 children now lives in a fatherless families, but the effects and costs to us as a country are catastrophic.

Further, the family court system you so affectionately describe is in fact one of the most brutal and secretive regimes in the world. Operated by an unelected, unaccountable and unsackable Star Chamber, it is a perversion of the course of natural justice. It trashes lives, destroys childhoods, tears families apart, strips them of their savings; it even pitches parent against parent. It criminalises and crushes you before suffocating you with a blanket of secrecy and censorship. It is like being buried alive. The only interests the courts act in are self-interests, not the child’s best interests.

The oppressive secrecy deployed by the courts would make the regimes in Iran, North Korea and even China blush, but you lazily accept the rose tinted view of the report. Did you not think to question the reason why the secrecy remains in place? To protect the system from scrutiny, accountability and transparency. So the official version of the ‘truth’ remains, leaving journalists like you to pick away at the tit-bits of propaganda laid out for you.

And if you don’t believe me, I will happily rock up to the Guardian and show you the court orders and injunctions preventing F4J from speaking out about the most vile and disgusting abuses of children, matters of public interest that should be put on public record but can’t because the secrecy (and threat of jail) exists to protect the reputation (what’s left) of the system, not the children it purports to protect.

And if you are still in denial then, I will take you to a few of our surgeries where you can watch men crumble in despair, grandparents collapse in fear they will never see their grandchildren again, watch people on the edge of breakdown, clinging by their fucking fingertips to the edge of life. I will then take you to the courts where you are not allowed, but can enter as a McKenzie friend. What you need to see with your own eyes is the barbaric, destructive nature of our wonderful family courts in action.

Perhaps then the Guardian can pull its bigoted editorial head out of its lazy, liberal arse and start actually investigating what happens to our children in these courts.

You claim there is nothing the courts can do. Really? Ok, why do they exist then? Why do the Ministry of Justice and the huge legal gravy train puffing away behind them spend so much money marketing themselves to families in breakdown? Because its business. A filthy, grubby, Dickensian business that is predicated on conflict, because that’s how they make money. On mutually assured destruction – on laying waste to a child’s inheritance.

This is yet another lie perpetrated by the system – what can we do? Well you take the money. Then you divide the children on a winner takes all basis. And that takes us to one of our key points – children are not to be divided in a Solomon like judgment. Children deserve BOTH their parents, not to spend interminable years trapped in a secretive and fucked up court system that destroys parents and their childhoods.

On your claim that ‘most people negotiate it all themselves’ this is yet another false claim we are tired of correcting. This mantra is often quoted in an attempt to diminish the scale of the crisis in family breakdown, but everybody knows somebody affected. Even the Family Justice Review panel’s report stated that half a million mothers, fathers and children go through the family courts every year.  Lord Justice Coleridge estimated that 3 million children were affected by the courts.  It is difficult to calculate the real figure because we don’t know how many cohabiting couples separate each year – unlike a divorce there is no record. There is no data recorded by the courts and the system knows nothing about itself.

With regard to your claims about discrimination against fathers and the ‘illusion of gender bias’, well that’s one hell of a fucking illusion; 97% of residencies are awarded to mothers.

The only upside to the Norgrove report is that it pulled back part of the cloak of secrecy and revealed that yes, fathers have no rights. Alleluia! At last, people (with the sole exclusion of the Guardian) now begin to understand that men and boys are systematically discriminated against on the basis of their gender.

But what really disappoints me is this;

You are fully aware through your husband (Will Self) that both myself and my wife have first hand experience of both sides of the family law divide and have helped thousands of fathers, mothers, grandparents and yes, children, through the system (see Jolly Stanesby and his daughter on ITV on our home page). You could of course have fact checked the article or bothered to call us and confirm our position. What lets you down then is that with this knowledge, you pepper your piece with bitchy comments that denigrate and demean the conscientious efforts of Fathers 4 Justice.

Ref your false concern about our public profile, I have your husband to thank for suggesting a few alternative approaches to addressing the issue. We engaged politically over recent years because of a misplaced faith in our democracy, because like Don Quixote, we love nothing better than tilting at fucking windmills (after six-years of hanging off buildings). He’ll be pleased to know it turned out as expected; the Tories are a bunch of lying shits and we will be dealing with them in due course on a very public platform.

But the bottom line is this Deborah. After 10 godforsaken years, I am disgusted and sickened that this risible propaganda is peddled as ‘informed comment’.

It is a pernicious, ideologically driven prejudice that feeds a gender apartheid that affects fathers, families and boys alike. It’s the same sort of despicable prejudice I fought against when I was in the anti-apartheid movement. Vile discrimination spouted by the likes of Eugene Terre’Blanche who said blacks didn’t deserve the right to vote because of the colour of their skin. Now you are saying fathers shouldn’t have the right to be treated equally – not because of the colour of their skin – but because of their genitalia.

