A SHORT HISTORY OF FATHERS4JUSTICE

Nick Langford
Nationalisation of the Family

The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As
long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the
people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.
Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1925-1926

rifoin's first Labour government came to power in 1924 after campaigning as the women's
party. The Conservatives - with some prescience - had accused Labour of wanting to
destroy the family and take children from their mothers to be made the property of the state.
The Guardianship of Infants Act 1925 only went some way towards achieving that. The
Act was a compromise thrashed out between Pomsoy MocdonoId's governmenf and early feminist
groups. It gave mothers equal rights in parental disputes brought before the courts, equal
rights to appoint guardians after their deaths, and the right to receive maintenance from
fathers. It did not, however, make mothers 'joint guardians' and the father remained sole legal
guardian of his legitimate children. One perceptive magistrate observed,
Any number of societies existed to look after the rights of women and mothers, but he
had yet to hear of a society that looked after the rights of fathers.
Opponents warned the intrusion of the court into the private realm of the family was
intrinsically undesirable; it would introduce discord, and there would be no going back; the issues
over which parents disagreed were not open to resolution through clear legal principles. Courts
were concerned with the definite ascertainment of the parties' rights, and parental disputes
would be decided, not on the 'rights' of either party, but merely around their opinions and
according to the discretion of the judge.
The Act's most significant and historical innovation was the introduction, in Section 1, of
the principle that,
B

The court, shall regard the welfare of the infant as the first and paramount
consideration.
The legislation opened family law to the working classes and offered lawyers a new
untapped market. Parents were encouraged to take disputes to the courts and the number of
cases increased; it became commonplace and acceptable for issues concerning the parenting of
children to be resolved in the courts rather than by parents acting together in cooperation.
Surrendering parental authority to the courts was no longer seen as an indicator of parental
failure.
The 'welfare principle' takes parental authority from fathers, on the pretext of
increasing it for mothers, but transfers it instead to the State, enabling courts to intrude upon
family life, and to make value judgements about parents' ability to parent. Decisions about
children are no longer the preserve of parents and are taken by substandard and poorly-trained
social workers, who neither know your children, nor love them and who set about removing
children from loving families by default rather than providing them with the services and
education to stay together.
It is not chiIdren's inferesfs which ore enhonced buf fhose of fhe State, pretending to
act in the chiId's best interests. The legislation has had the effect of pitting the child against
his family: whereas the family had been viewed as a whole, and the first and best protection of
a child, under the welfare principle it becomes a threat to the child, which must be neutralised
by the intervention of the courts and social services. Thus do the courts justify their invasion
of private lives and their arrogation to themselves of parents' rights to make decisions for their
children.
The anti-family agenda has progressed more-or-less unhindered with only the occasional
minor setback, such as the abandonment of ContactPoint, fhe ChiIdren's Index. It is instructive
to compare what has happened in the UK with what the Bolsheviks did following the Russian
Revolution. Where Marx and Engels had envisaged the family withering away as the result of
other reforms within society, there were radicals amongst the Bolsheviks who would not wait
and advocated immediate abolition.
The leaders of Bolshevik Russia began to enact laws to realise Marx' and Engels' ideal of
a society in which marriage would be based solely on mutual love and the economic foundations
of monogamy would disappear, to be replaced by the economic care of all citizens by the State.
Because of the predominance of the Church in regulating marriage and fostering the family, the
first reform de-legalised religious marriage and made both marriage and divorce entirely

secular; the liberalising of divorce, enabling either partner unilaterally to end the marriage
without any legal consideration of the merits, was introduced in December 1917. In 1918 the
legal distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children was eradicated by the abolition of
illegitimacy - inheritance would be based only on birth. In addition adult sexual behaviour
formerly regarded as unacceptable, including adultery, homosexuality and even polygamy were
decriminalised. Childbearing outside of marriage thus received state approval. These reforms
were profoundly destructive, rejecting religion, traditional morality and family structures and
encouraging irresponsible sexual behaviour, but putting nothing constructive in their place.
This was further encouraged by the legalisation of abortion in November 1920.
Abortion became available without charge and the incidence increased rapidly. Concomitantly,
adoption was banned: it made no sense to allow the formation of families and responsible
porenfing of ofher porenfs' chiIdren if oborfion enobIed the destruction of potential families
before they formed. The rise in abandoned children, however, led to the repeal of this law in
1926.
In the same year came, finally, legislation
which removed any distinction between marriage
and cohabitation, giving rights to cohabitees
formerly enjoyed only by married couples.
Effectively marriage as an institution was
abolished.
The consequences of this reckless experimentation were a huge increase in individual
suffering, broken families (to the extent that amongst the peasantry family life ceased to
exist), moral decline and psychological excess. Men changed wives with alarming ease and
frequency and it became commonplace for young men of twenty to have had 3 or 4 marriages
and their sisters to have had as many abortions. In the absence of a welfare state seven and a
half million homeless children - the besprizorniki - roamed the streets. Boys joined gangs of
thieves while girls as young as eight turned to prostitution in return for a crust of bread.
Society lost its ability to sustain itself; when crises such as epidemics, famine and economic
collapse hit, individuals could no longer turn to the family for support.
These changes were short-lived, and by 1935 Russia began to return to more traditional,
conservative family policies. Sexual licence and irresponsibility were denounced and Engels'
theory that the family would wither away was proved false. In 1934 homosexuality was re-
criminalised and a campaign against sexual promiscuity was implemented. In 1936 abortion was

de-legalised and mothers were awarded benefits for families of 6 or more; medals were struck -
such as the Order of the Glory of Motherhood - for the most fertile. In 1944 cohabitation was
stripped of its legal status. Responsibility, self-discipline and family values were restored.
The establishment in the UK of the Welfare state on 5
th
July 1948 made it possible to
raise children independently of marriage: it divorced consequence from responsibility and
unintentionally fostered a rise in family breakdown. In the 1960s feminism celebrated three
great victories. The first was the legalisation in 1967 of abortion: babies, according to
campaigner Gloria Steinem, were parasites, and it was a woman's right to abort them. The old
values of fidelity, altruism, sexual restraint and personal responsibility were sacrificed to the
new religion of the self, personal growth and 'choice'. Fathers have no right in law to prevent
the abortion of a child.
The feminists' second legislative
victory was the introduction of unilateral
divorce in 1969, enabling women to ditch their
spouses without their consent and without
their having done any wrong. Marriage and
family ties were denounced as 'sIovery',
'dependency', 'IegoIised prosfifufion', and
presented as shackles which limit individual
fulfilment and from which women must be
liberated; divorce became easily procured
provided the parties agreed. These changes,
rolled out in virtually every jurisdiction
across the western world, constituted the largest, most reckless social experiment in history,
and completely shattered the concept of marriage as a legally binding contract. They removed
the guarantee that a child should have a father and that a father could know his child to be
legitimate. Petitions multiplied: in 1969 there had been 51,000 divorces; by 1972 this had more
than doubled to nearly 120,000, affecting 131,000 children.
The third victory was to have the new alternative lifestyles and fatherless homes
legitimised under the name of 'family', emptying this once potent word of all meaning; the
socialist mantra now is that 'families come in all shapes and sizes'. Family life in the developed
world has become politicised by a socialist ideology which is radical, destructive, fanatical and
inimical to the nuclear family, to marriage and to masculinity.

