Fighting for fathers' day

With more direct action planned in the run-up to Father's Day, Nick Morrison looks at how dads have been driven to desperation.

THEY see themselves as modern day suffragettes. Around 100 years after women chained themselves to railings and went on hunger strike to win the right to vote, fathers are taking direct action to win the right to see their children.

In the 18 months since its formation, Fathers 4 Justice (F4J) has become the militant wing of the fathers' movement. Its members have donned superhero garb to demonstrate outside court buildings, including in Cardiff yesterday, scale a crane in Manchester, climb Bristol's Clifton Suspension Bridge and clamber onto gantries over London's main roads, each time bringing traffic to a halt.

Last week saw its most high-profile stunt yet, when two protestors threw flour-filled condoms at Tony Blair during Prime Minister's Questions in the Commons, earning wall-to-wall media coverage, both favourable and not, as well as raising questions over Parliamentary security. Further events are planned in the run-up to Father's Day, on June 20.

The group's principal aim is to secure equal parental rights for fathers, its principal villains the courts who are biased against them, and the mothers who flout court orders to deny fathers access to their children. Beyond these, lies the legal system, which refuses to give fathers rights over their children.

F4J has snowballed in its short life, with 9,000 members nationwide, but has been slow to take off in the North-East, with 250 on its mailing list. All that is about to change, says the group's North-East spokesman Mike Kelly, with stunts planned for next month which will put the region at the forefront of the campaign.

He says F4J was born of a frustration at the failure of more conventional tactics to give fathers access to their children, and at the steady erosion of fathers' rights over the last 30 years.

"Fathers have put up with this for years, and the unfairness behind the system wasn't getting into the public eye," he says. "A father has got no rights to his children whatsoever. He has to go to court cap in hand and ask the legal system if he can see his children.

"And if the mother is being awkward, then the legal system will support her with public funding to stop the father seeing his children, while the father has to find the money to fund a court battle."

He says courts start with the presumption that the mother is the best person to bring up the children, but F4J believes both parents should start off on an equal basis.

"There are some bad fathers out there, and there are some bad mothers. The children should be with the best person to look after them, but it shouldn't be presumed that the mother should have automatic custody," he says.

But even when the courts grant fathers access to their children, this can be of little consequence if mothers refuse to comply. Courts are understandably reluctant to jail mothers, and fining them can damage the child's welfare, with the money generally coming out of the father's maintenance payments.

"The mother can basically do what she wants, because she knows that the courts won't enforce the orders," Mr Kelly says. "Until the courts start enforcing contact orders, it leaves one parent to do whatever they want.

"Jailing should be a very last resort, but there are a number of other things that could be done. The children could be placed with the father for a short period, and that may bring her to her senses, or you could bring in driving bans if they break court orders."

F4J is a non-violent organisation, but has still drawn considerable criticism over its stunts, particularly over the flour-throwing, widely condemned as irresponsible. Mr Kelly says the extremity of direct action is a result of desperation.

"We have got a lot of members who are willing to go to prison. Once you have taken their children away and stopped a father seeing them, you have hurt them as much as you can.

"People might think it is irresponsible, but fathers have been forced into it by a system that doesn't support them. This is a last desperate play for people to have the legal system changed. Fathers 4 Justice does not condone violence or intimidation. We regard some of the protests as a way of bringing out what is going on," he says.

The fear of more moderate groups is that F4J's actions will damage the cause of trying to make sure fathers can see their children. Tony Coe, president of the Equal Parenting Council, says he agrees with F4J's aims, but cannot support breaking the law.

"We don't believe it is actually productive, because it exposes fathers to the argument that it's no wonder they're not seeing their children. It is unfair, but nevertheless it is the sort of thing that influences lawmakers," he says."

While F4J might get a lot of publicity by its actions, it is in changing the law that its effectiveness will be judged. While the jury may be out on this, Mr Coe says the reaction from MPs to last week's flour bombing has been overwhelmingly negative.

"It has made our job more difficult. Now we have to try and persuade people that we are not all a bunch of nutcases," he says. "We have to take a reasonable line on everything we do and we have to come over as reasonable people."

But, although their tactics may differ, Mr Coe says their fundamental aim is the same: for both parents to be treated equally. "We don't have an assumption that a parent should have contact with their child, and if we had that then it would send a message and everybody's conduct would change."

Ministers are looking at possible changes to the family courts system, in response to concerns that bitter court battles end up damaging the children, with a consultation paper expected in July, but introducing equal parenting rights is not on the agenda.

A spokesman for the Department of Constitutional Affairs (DCA) says the consultation will examine the enforcement of court orders, with possible sanctions including community service. But he stresses that the majority of cases do not come to court, with 91 per cent of parents agreeing their own arrangements for access without reference to the law.

"The most important thing for the Government is that the child's interests are paramount - it is not a case of one parent above the other," he says. "We want to keep parents away from the family courts if possible, and it is the Government's view that there should be contact with both parents, as long as it is safe."

Lord Falconer has met F4J representatives in the past, on the basis that it is better to talk to campaigners rather than exclude them, but it's safe to say there are no further meetings on the horizon, in the wake of last week's flour attack.

But Mr Kelly is unrepentant. "Sometimes things have got to be done, even if that one individual stunt isn't exactly what everybody would like to see," he says. "When one of the suffragettes threw herself in front of a horse there was an outcry. Fathers 4 Justice never wants to do anything as extreme as that, but all these years later people look back on that and see things have changed.

"These are people who are prepared to close courts down and close bridges because they love their children. We're just dads who love our children, that's all we are."