In doing so you condemn your sons to share the same fate because in your words the inequality is ‘quite right.’

For 10 years we have fought for the peace in family law against Herculean odds. Criminal courts are no place for families but trying to persuade people like you is like trying to persuade old racists. You are simply an apologist for the systemic abuse of children behind closed doors, because like all child abuse, that’s where it takes place.

I can’t convince you – but I think time will. If feral children and a feckless anti-social youth rattling around your neighbourhood don’t convince you, it will be a virtual statistical certainty that you or one of your children will find yourselves at the mercy of the family courts in the future and you will not only begin to feel the pain of the living bereavement of losing a child, but you will thank god that people like us were stupid enough to still believe in equality and fairness.

What are you going to say to Will Self Jnr when the CSA come knocking on his door and treat him as the ‘absent’ parent on the basis of his gender? What are you going to tell him when he asks why it is that the less time he spends with his kids, the more he pays? It’s like paying income tax when you are unemployed. This government loves absent dads. Loves to demonise them, but god-forbid they want to see their children. In Cameron’s Britain you can abandon your children tomorrow provided you pay – but shouldn’t child support be about emotional and financial support?

Because the one thing you have got right is that it is about the kids. And it’s about the boys you have condemned to share the same fate as their fathers because your discrimination has blinded you. When your children ask you as a grandmother, why they can’t see their children, you’ll never be able to blame us for not trying on their behalf because unlike you, I think they deserve better.

They deserve equality irrespective of gender.

All our children do.

Matt O’Connor
Founder, Fathers 4 Justice

Discrimination against human beings on the basis of their gender is now official. For 10 thankless, godforsaken years I have been telling people fathers have NO rights in law to see their children and for those 10 years people have looked on in disbelief. ‘Is it cos I got a meat and two veg?’ I used to ask fuckwit civil servants at the Ministry of Injustice. The answer is affirmative.

Which is probably why other groups have gone all Lady Boy ‘hermaphrodite is my middle name’ on us. Pussyfooting ain’t changed jack but the majority of fathers groups still dance round their hand bags when they should be out on the streets. There have been two fathers conferences recently and neither garnered any PR nor for that matter bothered to invite the only fathers group anyone on Planet Earth has heard of: Fathers 4 Justice. You have to ask why?

‘Please luv me long time’ plead FNF in their impotent response. Not likely. Even dumb arse civil servants can see Miss Lady Boy has bigger balls.

But the biggest betrayal this week isn’t just this wretched report, but the response of men to it. We often have to correct people who join F4J, thinking women baiting and hating is somehow acceptable. It isn’t and never has been and never will be. It is women who run F4J, argue our cause, support us in our hour of need, who nurse us when we have been forsake by everyone else and remind us that love will always prevail in the end.

It is the MEN who really deserve the credit for this unspeakable state of affairs. Not forgetting spineless fathers groups who betray fatherhood with every whimper, in the last decade we have had Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Blunkett who could have done something about his own case but fell into line for the sake of his party, not his children.

This week I have suffered the ‘Attack of the Manginas’ with a cast including David Norgrove, Jonathan Ross’ brother Paul and George Galloway to add to the list because there is nothing MORE damaging to our cause than these pussywhipped appeasers of inequality and injustice.

Smug, conceited ‘it’s never happened to me’ cretins who blame every other father for their own plight because it never happened to them. Take gorgeous George Galloway on Talk Sport. I like George. He is a great orator. He has balls.

But on this issue he spent 10 minutes chewing his own testicles off last night.

He tells me he has never had a problem (despite being married twice). So he isn’t only gorgeous, but lucky I tell him. He tells him he enjoys ‘short sword fighting’ but in reality, on this issue, his sword is so short he is ‘George Of The Eunuchs’. Fed by a diet of propaganda (child’s best interests), lies (only a small number of people end up in court) and damn lies (how can you get MORE litigation than what we already have – F4J are revealing the true details about the much referred to Australian experience shortly).

So don’t blame women for this state of affairs. Take issue with your fellow man who condemns himself and his own children to that same fate which statistically will hit him between the legs either with his children or grandchildren. Then watch them come running.

Ref the Family Justice Review, the report is so bad, it’s almost good. And that’s what I told the report’s Chairman when I bumped into him at the BBC. I said many people thought he was a complete xxxx. But that I was too polite to call him that.