Defend your Family

Family law in this country 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.
Moff O'Connor, Fathers 4 Justice: the Inside Story, 2007

t is convenient to date the birth of the fofhers' righfs movemenf to 12
th
June 1974 and an
article in the Guardian newspaper written by Keith Parkin, a West Country financial
consultant and art collector. Together with Alick Elithorn, a child psychiatrist, he had
established a campaign to challenge the prevailing attitudes within the Family Courts,
A society called Families Need Fathers has been formed. It will campaign for equal
parental rights in cases of custody, care and control, and for realistic positive access
for the unsuccessful parent.
The challenges fathers face today have not improved in nearly 40 years: a lack of equal
treatment by the courts, the winner-takes-all outcomes, and the lack of access to his children
for the losing parent. The ease with which you can remove a father from his family and his
chiId's Iife is frighfening. Mo evidence is required ond if is oII 'IegoI' becouse if hos been sfomped
compIionf wifh fhe chiId's besf inferesfs. Parkin summarised the changes which had taken place
in family law since the 19th Century,
Under common law, it was the father who took precedence; under statutory law it is now
the mother who takes precedence. Such are the whims of social fashions. Previously
children were regarded as appendages of the authoritative father figure. Now they are
romantically viewed as extensions of the all-enveloping maternal ego.
Parkin reiterated the warning made in the 1920s that cases coming before the Family
Courts were not capable of resolution through the legal process,
Questions of custody, care and control should not be matters of law. To try to assess
chiIdren's needs in o Iifigious confexf onIy exocerbofes o sifuofion which is oIreody
complex and very sensitive, and the whole process is an affront to the dignity of men,
women and children.
I

The membership grew, Families Need Fathers flourished and in 1979 became a
registered charity. Its funding was more problematic however and the organisation began to
court strange bedfellows, starting with the GLC in 1985. In 1992 it began paying its staff.
Such changes - the need for a secure income, the requirement to keep donors on board -
necessitated substantial compromises. Formerly loyal members left and set up their own
organisations: Both Parents Forever, the Campaign for Justice in Divorce, the Association of
Shored Porenfing, fhe Shored Porenfing Informofion 0roup (SPI0). For mony members, FMF's
flirtation with New Labour, the most family-hostile government of recent times, was the last
straw and contributed to the foundation of Fathers 4 Justice. FNF gained substantial
government funding but lost any remaining integrity or credibility it may once have had; its 16
full-time staff were now professional charity workers with little personal experience of the
Family Courts.
As FNF failed to provide a focus for disenfranchised parents, family rights
organisations proliferated: the Equal Parenting Council, Child Rescue, Family and Youth Concern,
fhe UI Men's Movemenf, Men's Aid, Dods Affer Divorce, fhe CheIfenhom 0roup, fhe MofionoI
Society for Children and Family Contact, the National Association for Child Support Action,
Family Rights Group and the False Allegations Support Organisation. This reflected the huge
extent of the problem; but it also revealed something else. Some of these groups, like FNF in
its original conception, aimed to help fathers, others sought to influence policy through
lobbying, others, like SPIG, established databases of knowledge and research. This variety,
despite their often different though complementary functions, showed how disunited fathers
were in their basic approach to resolving their problems. Such disunity, coupled with petty
rivoIries ond confIicfs of egos, hos been of Ieosf os greof on obsfocIe os ony ofher, if wosn'f unfiI
2003, with the publication by Fathers 4 Justice of
their Blueprint for Family Law in the 21
st
Century,
that the movement had anything even resembling a
manifesto.
On 18
th
May 1995, contrary to the advice of
his lawyers, a disenfranchised father lodged an
official complaint about a welfare report prepared by
the Family Court Welfare Service (FCWS), a
department of the Probation Service. For a year the
FCWS prevaricated until the complaint reached a

secret tribunal which finally sent a letter to the father on 16

th
July 1996 stating that it hadn't
read his file, refused to obtain it and rejected his complaint.
In November the Chief Probation Officer wrote to the father's MP falsely claiming that
the file had indeed been read and was subsequently disciplined for lying. This fact, too, was
then denied. It emerged that when checking the quality of welfare reports the FCWS excluded
both the substance and the subject of the report. It was revealed also that the FCWS
provided its staff with no training and provided no guidelines; it possessed no research and
conducted none; it didn't know what its officials recommended, or what the outcome of those
recommendations were; it had never progressed beyond the trite adage, 'all cases are different'.
It had no research on what constituted a suitable or reasonable contact arrangement, the
minimum level of contact, or at what age a child should start overnight contact. In short, it
hadn't a clue what it was doing.
A scandal developed; parents across Britain lodged hundreds of complaints; frustrated
by the FCWS they then complained to their MPs. Who forwarded the complaints to the Home
Office. Which denied responsibility. This fact was
forwarded to the Lord Chancellor's Department which
denied responsibility for the Home Office. The
Probation Service itself was now at risk. In 1998 the
Home Secretary, Jack Straw, decided to separate the
two before further damage could be caused, and after
another three years of very destructive limbo the Welfare Service was effectively renamed.
Thus CAFCASS was set up due primarily to political expediency, and the necessity to
sever lines of responsibility and accountability. Many of the entirely untrained staff were
transferred directly to CAFCASS without additional training. Little changed beyond the name.
CAFCASS was rushed into existence to coincide with the launch of a new National Probation
Service and cobbled together from no fewer than 117 pre-existing, locally administered
agencies; it subsumed the roles of the Guardian ad Litem and Reporting Officer (GALRO)
Service, which hod mosfIy been odminisfered by IocoI oufhorifies, ond fhe ChiIdren's Division of
the Official Solicitor. This represented the common but false governmental belief that if a
couple of similar but distinct state agencies can be combined under one roof, you can get away
with giving them half the funding. The haste with which CAFCASS was established was,
according to a July 2003 House of Commons report, 'o serious misjudgemenf'.

There were delays in appointing the board, tensions between members of the
management team and financial irregularities. Most of the support to children in public law
proceedings had been provided hitherto by self-employed guardians ad litem who were appointed
directly by the courts with responsibility to them. Historically there was little or no supervision
of their case work, and they were administered through Local Authorities; they had a high level
of independence and were well respected by the courts. Their involvement, however, was costly.
Part of the remit of CAFCASS was to reduce this cost and subject the guardians to
increased management and supervision. Supported by their unions - especially NAGALRO - the
guardians naturally resisted. NAGALRO sought a judicial review of the proposed new fixed-fee
contracts; CAFCASS responded by seeking to eliminate self-employed contracts entirely. A
subsequent judicial review quashed this decision, but it was too late and many guardians had
left, while those who remained understandably felt harshly treated and undervalued. CAFCASS
came to be 'perceived as the enemy of a quality service to children'; major gaps opened up in the
service and the existing workforce was largely lost, to be replaced partially by local authority
social workers and unregulated charities. Some believed fhe Lord ChonceIIor's Deporfmenf did
not want the new organisation to maintain the standards achieved by the FCWS. The vital work
of establishing the policies and procedures of a new organisation, training, professional
development, research and IT were all neglected and a backlog of cases built up which has never
fully been cleared and which, following the 'Baby P' case, increased significantly.
CAFCASS never caught up with itself or operated within budget. The first chief
executive, Diane Shepherd, was suspended in November 2001 and was subsequently sacked for
mismanagement and other undisclosed reasons - probably for paying off a would-be whistle-
blower. In Augusf Z00Z boord member Judy WeIeminsky coIIed for o review of fhe boord's
membership, proposing representation from social work unions.
The original problems encountered by the Family Court Welfare Service continued with
CAFCASS: the lack of training, the lack of national performance guidelines, the lack of research
into the effect of its interventions, the lack of monitoring of outcomes and guidance on the
quantum of contact. For most of its history CAFCASS has had no minimum training requirement,
and no defined training budget. Many staff received no more than two days' training before
working on active cases. The 2003 DCA Select Committee report commented that 'CAFCASS'
failure to establish even a minimum training and professional development strand appears to us
to be one of their more serious shortcomings'.

Delay in appointing a guardian increased from 24 hours pre-CAFCASS to at least six

weeks post-CAFCASS. Fewer cases were handled, standards of recruitment declined, and the
required level of experience was reduced from five years to three; new guardians were unsure
of their role in proceedings and judges complained the work done was of an unacceptable
standard. There was no training or professional development, existing arrangements ceased and
there was no cooperation between old and new guardians. The original system of appraisal and
performance management disappeared so that there could be no input from staff into the
service's deveIopmenf - and yet one of the reasons for setting up CAFCASS in the first place
had been to ensure appropriate supervision and accountability of self-employed staff.
FreeIonce guordions were inifioIIy excIuded from emoiI ond fhe orgonisofion's infronef. Some 6
million was provided for a case management IT system, but the project was halted and the
money disappeared. Even when new hardware was acquired there was no case-management
software to run on it.
Herein lies the root failure of the entire family justice system, and it means that the
system operates with absolutely no idea what effect its intervention is having. The Commons
report observed that-
'evidence-based practice', which is of growing importance in areas such as health and
social care, is lacking, particularly in the area of the management of private law disputes
and decisions about contact. The complaints which we have received from non-resident
parents and their representative groups alleging bias against them on the part of
CAFCASS, for example, perhaps reflect the concern expressed by MCSI [the
Magistrates Courts Service of Inspection] that CAFCASS is to some extent working in a
vacuum when it comes to making recommendations to a court about what is going to be
best for any particular child.

The Birth of F4J

So all this was going on, along with the usual flotsam and jetsam: the campaign group
Fathers 4 Justice threw a condom filled wifh purpIe fIour of me during Prime Minisfer's
Questions (it was the shortest PMQs I ever did, and much was I grateful).
Tony Blair, A Journey, 2010

y 2001 Moff O'Connor - a London-based creative director and disenfranchised father -
was researching political activism. He was already a member of the Equal Parenting
Council and Families Need Fathers but had been thrown out of an East End meeting - 'o
deporfure Iounge for dispossessed dods' - after he tried to rouse the assembled fathers from
their collective stupor. With the support of another local father, Tony Lewis, O'Connor began
to put together plans for an alternative and sank 50,000 of his own money into what he has
called the biggest suicide mission of his life. The inaugural meeting was held in a school hall in
Gorleston, near Lowestoft, and was made up of FNF refugees.
In fodoy's 8rifoin o chiId's Iife prospecfs ore sef by fhe fime he is Z ond boreIy hoIf of
children will reach 16 with their families intact. Despite the great gravity of the issue,
Parliament has shirked its responsibility and allowed laws to remain in place which apply to a
society long since vanished. If hosn'f considered divorce reform since fhe chonges of I97I
which were themselves the result of a Royal Commission from 1956. The Conservatives
attempted some modest reform with the 1996 Family Law Act but most of it was abandoned
after the 1997 General Election.
In 2001 the Labour Government commissioned a report into the problem of contact,
Making Contact Work. Perhaps at the time its proposals seemed radical; now, with hindsight,
they lack ambition and insight: compromises between the grief of disenfranchised parents and
ideoIogicoIIy mofivofed orgonisofions Iike fhe MSPCC ond Women's Aid. The reporf
recommended more information be given to parents, more funding for the newly-formed
CAFCASS and for contact centres, greater use of mediation and conciliation, more flexible
representation of children, wider powers of enforcement and more research. Some of these
suggestions later led to the reforms of the Children and Adoption Act 2006, but there was no
mention at all in the report of what parents knew was actually required: open justice, early
intervention, equitable treatment of parents, and the monitoring and recording of outcomes.
B

To impIemenf fhe reporf fhe Lord ChonceIIor's Deporfmenf (Iofer fhe Deporfmenf for
Constitutional Affairs and now the Ministry of Justice) established a number of committees and
sub-committees which came to be lobbied heavily by the fathers' groups. Informal monthly
discussions were held with LCD staff such as Amanda Finlay, Warren Davis, Stuart Moore,
Yvonne Neary and Mike Tester. The 'groupthink' remained as Keith Parkin had described: that
mothers should retain sole 'custody, care and control'. A clear anti-father prejudice was
apparent and the decisive committee, the Outcomes and Evaluations Group, comprised nine
women and just one token man.
In June 2002 Amanda Finlay invited fathers' groups to nominate delegates and a
temporary 'Coalition for Equal Parenting' was formed: Tony Coe and Paul Duffield (Equal
Parenting Council), Penny Cross (MATCH), Stephen Fitzgerald (Coalition Coordinator), Tony
Lewis (FNF), Robert Whiston (Mankind) and Moff O'Connor.
A meeting was held at 1:00pm on Tuesday, 29
th
October hosted by Sally Field, Head of
Family Policy Division 2 and dubbed 'Misfress of Misery', ond Worren Dovies, Heod of ChiIdren
Branch. Their starting position was that there was nothing wrong with the system as it stood.
What they had been tasked to achieve was a way of making contact 'safe'. In other words, they
hod foken on boord fhe concerns of groups Iike Women's Aid ond fhe MSPCC buf hod chosen fo
reject outright the concerns of fathers. The delegates challenged their presumption that
contact was not safe. Field believed the feminist orthodoxy that continuing conflict between
parents was worse for children than loss of contact and reminded them that fathers had no
right in law to contact with their children, it was up to them to make an application to the Court;
the Government didn'f beIieve fhof 'a presumption of contact would be helpful', a meaningless
phrase with which fathers would become very familiar.
Making Contact Work recognised fhe concerns of Women's Aid over confocf in sifuofions
of domestic violence and included the reminder that this issue had been covered in the earlier
Report to the Lord Chancellor on the Question of Contact in Cases where there is Domestic
Violence in the Spring of 2000. The focus of Making Contact Work was, by contrast, on cases in
which domestic violence was not on issue. Women's Aid hod misundersfood 'the nature and
purpose of the consultation paper' and sought to introduce domestic violence as a component of
all cases. The LCD staff were manifestly determined to make the same error.
Worren Dovies moinfoined fhof fofhers hod fo prove confocf wouId be in fhe chiId's besf
interests (this was not at all what the Advisory Board on Family Law: Children Act Sub-
Committee had recommended); 'every case is different', he said, repeating another familiar

Government mantra. 'Thof's boIIocks,' snopped O'Connor, 'every murder case is different, but
the law is the same.' The LCD was challenged to provide evidence that could demonstrate the
rationale for severance from fathers. 'So I presume fhof fhe judiciory ond CAFCASS know
whof hoppens fo fhese kids offerwords7' demonded O'Connor, 'I presume fhere ore records for
fhe oufcome for chiIdren7' There wos silence. The coalition delegates concluded that court
decisions could only be based on conjecture, government mantra and deceit.
Tony Coe felt Field was trying to convince the delegates that Parliament had not
expressly intended that shared residence should be the common form of order when in his view
there was clear evidence that it had: Law Commission paper 172 had stated a child should more
commonly live with both parents
than with one; during the Commons
debate Sir Raymond Powell, Labour
MP for Ogmore, had hoped,
The Children Bill, which
emphasises the importance of
both mothers and fathers in child-
rearing, will end the inhuman, callous and cruel practice of divorcing a child from one of
his or her loyal and devoted parents.
Field clung to her point that non-resident parents did not lose equal parental
responsibility (an inconsequential detail in practice). Robert Whiston observed there was less
abuse in cases where both parents were involved in care; Field evaded this: abuse was a matter
for the Department of Health, not for them. Whiston felt the problem was one of judicial
training and wanted to know who trained the judges and what they were taught; Field responded
that the Judicial Studies Board was independent of the LCD.
Clearly the discussion was going nowhere: Field blocked every move, Moff O'Connor
demanded that the LCD engage in proper dialogue before storming out,
You fhink I'II roII over, don'f you7 Thof if you fickIe my beIIy I'II jusf roII over Iike every
ofher fucker you've skewered on your fomiIy borbecue. 8uf I won'f. When I come bock,
fhere wiII be o hundred more behind me. I oin'f pIoying by your ruIes ony more. I've gof
some new ones of my own.