Instead, as Cristina Odone said, ‘he is the man who hated children.’ Frozen to the spot, paralysed by fear, poor David could barely move his lips to say tell me there was NO evidence to support the claim that they have acted in the children’s best interests. ‘Bit of a shit report then?’ I told him. All that time, all that money, all those combined minds and yet barely a shred of evidence to stand this report up. Pathetic. In any other walk of life you’d be fired for producing such an inadequate piece of work.

So where does this leave us? I think this might be a turning point. Not in terms of direct action, but in terms of climate change. This report CONFIRMED what we have been saying. Proof, if proof were needed, that every single protest, every letter written, every argument waged in the media, was valid and true. The next stage is to see how the Conservative led coalition respond. But don’t hold your breath – they can’t be happy that this report was so anti-father and grandparents.

They would have dressed this document up in a studded jockstrap not a fairy dress, to create the illusion it was fair and father friendly. No such luck for the coalition so lets wait and see whilst all the while banging on the doors of our constituency MP’s and supporting F4J.

Thanks to David Norgrove & Co, he has validated the very existence of Fathers 4 Justice and proven to a nation that we were right. From 4.00am on Thursday we have fought our corner on ITV Daybreak, ITV News, Channel 4, every radio station and newspaper. We have enjoyed our best audience share since 2005 –  over 35million people this week – who have heard our message; that F4J is still not only going, but is alive and in rude health and will fight to the very end to create a fair, just and equitable system of family law.

As I said in many, many interviews this week; never, ever give up on your children. Get up, stand up for your rights and join Dad’s Army.

Join Fathers 4 Justice. The last line of resistance for fatherhood.

Matt O’Connor

For further information visit http://www.fathers-4-justice.org/

Not only is the plight of fathers and families invisible to the rest of the country and the world, we are the only voice for the children who have no voice. We are the last line of resistance in the battle to save fatherhood. It is incumbent on every single one of us to fulfil their duty to their children and their country by standing shoulder to shoulder in quiet protest outside the gates of the most famous home in the world.

To bring your message from your home to their home. To bring your message to the thousands of tourists who will be present at the Changing of the Guard. We will tell them to tell the world. We will let them know that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, support any family, oppose any injustice in the pursuit if equality and the promise of tomorrow for our children.

To you I ask this; bring the pictures of your lost children to tie to the gates of the Palace. Bring your testimony and quiet dignity. Whatever they say or do, meet hate with love, despair with hope and fear with courage. We will join together hand in hand to demonstrate our determination and resilience and to tell the government we will never, ever give up on the children of this country.

There are few fates worse than the living bereavement of being denied access to your child. Our children are missing. A generation stolen. Fatherhood kidnapped. We are the last line of resistance against a dangerous and toxic gender apartheid that segregates children from their fathers.

Our country operates despicable double standards, lecturing the world about justice and democracy whilst practising the most grotesque practices on children and families. For fathers condemned as runaways and deadbeats by our Prime Minister, it the political equivalent of water boarding.

Even though the situation appears desperate in a country devoid of the political or moral courage to stand against the secretive and brutal regime that is the secret family courts. Even though many in society will shout us down as heretics, accuse us of being women-haters and attack us viciously as only those whose ideology is threatened react, we shall appeal to the voice of reason, the ear of justice and the heart of equality that each and every person knows to be true and fair.

For those that threaten us and seek to intimidate fathers my message is this; your threats carry no weight to men who have been stripped of their children, their homes and their dignity. Who carry themselves tall and proud and fearless. Men whose quiet sorrow forges inner strength and courage. We will not let our destinies be enslaved by thuggery, but we will determine our own tomorrows.

We will never allow our children to share our fate.

There are many who still don’t understand why we demand action not words. Our struggle will not be won by armchair generals or emasculated men too frightened or impotent to break the taboos and chains that shackle us. Fear is a state of mind not the equivalent of a government Jedi mind trick. Standing together we have NOTHING to fear.

For the last decade I have campaigned to give my three boys a better tomorrow. A tomorrow free of the bigotry and prejudices of today. Free to be the parents we could and should have been if the state had not made us outlaws in our own country. Free to be first class fathers, not second class parents. That is my promise of tomorrow to my three boys.

Not be judged by their gender, but by their capacity to love and cherish their children.

But we cannot achieve that without a struggle.

We act with the fierce urgency of now. We must oppose extremism wherever we find it – even if that means confronting militant feminism. We act to confront injustice whatever it exists. We must act to bring the plight of children and families to the attention of the world at the London 2012 Olympic Games – The Crying Games, because every child finishes last in Cameron’s Britain.

We are fighting battles on four fronts. Against the secret courts and the parasitic legal system. Against our so called democratic parties and their systemic attacks on fatherhood for cheap political capital. Against militant Feminsim and the poisonous legacy it has injected into the body politic. Finally against the CSA whose ideology reduces fathers to the status of cashpoints and sperm banks. Crisis demands coordinated action on all four fronts.

As F4J’s research Director Nick Langford stated this week, ‘The government loves feckless fathers, provided they pay and don’t want to see their children.’ As we have often said under this Conservative led coalition, you an abandon your children tomorrow provided you pay.

It is a crisis on a humanitarian level for children and families. A catastrophe on a social scale as evidenced by the consequences of mass fatherlessness an the ensuing riots. A national emergency as a nation because of the damage we are doing to the fabric of our society today and tomorrow through the destruction of families.

One can only guess why policies which are so grotesquely abusive to children and families go unchallenged. There are undoubtedly many reasons however if you follow the money – and most scandals always follow the money – then the destruction of families is great business for UK PLC. Dividing families generates consumption and growth. Two houses, two cars, two wide screen TV’s, everything is doubled. Even offset against the costs of family breakdown the dividends reaped from family breakdown probably generate a substantial nett profit. As unimaginable as that may sound, it may explain why our tax system pays parents to live apart, not together. For the fools who think government doesn’t already interfere in personal relationships or making moral judgements about marriage, it already has. This is a government that incentivises family breakdown.

Finally for those that ask why we have resumed direct action I will tell you this. For three years we exhausted every single avenue of dialogue available to us, only for the Conservative Party to break their promises and betray our children and families. Today, we give them notice that a new campaign is upon them. We will challenge them. We will surprise them. We will defeat them.

What has begun again with a whisper, will become an unstoppable and deafening roar; a movement reborn of purpose, where we resolve to make a better tomorrow not live trapped in the despair of yesterday.

We choose to challenge government, not because it is easy, but because it is difficult. We are not willing to postpone, or negotiate. The wall of resistance may seem impenetrable but it is left to us to bring it down stone by stone, father and mother, sister and brother.

Your children are not somebody else’s responsibility. They are YOUR responsibility. And it is your responsibility to fight for them. To send them a message from the fathers of today to the fathers of tomorrow – you are our children, you are our future and we will not let you down. We are coming to get get you.

Daddy is coming home.

Proof if proof were needed, that Britain is as bad as Iran, North Korea or any other vile dictatorship we have propped up until we decide we want their oil. Two officers from the Met attended a meeting with F4J on Friday – yes doing their job – but employing all the emotional intelligence of a lobotomised baboon.

The scene was Le Pain in Covent Garden. In attendance were myself and my colleague Doctor Safdar who has a rough and ready bedside manner, ideal for the men from the Met.

Inspector Mark Kelly who covers St James and Green Parks is the Yards answer to Max Clifford.

Dispensing insightful marketing and pr advice without inducement, Mark Kelly told me, ‘I don’t think Buckingham Palace is a good place for a protest’. He must have missed our screening of The Dark Knight on September 13th, 2004.

I hope his policing skills are better than his pr ones, or we are all in terrible, terrible trouble.

I did offer him a ‘real’ job in marketing which appeared to upset him. Given the credibility of the Met has been shot (sorry) to pieces in the last year and that former Counter Terrorism chief Andy Hayman looked like a circus act in front of the Parliamentary Select Committee, I thought marketing might be a step up? Their main occupation these days seems to be looking at Facebook (isn’t that banned in the workplace?) and gathering ‘intelligence’.

Believe me, they need to be gathering all the fucking ‘intelligence’ they can get.

A real concern centered around the changing of the guard at Buck Palace on the morning of the 24th. ‘Lots of tourists’ he told me. It was clear we were dealing with some of the Met’s sharpest minds.

Things took a sinister turn when they said that anyone (from F4J) meeting in the Royal Parks would be an ‘unauthorised gathering’.

‘What about a parent holding a picture of their children?’ I asked. ‘If there were more than two of you, you’re nicked sonny,’ he told me.

And what about children? Anyone can be arrested, though reassuringly he told me children didn’t need handcuffs. Thank god for that I thought. For a moment I thought I was living in Iran.

All of which begs the fucking question, why go through the appropriate channels when our Police make such a hash of negotiating – why not got to fancy dress shop, pick up van and ladder and press go?

Freedom to protest? Not where our gun-toting, shoot to kill, inducement inclined public servants are inclined. Peel must be rolling in his grave.

Even Colonel Gaddafi would have let you rock round Green Square with a photo of your kids, but not the Met.

Finally, before I had arrived, I had been informed that they had visited one of my businesses before hand. Interestingly I hadn’t told them about my business, or asked to meet them there. ‘Tell Matt we are the Met Police and we are waiting for him at Le Pain,’ they told my staff in a fairly intimidating manner.