The meeting was so badly handled by the LCD staff that Sally Field - and her colleague
of fhe Lord ChonceIIor's Deporfmenf, Amondo FinIoy - came to be celebrated as the midwives of
Fathers 4 Justice. By January all fathers' groups had pulled out of the talks.
Fathers 4 Justice, founded by Moff O'Connor os o 'Greenpeace for dads' and constituted
of hundreds of parents frusfrofed by fhe compoign's 30-year paralysis, eschewed the Families
Need Fathers committee-based approach; it was the first to take angry fathers out of the
back-rooms of public houses and put them onto the streets when on 17
th
December 150 Father
Christmases descended on London. Following the demonstration membership rocketed.
In 2003 Fathers 4 Justice launched an all-out campaign against CAFCASS involving
members clad in white paper suits and face-masks 'cleaning up family law' by scrubbing the
outside of CAFCASS offices, displaying placards and handing out leaflets. In August at least 30
CAFCASS offices reported receipt of hoax bombs; the offices were evacuated and Fathers 4
Justice were accused, but no arrests were made and to this day the perpetrators remain
unknown. September saw an extraordinarily contrived three-day show trial of three members,
Moff O'Connor, Seon O'ConneII ond Soroh Ashford, for fhe heinous crime of painting the door of
an Ipswich CAFCASS office purple. They each received a 12-month conditional discharge and
were ordered to pay costs. After the trial CAFCASS denied claims made in court that they
were nof properIy froined ond didn'f know whof fhey were doing, despite the evidence that they
had no means of knowing where the best interests of children lay.
In October the CAFCASS Chairman, Anthony Hewson, resigned, confessing that the
entire organisation was sinking under the weight of criticism, and in December, following a
Constitutional Affairs Select Committee report published that July, the Lord Chancellor, Lord
Falconer, dismissed the entire board after the service had descended into 'chaos' and
fronsferred responsibiIify from fhe Lord ChonceIIor's Department to the Minister for Children,
Margaret Hodge. Within a month Hodge demonstrated her utter unsuitability for the role. As
leader of Islington Council between 1982 and 1992 she had been responsible for its failure to
investigate allegations of child abuse. When Demetrious Panton went public in 2003 with his
claim to have been sexually abused by the head of a council-run chiIdren's home a number of
national papers called for her resignation. In a letter Hodge dismissed Panton as 'extremely
disturbed'. The letter, initially protected by judicial injunction, was eventually published,
forcing Hodge to poy Ponfon's IegoI cosfs ond to issue a public apology.
In February 2004, after 60 activists stormed a CAFCASS conference at the Britannia
Hotel in Coventry, the Family Court Minister, Lord Filkin, invited Fathers 4 Justice to 'crisis

talks' to head off all-out civil disruption. Following an article by F4J in the Economist, a senior
family judge, James Munby, launched a 'blistering attack' on the family justice system in which
he said that judges needed to 'face up honestly' fo fhe sysfem's foiIings. Munby blasted the
courts for 'scandalous' delays and mismanagement of cases, suggesting that the way courts dealt
with contact applications might even breach the European Convention on Human Rights. He
called for short jail terms for mothers who persistently flouted contact orders. Significantly,
he noted the need for the system to take account of public opinion over its failings; he feared
that the number of fathers who had justifiable grievance was 'foo mony for comforf'.
2004 was the year Fathers 4 Justice hit the headlines; recognising that the media had
IiffIe inferesf in fhe unfoIding scondoI wifhin fomiIy jusfice, O'Connor's sfrofegy fo 'moke fhe
injusfice visibIe' wos fo piggy-bock fhe fomiIy jusfice sfory on fop of fhe group's exposure of
serious gaps in post 9/11 national
security. On 19
th
May Guy
Harrison and Ron Davis gained
access to the VIP gallery of the
House of Commons during Prime
Minisfer's Quesfions. As Tory
leader Michael Howard finished a
particularly penetrating assault
on Blair, Harrison hurled a
condom filled with purple flour
and glitter at the Prime Minister.
If bursf open on 8Ioir's back, showering John Prescott and Gordon Brown who were seated
behind him, and creating a purple cloud which drifted across the chamber, necessitating an
evacuation. Scores of panicked MPs rushed out into the street, covered in dust which could
well, had the scenario been different, have carried spores of anthrax into the heart of London.
Only former Guardsman Iain Duncan Smith remained seated.
Harrison would return to the roof of Westminster Hall in September 2005 where in the
shadow of Big Ben he unfurled a banner urging FOR FAWKES SAKE, CHANGE FAMILY LAW.
In July F4J activists stormed York Minster where the Church of England was holding its
onnuoI 0eneroI Synod, O'Connor wos permiffed fo address the assembly and berate them for
ignoring the issue of family collapse and for marketing marriage without offering roadside
recovery or a breakdown service. As he left the congregation broke into spontaneous applause.

On 13
th
September F4J executed its most dangerous
and high profile stunt, and achieved its highest level of media
coverage to date. While the group was officially attending
Pon Dovies' heoring of 8ow Sfreef Mogisfrofes' Court, a small
team set off with a ladder and some superhero costumes for
Buckingham Palace. As one of the team steadied the ladder,
painter and decorator Jason Hatch climbed it, closely
followed by Dave Pyke. While Hatch managed to reach the
front of the Palace, Pyke was forced down by armed police.
Dressed as Batman, Hatch hung up a banner proclaiming,
SUPERDADS OF FATHERS 4 JUSTICE: FIGHTING FOR YOUR RIGHT TO SEE YOUR KIDS and stayed
on the Palace for 5 hours before being arrested.
The media response was unprecedented; these daring and colourful actions, supported
by an entirely new professional approach to campaigning with professionally-designed banners,
posters and leaflets, won the group unparalleled publicity for its cause and the membership
ballooned. Fathers 4 Justice groups, some official, some not, proliferated across the world, in
the US, Canada, South Africa, India, Israel, Holland. At the same time the backlash began;
crusaders for a vital cause were presented as canvassing for their own cases and tabloids like
fhe Mews of fhe WorId ond fhe Mirror offered Hofch's ond O'Connor's ex wives thousands to
dish the dirt, desperate to discredit the campaign. Journalists infiltrated local groups and
began collecting video evidence for future documentaries. O'Connor was himself labelled a
terrorist by the security services and his home and car were bugged. The hacking of his mobile
phone remains under investigation. He was embarrassing too many people in high places.
In the Autumn singer and political activist Bob Geldof weighed into the controversy with
a ferocious attack on the system,
The law is creating vast wells of
misery, massive discontent, an
unstable society of feral children and
feckless adolescents who have no
understanding of authority, no
knowledge of o mon's Iove ond how
differenf buf equoI if is fo o womon's.