The meeting ended, standing, face-to-face, nose-to-nose with me informing him using a very rich strain of maritime language to go forth and multiply with offers of free dental work if a single child was arrested or they tried to intimidate me again.

Next time he wants a meeting, we’ll meet him at his house, take his kids then ask how he feels before placing him under a citizens arrest.

Last week the Met were wanting to round up absent fathers to take responsibility for their rioting children. This week they want to arrest the children of fathers wanting to take responsibility for their kids. After all the institutional corruption, phone hacking, the public execution of Mark Duggan (and others), and the kettling of young students, maybe this isn’t such a surprise.

What possible confidence can you have in a force that rules with threats and brutality against our children? Time to read them the riot act.

Before this pathetic attempt at government was elected, the long term forecast was for riots. The only shock horror has been ‘what took you so long?’ That’s because the economic pain hasn’t been felt yet. Chances are it will be, and soon.

It has long been known that we have created a nation of feral children, a feckless youth, brought up without fathers, indulged by whimpering mothers (“How can I tell my son what to do, he’s 6ft tall and just like his father.” Yes, the father he doesn’t see), indulged by schools with all the discipline of a Club 18-30 holiday and living in a world without boundaries, morals or ethics.

Now, we want our kids to learn respect, but how can they?

Respect who?

Their mother? Er no. Their father? Oh yes, thats the guy the state stitched up, you know the ‘runwaway’, the ‘deadbeat’ the one who gets treated like a fucking cashpoint.

But don’t worry, there is always the nanny state. The state run by MP’s, you know, the ones that fiddled their expenses. The ones who slept with Murdoch and bankrupted the country saddling you with unpayable debts and a fucking big, black hole worse that any damage caused by a few riots.

How could you not trust the son of a banker and a stockbroker sending our kids (not theirs, obviously) to die on behalf of a country that deprived them of their fathers and will deny them that same right. Wars where we invade and rape a country of its resources on the flimsiest of excuses and we think this provides a good example to the rioter in JD sports stealing trainers?

Then of course, we should respect the Police. Yes, the Police who took bribes from newspapers and enjoyed dinners with suspects. The same police that shot dead a drunken barrister who couldn’t piss straight let alone shoot straight. A Brazilian plumber who ‘jumped over a barrier’ and was a suspect. Only he never lept the barrier and was the wrong man but 8/9 bullets all made us so much safer. The Irish man they said was armed but it turned out to be chair leg or the black man who died in a shoot out, only, he didn’t fire a shot.

This country is teetering on the abyss. It has been wrecked economically and socially by a political aristocracy who you wouldn’t trust to run a bath let alone a country. They proclaim to act in the ‘child’s best interests’, preside over an epidemic of mass fatherlessness and then after blaming the dads, they turn on the kids, the youth THEY created, and threaten them with plastic bullets.

There are no fucking role models left. We have led by a disgraceful example and our youth have followed so lets not feign surprise they have dared to copy us.

We are ALL responsible. Responsible for the criminals we elected. Responsible for the society we allowed them to create. And responsible for what has happened to our children.

Matt O’Connor 9/8/11

Like the time Counter Terrorism Command came down to see me in Hampshire a while back after I told them I was launching my own ice cream brand (they thought it was some plot to overthrow HM government with a Mr Whippy Van a shed load of sprinkles and some weapons of mass seduction). Or the day the Met Police said that I was (and I quote verbatim) ‘a greater threat to this country than Al Qaeda’.

You had the feeling they were trying to bait you, draw you out of retirement a bit like an ageing Sinatra, Shrek or in my case, Elton John. I thought surely they can’t be that stupid.

But then I hadn’t factored in Mr Cameroon.

A PM surely deserving of his own brand of olive oil given his slippery ethics. ‘U turns?’. Pah, thats nothing. This man does hand break turns with pre-election promises disappearing in a puff of burnt rubber.

You can’t say he wasn’t warned either. When they arrived at Portcullis House, arms full of promises and bountiful commitments you thought ‘how can you trust these fuckers?’ You couldn’t. But at the same time, you had to give them the opportunity. And they were told by me in no uncertain terms, fuck with me on these promises, and I’ll bury you face down so next time around, you won’t be able to crawl back out.

So what’s David Cameron’s gift to Fathers this Fathers Day? To label 50% of the population as ‘runaways’ to be treated like ‘drink drivers.’

Thanks to hermaphrodite mens groups, neutered and pussyfooting around the issue as well as our own absence from frontline campaigning, Cameron obviously feels comfortable making these comments. It’s hard to imagine him describing mothers on Mothers Day as ‘whores with multiple partners’ like Karen Matthews or ‘Cokeheads’ like Kerry Katona (much lauded Mother of the Year previously – thats how beatified mums are). Mums who should be treated like Myra Hindley.

And what about the mothers who abuse their children by denying them the right to see their fathers this Fathers Day? Or exclude dads on every other day of the year with the assistance of Dave and his cronies. Or the grandparents denied access to their grandchildren as a result?

But the fact he can get away with these sort of comments shows how pathetic we have become and how insidious and successful forces in government have been at undermining to the point of extinction the role of fathers in society.

Cameron IS fully aware of the reality on the ground. There can be no excuse for this sort of despicable slur on fathers which is part of a wholesale, ideologically driven assault on fathers and fatherhood.

The Dada is already going the way of the fucking Dodo. Fathers have been reduced to sperm banks and cashpoints. Under Cameron and his goons, you can abandon you children tomorrow, provided you pay.

And whilst he is busy picking battles in foreign lands – as fathers lay their lives down on behalf of a country that doesn’t even afford them the right to be a father – he is the cheerleader of one of the most barbaric, evil, secretive and abusive regimes on earth – Britain’s Secret Family Courts.

I find two facts about Cameroon really nausea inducing. I was told by a colleague in PR recently that when Cameron was at Carlton, he was always asked to deliver the dirty message to unsuspecting colleagues because he always did it so sincerely whilst lying through his back teeth. He knows the truth, but he does whatever he thinks he needs to do to stay in power and he is doing it at the expense of our children and families.

Our duty is to defend our families against the barbaric regime he presides over. He has had his time and he has had his warning. His comments today pour oil onto the burning wells of anger and injustice. He would do well to reflect on the power of our message, something that his own backer Lord Ashcroft has recognised in a recent poll that put Fathers 4 Justice as the THIRD most popular organisation in the UK behind Greenpeace and Amnesty despite not staging a single demonstration since 2008.

Combine our pathetically inadequate budget against the multi-million pound marketing muscle of those two organisations, and you can see why F4J is studied as a masterclass in campaigning, pr and branding by other NGO’s and charities.

Mr Cameron should remember that as a father who lost his own son, that pain is living in every one of us. To insult us is to insult the memory of all our children and he does that at his own peril.

Matt O’Connor 19th June 2011

Is not the systemic removal of fathers from families already applying a ‘one size fits all’ approach to families. Or did I miss something?

Or is it that the fucked up thinking of Nuffing Foundation desires an outcome where every child is living with somebody else’s parent, except of course, their own. Because that is the dysfucktional outcome they have created. Or are they simply saying that marriage is bad for kids and that getting divorced will give your child a much better outcome?

How dare you argue against the principle of equality? How dare you say that equal parenting is somehow damaging to children. After thousands of years of the family, this Darwinian social construct, this glue that keeps us together as families – families that are stronger than the state – you seek to lecture us that you know better. Well, lets check out a few home truths.

There is only one danger to children and families. A danger that should have a fucking great public health risk attached to them: perverted ‘thinkers’ like Mavis Maclean and this wretched foundation. Perverting children so they are raised without a father. Perverting families by creating a nation of single mums weened like addicts onto a drip feed of state benefits like a hooker feeding off a pimp – a pimp who has kidnapped the father and turned him from a loving parent into a fucking cashpoint.

Perverting society with the effluent of their indoctrination: the highest rate of teen pregnancy on Western Europe, an abortion epidemic and the highest rate of young offending in Western Europe. Thanks to Mad Mavis and her Fanatical Feminist Taliban, we are experiencing a period of unprecedented and catastrophic social fall out with kids having kids. Kids making families on the streets in the absence of their own parents.

Congratulations Mavis Maclean. You and your fucked up ideology are a weapon of mass family destruction destroying families using a scorched earth policy and using the greatest deceit perpetrated in the history of this country: the child’s best interests mantra, a get out of jail card for fucked up academics except, there is NO evidence that the family courts or the Nuffield Foundations policies have been in the best interests of the children because they have conveniently failed to keep any records. Odd that eh?

And as my evidence conclusively, inarguably proves, thats because it has been in the interest of gravy-trainers like academics, lawyers and so called professionals to feed off the conflict that is family breakdown under the cover of acting in the child’s best interests.

The marker of any society is how we treat our most vulnerable. The disgraceful behaviour of these academics and the tragic outcomes that result from these policies means these people should be on trial.

And like any barbaric, sadistic tyrant, one day they will have to answer for their actions to the families and children they have torn apart. Some of us are sworn to make that happen.

Matt O’Connor, 28/5/2011

So lets look at our own ‘movement’ before we look at the obscene conclusions reached by the Family Justice Review Panel.