Family law as it currently stands does not work. It is rarely of benefit to the child and
promotes injustice, conflict and unhappiness on a massive scale.
Geldof declared, 'My agenda is to change fhis Iow. If's o bIunf insfrumenf ond if you're
subjecf fo if you're freoking ouf. On Fofher's Doy there is a peak of suicides, because of the
fathers who are not allowed to see their kids on that day'. In these early days of the campaign
the broadsheets were comparatively supportive; an editorial in the Independent, for example,
approved, '8ob 0eIdof is righf, There ore fwo injusfices in porficuIor fhof cry ouf fo be
remedied, one reinforcing the other. The first is the anti-father bias of the family courts; the
other is their secrecy'. The paper added this very prescient warning, 'If Mr Geldof is in error,
it is in his implication that it is enough to recognise the injustices to put them right'.
This was an error which was to be repeated by the equal parenting campaign many times;
no one anticipated that the response of the system would simply be to shrug off the attacks
made on it and carry on its business as usual. The fathers' rights movement was dangerously
nave. The campaigners had believed that merely 'making the injustice visible' - in 0hondi's
phrase - would lead to wide-ranging reform; they failed to appreciate the forces ranged against
them which very much needed the status quo to endure.
An example of just how devious and remorseless these forces could be is provided by
the story of the 'Early Interventions' pilot project. The EI project was devised by the New
Approaches to Contact family policy review agency (NATC) to prevent disputes reaching the
point of intractability. The trigger for the project was MPs' realisation that the Family Court
Welfare Service 'did not regard it as appropriate or feasible' to give guidance to its
practitioners on the suitable level of contact between a father and his child. This meant
contact was often derisory and insufficient for the safeguarding of a relationship.
The two core elements of the project were programmes to educate separated parents in
how to act in the best interests of their children and compulsory mediation; as Judge John
Lenderman of Florida said, 'I'm fofoIIy convinced mediofion shouId be mondofory. Every judge
fhof I've foIked fo oround fhe Unifed States says mandatory mediation is the way to go'.
Mandatory mediation would have prevented parents resorting immediately to litigation in
order to get the outcome they wanted. The project aimed to ensure that children continued to
have 'generous, frequent and continuous contact' with both parents following divorce; Oliver
Cyriax, the former solicitor who headed the project, said, 'Most parents, judges, experts and
professionals already agree. An ideal model of alternate weekends, half the holidays and
midweek visits is hardly controversial'.

The reform would have introduced a long-overdue new model for the Family Courts, fully
articulated, fully-costed, fully-detailed and fully-endorsed by the Department for Constitutional
Affairs, the President of the Family Division, the family judiciary, the Family Law Bar
Association, the chairman of the Solicitors Family Law Association (now Resolution), the
Coalition for Equal Parenting, Fathers Direct, Families Need Fathers and - vitally - the leading
child development consultants, as well as other leading stakeholders.
The reforms were hijacked by two civil servants. Brian Kirby, CAFCASS Partnership
Manager, and Bruce Clark, a civil servant at the DfES who came from a family protection
background. They substituted on oId 'more-of-the-same' CAFCASS flop called Family
Resolutions for EI and then passed this for implementation to a 'Design Team' of nine civil
servants established by Margaret Hodge at the DfES.
Under CIork's scheme fhe priorify wos nof how to enable contact but protection from
'harm'. Any application for increased contact would trigger an investigation and risk assessment.
Where the quality of contact was deemed satisfactory there would be no need to increase it;
where it was unsatisfactory there would be no more contact; where the quality was
indeterminate there would be a cessation of contact while the case was deferred.
The minutes of the first meeting do not mention the EI project; Clark ensured that none
of the committee was familiar with the project, nor with existing family law or contact disputes.
On 25
th
May the team rejected the proposals without discussion. The EI documentation was
never even read; Eight years of specialist development work was written off. Oliver Cyriax
described the fiasco as, 'a green light to withhold any increase even where - as often happens -
contact is just two hours a fortnight. Applications for more access can be dismissed because
fhe oIIeged "quality" of fhe oppIiconf's exisfing confocf is good - and hence sufficient - or bad,
and thus too much'.
When the Government launched its Green Paper, PorenfoI Seporofion: ChiIdren's Meeds
and Parents' Responsibilities on 21
st
July 2004 Clark had fooled the ministries into presenting
the Family Resolutions Pilot Project as the culmination of the EI programme, but this was not
the case. In September the Pilot Project was launched in Brighton, inner London and Sunderland
and aimed to attract 1,000 participating couples.
A subsequent evaluation of the Pilot found that only 62 couples had been referred, that
only 29 completed the programme, and that 18 dropped out before even starting. District
Judge Nicholas Crichton blamed the lack of readiness, poor sales pitch and a suspicion amongst
potential clients that it was merely more of the same (which it was),

I do not see a difficulty in saying to people, 'If you want access to a judge in a
courtroom, which is a very expensive facility and not necessarily the best facility to try
to resolve your problems, you have first of all to try one of a range of options to see if
we can find another solution to your problem,' but because we could not do that we got
very significantly less [sic] people into the project than we had hoped for.
His colleague Mr Justice Munby agreed, 'Some will be disappointed - and I can
understand why - fhof fhe 0overnmenf's very recenfIy onnounced piIof scheme proposoIs onIy
encourage the use of mediation and do not make it mandatory'. Clark was the subject of an
'internal investigation' by his Permanent Secretary, Sir David Normington, who cleared him of all
wrong-doing in September 2005. Brian Kirby remained in CAFCASS, and continued to make
reports based on a discredited ideology.
The Act which finally resulted, the Children and Adoption Act 2006, was profoundly
unhelpful; it was based on the EI rhetoric of liberalisation, facilitating contact, and reform, but
the machinery of the Act was the machinery of deferral, oppression, restriction and the denial
of contact. The Conservatives' pre-Election commitments echoed the two EI principles, but
have been abandoned. It now seems extremely unlikely that the Early Interventions project, or
anything like it, will be resurrected in the foreseeable future and CAFCASS still has no
guidance on the quantum of contact.

The Rising

I wosn'f inferesfed in persuoding fhe esfobIishmenf fo reform fhe Iow. I wonfed fo beof
the fuckers into submission. I wanted every family law professional strung up by their
bollocks and hung from a lamp post until they apologised or rotted.
Moff O'Connor, Fathers 4 Justice: the Inside Story, 2007

ob Geldof agreed to support the new campaign against the Family Courts provided if didn'f
employ violence. Under the slogan In the Name of the Father Fathers 4 Justice put the
Government on 40 days' notice that families would no longer tolerate the abuses of the system
and issued Margaret Hodge, Jonathan Tross, the new chief executive of CAFCASS, and the
President of the Family Division, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, an ultimatum,
Enforce the will of
Parliament, enforce Court
Orders that are
continually broken by
recalcitrant mothers,
enforce the fact that
children have a right to a
meaningful, loving
relationship with both
parents or face a dramatic
escalation in our campaign.
At 3:00 am on the morning of the 21
st
October 2004 the protest Fathers 4 Justice
referred to as The Rising commenced. Just hours after the ultimatum to the Government
expired the group sprang into action. A team of five, two of them, Eddie Gorecki and Jolly
Stanesby, dressed as Batman and Robin, struck with ladders and scaled the front of the Royal
Courts of Justice. They planned to remain there for a week. While they admired the view
across London, about a dozen more members of the 'Fathers 4 Justice Family Law
Decontamination Squad', suitably equipped in full decontamination kit, breached the security of
CAFCASS offices and sought out Jonathan Tross - the CAFCASS chief executive and one of
the faces on the Fathers 4 Justice 'most wanted' set of playing cards. Entering peacefully, they
B