Somebody once said ‘I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees’, yet that is what an entire gender have submitted to, and in doing so, condemned our children and future mothers and fathers to the same fate.

The imprint of this legacy on our children is so toxic and enduring, it may be impossible to reverse.

A significant part of the blame lies at our own feet. For a while, we stood together and followed a set plan. Then, deluded and divided, some thought they could do better, only for reality to kick in too late. Other groups were bought off. Others became extinct. In doing so we ALL failed to rise to the challenge and we let the vested interests again gain the upper hand.

What troubles me is that for all the fighting talk, we have seen very few people walk the walk. Talk is cheap. On the net, the currency is like confetti – its worthless without physical action, without stepping up to the plate, without making a sacrifice.

So when we are doing nothing, perhaps we shouldn’t be so quick to blame the Family Justice Review Panel (FJRP) for doing nothing?

Maybe.

But the FJRP haven’t had their children stolen from them, had entire lives decimated, being suffocated by the blanket of secrecy applied by the grotesque and abusive regime that is the Secret Family Courts. Forget Libya, we have our own dictators here, a secretive and brutal regime operating beyond scrutiny.

Beyond the law.

Let us remember, people are dying here. Lives are being destroyed at the hands of this regime. This is a regime that in the last 12 months has lied, cheated, covered up any one of so many unspeakable crimes that the perpetrators should be on fucking trial.

So lets start with a few of the facts the FJRP have conveniently chosen to ignore, and while I’m at it, lets spell it out in full Maritime Language.

Firstly the Family Justice Review Panel is a fucking cover up.

A sham.

It supports the ongoing abuse of children yesterday, today and tomorrow. The configuration of the panel is based on the incestuous relationship between the judiciary, lobbyists and an ideologically driven industry built on conflict and the destruction of families.

The review is a continuation of the biggest cover up in the history of British Justice of the biggest child abuse scandal in the history of the United Kingdom. Do not underestimate the power of these words. They will return to haunt those who were complicit in this injustice.

Secondly, the shameful, pathetic, hermaphrodites at Tory HQ didn’t need a report to tell them the house is burning down. It was self-evident. When your house is on fire you call the fire brigade not a pen-pushing bunch of bureaucrats to go all Jackanory on us.

Worse still, when you know how to put the fire out – Tory HQ having told us of their plans which were in line with F4J’s before the election – why would you let the blaze continue out of control in knowledge of the apocalyptic outcomes for children.

That, Mr Cameron, is criminal.

Then they float the token smokescreen that ‘grandparents’ should get to see their grandchildren…what fucking tosh. They can already apply to a court to see their grandchildren and watch their worthless contact order go up in smoke like the parents and of course, if parents were seeing their children, there wouldn’t need to be a law for grandchildren to see their grandkids would there?

Of course the unequivocal implication of this grandstanding leak is that grandparents are safe, and fathers are not – and all this after Baby P where the natural father was denied access to his son because of false allegations.

Lets drill further into the evidence we supplied:

In one case F4J were involved in, we uncovered a child sex abuse ring operating from a Contact Centre, where the Contact Centre Manager was sleeping with the children she was charged with looking after. Don’t believe us? We have all the paperwork. What did the panel do? Nothing. What did the police do? Nothing.

In other cases we brought to the panels attention, some cases had been ongoing for over 10 years – 10 years of a 10 year old girl’s life. What did the panel do? Nothing.

We tore apart the fraudulent claim that lies at the heart of the system ‘child’s best interests principle’ – no records kept so no way of proving courts have acted in the child’s best interest. What did the panel do? Nothing.

If it isn’t acting in their interests, then whose interests are it serving?

The review is content, somehow, for the status quo to remain. It does not use the language of outrage or urgency, but language spoken with the ears of vested interests in mind. It has excluded parents from the panel as the system excludes parents from the process and it’s vision is filtered through the distorted prism of public law where decisions are made on behalf of children by politicised and ideologically driven organisations.

Organisations allegedly acting to ‘protect’ children, whilst presiding over the biggest child abuse scandals of our time.

Admittedly, the panel do shamelessly pilfer a few of our ideas (parent share plan, family line) though don’t have the courtesy of acknowledging their source.

Nor do they recognise that this unfolding crisis requires urgent, radical attention and that basic fundamental rights are being broken and in doing so the report is a wholesale rejection of everything I stand for:

It rejects my role as a father. I still have NO right in law to see my children (though F4J was started after I started seeing them again). I am therefore a non-entity and I have refused to sign my census form because if the state doesn’t recognise me as a father, it doesn’t recognise me at all.

It rejects the principle of equality between mother and father. It states there is no bias, if thats so, please explain why 94% of residencies are awarded to mothers and 50% of all contact orders for fathers are broken?

It has rejected transparency and supports secrecy and an appalling regime run behind closed doors where, like most child abuse, it can continue unchecked.

It allows an unelected, unaccountable, privately educated aristocracy to reign in their star chamber without fear of being exposed because they threaten and bully parents into silent submission with the compliance of the legal fraternity.

This monstrous. tyrannical, perverse and barbaric regime is worse than anything in Iran, Libya or North korea and poses a serious risk to the welfare of EVERY family in the UK.

And all this presided over by a government more dysfunctional than the last, a government that played happy families whilst screwing marriage with its insane tax policies to the extent that you are £600 a month better off living apart. So don’t fucking come on all family friendly on me Cameron. You are worse than New Labour because at least they didn’t pretend to care.

You betrayed families, you betrayed fathers and worst of all you betrayed the most vulnerable in society – our children. As I said in our ‘Anthem to Justice’ “if we can’t save the children, how can we save the world?”

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ll speak for me. I’m not going to live in a world of inequality. If you don’t want to defend your family, thats your choice, but it will never be mine.

I won’t accept this brave new world where mum marries the state, not a father, where kids have kids and make families on the street. You can’t love, if you haven’t been loved.

And if you can’t be angry after losing everything, when will you ever be angry? The above are reasons enough to be angry and inequality is something we are not going to take anymore.

The courts operate like a supermassive black hole sucking families into them, then ripping them apart.

We are the last line in resistance. We have given them the opportunity.

We made a 1,000 page submission. Doesn’t look like they read one fucking word. If anyone asks why we do what we do, we have a bulletproof argument, we acted because others failed to do so.

They broke their promises to us but I’ll make one promise here which will not be broken, you can do nothing, but we will do everything we humanly can to overthrow this evil regime.

We are the resistance. We are the new rebellion and justice is coming.

Matt O’Connor

24th April 2011

NB F4J has made a Freedom of Information request to find out how much this scam has cost the Taxpayer.

As I sat in a surgery today facing a line up of lost souls hanging by a thread above the well of despair, I noticed how the lexicon of Cafcass reports and hostile solicitors letters regularly used the words ‘controlling behaviour’ to describe fathers.

Without wishing to say anything negative about the men in front of me, none of them seemed prepared for a typical domestic dispute over a remote control, let alone ‘mind control’ and host of other behaviours designed to incarcerate helpless, vulnerable women to a life of servitude. Because of the outstanding successes in feminism over the last 30 years, we are still lead to believe women are still cowering under the kitchen table when dad gets home after 10 pints of wife-beater.

Now, that isn’t to say family violence isn’t a serious issue, but by blanket casting all mums as ‘victims’, it only serves to divert resources away from the most vulnerable mums. It also plays to the sickening stereotype that mums are madonna’s and dads are demons.

The Fanatical Feminist Taliban would have you believe that all violence is men on women which conveniently ignores the unpalatable truth; most abuse on children is mother on child and a carousel of stepfathers pose a greater risk to children than any father – just ask the father of Baby P. Yet we have perverse situation of a nation of fathers living with anyone else’s children, apart from their own, be it the children of their new partners or of course the next Ian Huntly or Roy Whiting living with yours.

That Domestic Violence has become a euphemism for father on mother violence is bad enough (thats why we call it Family Violence).

But when these fanatics use a new lexicon to slander an entire gender, it shows how pathetic our campaigns have really been and demands that we confront this bigotry head on.

There needs to be a ‘face off’ with Feminism.

Lets start with ‘controlling’.

I’ll tell you who is controlling; Those parents – mostly mothers – who control when a father can and can’t see their children.

I’ll tell you who is controlling; Those so-called child-care professionals and judges who control when a father can and cant see their children.

I’ll tell you who is controlling; Court Orders which are by definition CONTROL ORDERS, worse than those used to control terrorists, used against parents to sanction them pathetic amounts of state appointed time with their flesh and blood.

In the midst of today’s role call of misery, I could see how we need to turn this and use this lexicon against the system.

If ‘controlling behaviour’ is domestic violence, the next time you fill in a court form, fill in the Domestic Violence box to claim legal aid. Report the matter to your Police station – contact denial is child abuse and domestic violence. Demand to see their DV officer. If they refuse, go with as many family members as you can muster and visit your MP. Book multiple appointments for each family member to make the point. Even if the Police do nothing (and they almost certainly will) get a crime number – fight the power!

The only people being controlled are us by people who are ironically themselves out of control. If each of us makes a small stand, we can turn this into a campaign of direct action.

Harman and Co might be a case of ‘ground control to Major Tom’, but sometimes little battles can turn into big wins. Like changing channels, you can choose to change how you are treated.