asked to see a senior manager, but were asked to make an appointment; they replied that
Fathers 4 Justice did not meet the 'stakeholder' protocol and then entered the building with
megaphones, whistles and air-horns. The Metropolitan Police arrived and stood by patiently until
the protestors left. About 2,000 fathers joined in the associated march through London.
Hopes were high within the campaign for an end to the Family Court injustice within two
years; the group made the error of which the Independent had accused Bob Geldof, that they
had only to alert an ignorant Parliament to the fact that the courts were not fulfilling the role
given them and Parliament would take action. This was far from the case.
In July 2004, and after four cancellations, Fathers 4 Justice member Paul Watson
finally managed to see his constituency MP, Tony Blair,
I pushed him again on what he would do. Where would he stop as a decent dad? 'Tony,
imagine someone snatched
Leo. Those police guys would
be swarming about. Imagine
fhof fhey couIdn'f find him
and someone said, 'Just leave
it Tony. He will come back
when he is older.' What would
you do? Would you give in?
Imagine you thought he was
next door in another house.
Would you break that door
down and risk upsetting the people inside and perhaps getting arrested. Would you do
that as a decent dad? Of course you would.' And he nodded.
I said, 'Because you would do anything for your kids, even if it meant you sometimes
overstepping the mark,' and he said, 'Yes, I would.' I told him he was no different to me
and I was no different to him.
Funpowder plotter Ron Davis also spoke to the PM on a radio phone-in in which Blair
appeared to give his support to a presumption of shared parenting; he promised to pursue the
matter with Davis, but never did.
The political response remained deeply depressing. The advent of Fathers 4 Justice
coincided with a government viciously opposed to the traditional family and its legislative

activity marginalised 'ordinary' families. Instead, it enabled innovations like gay adoption with
the 2002 Children and Adoption Act, and same-sex relationships with the 2004 Civil Partnership
Act. It promoted the belief that all men were violent, abusive and a risk to women and children.
Tony Blair appointed an Equalities Minister, Harriet Harman, whose only interest was equality
for women at the expense of men; he sold single motherhood as a lifestyle choice with huge
financial rewards and he started to remove fathers by design through the Human Fertilisation
and Embryology Act. Lobour's Iegocy wos fo be whof Mormon Tebbif chorocferised os 'an
expIosive breokdown in fomiIy Iife'.
Lobour's poIicy on seporofion wos nof published until 2004 in the form of the Green
Paper PorenfoI Seporofion: ChiIdren's needs ond porenfs' responsibilities. This was followed by a
consultation, to which Fathers 4 Justice contributed, and a further report, Next Steps.
Parental Separation was pitifully modest in ambition; it proposed to improve the
information available to parents, to introduce 'Parenting Plans' to help parents agree beneficial
arrangements, to extend the access to legal advice, to use legal
aid to encourage lawyers to work towards resolution rather than
conflict, to develop and support early intervention and mediation,
to introduce in-court conciliation, to improve case management, to
legislate for the enforcement of orders, and to coax CAFCASS
away from report-writing towards problem-solving. Most of this had
already been recommended in Making Contact Work.
Not all of these measures were introduced, and some, like in-court conciliation, were not
fruiffuI, despife fhe 0reen Poper's impIousibIe cIoim fhof if wos 'successful in achieving
resoIufion of fhe mojorify of coses wifhouf o confesfed courf heoring'. When academic Liz
Trinder's reporf demonsfrofed concIusiveIy fhe foiIure of conciIiofion fhere wos no offempf by
the Government to admit its error or try an alternative. Significantly, despite the unexpected
admission in Parental Separation that 'court-resolved disputes produce the least satisfactory
outcomes both for parents and children' and frequently necessitate repeat hearings, Labour
never looked at any out-of-court alternatives; for most parents, court remained then and
remains now the only available option in conflicted cases.
In June 2005 the new Chief Executive of CAFCASS, Anthony Douglas, took the
desperate step of writing an open letter exclusively to fathers in an attempt to head off their
growing campaign. The letter committed the agency to constructive cooperation with various
fathers' groups, including the display of Fathers 4 Justice leaflets in its offices,

For the last 6 months, CAFCASS has been in a constructive dialogue with Fathers 4
Justice with the twin objective of making progress on the issues facing fathers and
ovoiding o negofive cycIe of direcf ocfion ogoinsf our offices,
The evidence we have from research shows that our involvement results in more children
having more time with their fathers. In our view, long-term dialogue is more likely to
promote positive change and a stronger joint understanding than conflict.
CAFCASS and Fathers 4 Justice will be taking some practical steps to develop their
relationship further. This will include F4J meeting the CAFCASS Board in July, and
newly designed F4J leaflets being displayed in CAFCASS offices.
Fathers 4 Justice continued to engage in dialogue with CAFCASS and to have meetings
with Douglas and other senior managers, but CAFCASS never identified the research it cited
and never delivered on the commitments it made. Many in the organisation felt that F4J had
struck a deal with the devil and had betrayed its members. O'Connor's refusoI fo sfond
candidates in the General Election caused further dissatisfaction. A bid to launch F4J in the
US proved unsuccessful: a scouting mission had been dogged by three car-loads of FBI agents
and when F4J arrived in America to
launch the new enterprise their timid
American counterparts backed out of
the deal, preferring to set up a
charitable self-help group rather than
engage in confrontational activism, while
still using the F4J name and corporate
ID. O'Connor wos furious,
If's Iike sficking o Ferrori bodge on the
front of a fucking milk float!
Back in the UK one activist had
stolen 20,000 worth of banners and
merchandise and local coordinators were
pocketing membership fees. Grumblings
continued; there were high levels of
resignations and expulsions, leading to

fhe decision fo puII fhe pIonned Fofher's

Day demonstration. Splinter groups like
fhe 'PeoI' Fofhers 4 Jusfice ond fhe EquoI
Parenting Alliance were established by
fofhers who beIieved O'Connor hod
abandoned his founding principles.
O'Connor issued an ultimatum,
Anyone who wants to break their
agreements or go against the spirit
of the organisation I set up should
leave forthwith if they do not
agree now with what they originally
signed up to. I for one will not be
diverted from our objectives or our
way of working by a minority of
individuoIs, I'd osk everyone fo consider whefher if is righf fo embork on o period of
conflict where individuals will be fighting each other rather than fighting injustice.
Unknown fo O'Connor of the time, ITV had planned to run a two-part Granada
documentary about F4J to coincide with the demonstration. Instead they decided to show it in
November foIIowing fhe '8edIom' profesf - a colourful bed-push through London to promote
overnight staying contact as a minimum. Granada had resorted to shameful tactics in order to
present a palpably misleading picture of F4J, hiring thugs to infiltrate the group, plying
vulnerable fathers with alcohol and inciting them to violence. Because of the delay, the Tonight
programme, fronted by Trevor Macdonald, depicted members whose damaging conduct had
already been dealt with through expulsion. F4J - and Matt O'Connor in porficuIor - had got off
lightly.
In January 2006 however, O'Connor's Iuck ron ouf. The Sun newspaper published a front
page claiming that Special Branch had smashed a plot by Fathers 4 Justice to kidnap 5-year-old
Leo 8Ioir, fhe Prime Minisfer's son. By the evening it was the lead story on all the news
channels. The story was preposterous, and so obviously false that no journalist bothered
contacting F4J to verify it. F4J was in the business of reuniting children with their fathers,
not separating them. O'Connor wos owore, however, fhof fhe orgonisofion wos gravely damaged
and could not campaign credibly until the story blew over.

O'Connor now hod o boby, Archie, ond fhe growing sfress of running so confroversioI o
campaign was threatening his family life; he did the only thing he could do and mothballed the
organisation. It was a tactical retreat: a key aspect of O'Connor's non-formulaic approach was
to keep chopping and changing his strategy to prevent the security services guessing what his
next step would be and thus planning to intercept it.
The tale wos oImosf cerfoinIy fhe creofion of Pebekoh Wode, fhe Sun's edifor ond cIose
friend of the Blairs. Five years later and now known as Rebekah Brooks, she was forced to
resign as chief executive of News International following disclosure of the phone-hacking
scandal involving the News of the World during her time as editor. A News International insider
wrote, 'Scores, if not hundreds, of front-page stories were written by the PR men. They would
think up a headline and story and The Sun and News of the World would run it, word for word.
Some of them were complete fiction.'
The campaign was
revived, ironically, by the
jailing of one of its pre-
eminent members, barrister
Michael Cox (cover picture),
for refusing to pay the
fatherhood tax known as
chiId supporf. O'Connor
coIIored fhe CSA's bumptious
borrisfer, Tim Conconnon, oufside fhe courf, 'Poss my fhonks on fo your monogemenf. You hove
just re-ignifed fhe fIome of Fofhers 4 Jusfice'. The group returned to the front pages in May
with a demonstration which took the MofionoI Loffery Iive off oir, 'FomiIy Low Loffo,' reod fhe
tee-shirfs, 'Mexf fime if couId be you'. This time it was O'Connor's wife, Modine, who took
centre stage.

Portrait of an Activist

JOLLY STANESBY is one of the superheroes of the fathers' rights campaign, DKa
streak of fermented West Country cider pissIn September 2003 he camped for three days on a construction
crane 120ft above a new court building in Exeter. He said he wanted to talk to the Children's Minister,
Margaret Hodge, about why more than 1,000 children a week lost partial or total contact with their fathers. He
said, I hate heights, I can assure you, and if I had a choice I wouldn't be up here, but like I say, I've been
tortured basically and I know that thousands of thousands of dads are going through the same thing and I feel
I've got to go to whatever extreme it takes to do something about it.
A month later Jolly was up on the Royal Courts of Justice dresZ'-'
Batman. In November he appeared in court in Barnstaple dressed as a woman, a Doubtfire Dad, to appeal for
more time with his daughter, Rosie. In December he was up on Tower Bridge with a banner depicting Margaret
Hodge as a Christmas turkey with the message, GET PLUCKED MINISTER.
In January 2004 Jolly spent a week on W Tamar Bridge, risking his life in freezing temperatures.
In November Jolly finally met his arch nemesis, Hodge, at a family law conference in Manchester and made a
citizen's arrest with a pair of handcuffs. Later that month he was dressed up as Santa on the Second Severn
Crossing, closing it for 5 hours.
He was involved in the Lottery demo in May 2006, almost climbed aboard the Queen's coach at her Birthday
Procession in June, sat on the roof of Judge Tyzack's house in November - and was nearly shot, scaled
Stonehenge in February and flew to the US in 2007 to climb onto the Lincoln Memorial.
In June 2008, Jolly scaled the roof of ,,>
Dressed as Captain Conception he unfurled a banner which was hailed as the most successful yet. The slogan,
borrowed from an American campaign group, read, A FATHER IS FOR LIFE, NOT JUST CONCEPTION, a reference
to the ongoing debate into the Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
Though his stunts are not amongst the most dramatic or controversial F4J has done, Jolly is the most consistent
and reliable activist, never happier than when being arrested.

Breakdown Britain

It is about government realising that we have to create a level playing field for the
decisions people make about family. This means reversing the biases against stability
we've seen in recenf yeors, incIuding fhe domoging finoncioI discourogemenf fo coupIe
formation, despite the evidence of its stable outcomes for children.
Iain Duncan Smith, speech to 2011 Conservative Party Conference

he problem of family breakdown did not receive significant political scrutiny until 2006
with the publication of Breakdown Britain by the Social Justice Policy Group chaired by
the former Conservative Party leader, Iain Duncan Smith. The narrower issue of family court
injustice has featured even less prominently on the political agenda.
Family breakdown, according to the Social Justice
Policy Group, could be summed up in just three words:
dissolution, dysfunction and what it chose to call
(presumobIy for reosons of oIIiferofion) 'dad-Iessness'. If
criticised Labour policy which aimed to support all types of
family indiscriminately while ignoring 'the fact that some
family types, on average, result in better outcomes for
chiIdren ond oduIfs fhon ofhers'. The reporf ocknowIedged
- perhaps for the first time - the role played in sponsoring
family breakdown by the legal system: 'across 18 European countries, the combined effect of all
legal reforms conservatively amounts to 20% of the increase in divorce rates between 1960 and
Z00Z', ond condemned proposoIs by fhe Low Commission fo exfend righfs fo cohobifing coupIes
on the grounds that 'the dissolution of cohabiting partnerships is the main driver behind lone
porenf fomiIy formofion in fhe UI'. The reporf endorsed fomiIy-centred rather than exclusively
child-centred policies; the stabilisation of families and promotion of marriage; and the
empowering of individuals rather than the state to raise children.
Breakdown Britain revealed the appalling rates of family breakdown, educational failure,
welfare dependency, drug and alcohol addiction and indebtedness within modern Britain, despite
the massive spending on welfare which now exceeds income tax receipt. The report showed
Lobour's cIoim fo hove 'lifted 2 million people out of poverty' was false, and that there were
more people in severe poverty than there had been a decade earlier. Concentration on material
T

poverty - however ineffective - had left the contributory factors neglected, such as family
breakdown, drug and alcohol dependency, unemployment and poor education. The report
revealed the direct, causal link between the strength and heoIfh of o chiId's fomiIy ond fhof
chiId's prospecfs in Iife, ond yef Lobour had remained indifferent, refusing to address the
centrality of family breakdown in causing and sustaining poverty.
The standard political response to the family crisis has been to pretend it wosn'f
happening and to refuse to engage properly with campaigners. When Fathers 4 Justice climbed
onto the roof of Lobour's perversely named Minister for Equality, Harriet Harman, in June 2008
she denied they had ever sought a meeting and said they could have attended her regular Friday
constituency surgery at Southwark Town Hall two days earlier,
They have said this is because they want a meeting but I checked with my constituency
office ond fhey hoven'f
requested a meeting.
I checked with my ministerial
office and they hoven'f
requested a meeting there.
Her earlier letter to
Moff O'Connor's MP Mark Oaten
contradicted this, and said,
'ministerial commitments mean I
am unable to meef Mr O'Connor,
but should he wish to make any comments or suggestions on family justice issues I would ask
that he writes to me or my officioIs of fhe obove oddress'.
In Z00o pu;;Ied ocodemic Pichord CoIIier osked, 'Why is if felt... that law is
sysfemoficoIIy discriminofing ogoinsf men7' CoIIier fypified fhe cIosed mind-set of his ilk by
evoding fhe simpIesf woy of onswering fhis: evoIuofing fhe movemenf's cIoims by Iooking bofh of
the legislation, and then at the way it is interpreted and applied and the consequences it has.
The obvious possibility that there might be something rotten in family justice was taboo. Two
years later, Collier, now a father himself, had undergone an epiphany,
There is, crucially, no assumption [in law] to shared residence or 'equal parenting'
arrangements. There is, rather, a lack of political commitment to dealing with, and
taking seriously, the specific circumstances of separated fathers.

...the failure of the law to accord fathers equal contact time with their children is
perceived os o psychoIogicoI injury reIofing fo mony men's sense of fheir worfh, nof jusf
as fathers, but also, importantly, as men.
Fathers 4 Justice continued to request meetings with ministers but were repeatedly
turned down. In December 2007 the Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain (who had
responsibility for the CSA) invited Fathers 4 Justice management to a meeting in his Neath
constituency, but when they travelled the 170 miles from Southampton he refused to see them,
Here was a Minister who would shake the hands of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness,
buf wouIdn'f shoke fhe honds of o mon who is known onIy for boIsfering soIes of
superhero gorb in our nofion's foncy-dress shops.
Of course, politicians, like anyone else, are able to
understand these issues when it affects them. In 2004
Home Secretary David Blunkett began court
proceedings to have contact with his 2-year-old
illegitimate son; he was awarded a miserly 2 hours
supervised contact per month but declined the offer of
free F4J membership. The preferred ministerial
response fo O'Connor's challenge was rather to
discredit his organisation - the alleged plot to kidnap Leo
Blair being only the most extreme example. Rival but
ineffective groups were offered government funding
in order to lure away members and undermine the campaign. US family crusader Stephen
Baskerville explains,
Fatherhood promotion groups are no more immune than anyone else from the allure of
government money, which can easily end up fuelling the patronage and the problem
rather than providing the solution... In its attack on independent fathers' groups which
are funded entirely by members' contributions and receive no government money, the
National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges (itself government-funded) and the
US Justice Department suggest countering the message of fathers' advocates by
offering financial payments to fatherhood organisations willing to toe a government-
approved line and join in the vilification of fathers: 'To counter these harmful messages
[of fathers' groups], the voices of 'responsible' fathers' groups must be heard on the

subject of domestic violence and child custody - and there must be an increase in
resources fo fhese groups so fheir voices con be heord.'
The Fathers 4 Justice campaign trod water after 2007 but took off again in 2010. The
key furning poinf for O'Connor which compeIIed him fo refurn fo compoigning wos fhe nighfmore
of going through the hellish system o second fime. O'Connor hod mef his wife, Modine, of on F4J
meeting she had attended, seeking advice on her own case which the courts have dragged out
now for over 10 years. O'Connor hos fhree sons - he wos defermined fhof he wouIdn'f hove fo
endure the horror a third time with one of them; he said,
To experience family law once is traumatic. To experience it twice leaves you desperate,
traumatised and emotionally disembowelled. I consider the actions of the judiciary in
my wife's cose fo be mofivofed nof ouf of fhe chiId's besf inferesfs, buf ouf of moIice
and spite against us for the campaign we have run against them. I do not recognise their
authority and I consider their actions a threat to the welfare of our children and family
and for that reason alone, I felt compelled to act.

From Crisis to Meltdown

We cannot afford to proceed on the blinkered assumption that there have been no
miscarriages of justice in the family justice system. This is something that has to be
addressed with honesty and candour if the family justice system is not to suffer
further loss of public confidence. Open and public debate in the media is essential.
Family Court judge Mr Justice Munby

emember what Family Court judge, Peter Singer, said in 2003 after there had been
61,000 applications for contact that year and family proceedings had cost 426 million?
In 2003 the system was already acknowledged to be in crisis, and yet by 2009 applications had
risen to 95,000 and the cost of the system had doubled; some cases were dragging on for 8 or 9
years with no end in sight. Even the judiciary was beginning to wake up to the calamitous
effects of fatherlessness; in April 2008 one of the most senior family judges, Sir Paul
Coleridge, spoke to members of the family lawyers' association Resolution:
It is a never ending carnival of human misery. A ceaseless river of human distress... The
effects of family breakdown on the life of the nation and ordinary people in this country
will, within the next 20 years be as marked and as destructive as the effects of global
warming. We are experiencing a period of family meltdown whose effects will be as
catastrophic as the meltdown of the ice caps.
In a further speech Paul Coleridge emphasised the public nature of the crisis and the
need to return to marriage as a gold standard,
In the end it is the behaviour of individuals which has driven us here and it is only
changes in behaviour which can make a radical difference and ease the burden on the
services.
The fundamental change in individual attitude and behaviour that is required, is in our
assumption that the way in which we conduct our private lives in relation to both the
production and parenting of children or the break-up a parental relationship, is a private
matter which only affects the individuals directly concerned.
No, it is not. It is a public matter; of real public interest and real public concern.
R

Campaigners and commentators alike have run out of vocabulary to describe a system
which seems to have an infinite capacity to deteriorate. Following the Laming inquiry into the
death of Victoria Climbi and consequent introduction of the Every Child Matters agenda the
emphasis became to ensure that the impact of human fallibility and incompetence amongst social
workers - including CAFCASS - was minimised. One effect of this had been to introduce a cut-
down pro forma for CAFCASS to follow in all cases instead of the standard welfare reports
which were taking a year or more to deliver. Almost immediately this was criticised for being
too restricted to cover all eventualities, for failing to promote rigorous analysis and for
encouraging instead a 'stream of consciousness report' which was hard to follow and superficial.
Most worryingly, it jettisoned the welfare checklist which CAFCASS was statutorily obliged to
follow in all cases and which had formed the basis of complete reports. This represented an
extraordinary dereliction of the duty imposed by Parliament.
In June 2009 CAFCASS reported massive increases in both private and public law cases.
At the same time, due to pressure on its budget, CAFCASS had reduced the number of
practitioners it employed by up to 50% in some areas, despite a rise in applications of up to
70%; a funding crisis led to the cutting of a further 70 jobs in September. To reduce costs
more case-load was transferred to entirely unqualified and unaccountable charities. CAFCASS
claimed this was only temporary though it continues. An ongoing recruitment crisis led to what
many argued was the appointment of an even more inadequately trained and inexperienced
workforce. There was evidence that unqualified trainees were being required to produce
welfare reports, and that former staff were being pulled out of retirement.
CAFCASS introduced a system of 'duty allocation' whereby cases were allocated on an
interim basis to a duty FCA in order to reduce the number of unallocated cases; these had
peaked at 1,000 in August 2009 and fell to 150 by September 2010. Massaging the figures in
this way looks better on paper, but allocating a case is a very long way from resolving it
satisfactorily. Duty allocation was widely unpopular because it effectively guaranteed that very
little work would be done once a case had been allocated in this way
In December 2009 a threat by the union NAPO to strike over soaring workloads and low
morale was narrowly avoided only through an emergency cash injection of 1.6 million. Cases
were being apportioned 25 hours, though many could take twice that; the individual caseload
increased from 12 in 2008 to 20, with the expectation that it would rise to 28 in early 2010; by
October an average caseload had risen to 35. NAPO produced a press release followed by a

parliamentary briefing paper claiming CAFCASS was in meltdown, and pointing out that the head
office budget had increased threefold whilst delays lengthened and staff morale collapsed.
Predictably Chief Executive Anthony Douglas dismissed all concerns, 'All public bodies
have to use taxpayer resources wisely and as our figures show our efforts to tackle the
increase in cases ore yieIding resuIfs'. The response of monogemenf wos fo suppress
expressions of discontent and to bully employees into compliance. The then President of the
Family Division, Sir Mark Potter, was forced to introduce emergency measures to limit the role
played by CAFCASS and give the service an opportunity to clear its backlog, cutting the service
provided below anything which could optimistically be called a bare minimum. These measures
were only lifted in September 2011 by which time public law applications were still soaring but
private law cases had actually dropped back a little.
In May 2010 the
Official Solicitor contacted
family lawyers to announce
that his staff were unable
to act as guardians ad litem
in new chiIdren's coses due
to the relentless rise in
demand. All other options
should be exhausted first
and his staff be used only
as a last resort. The
acceptance criteria were
changed to become more restrictive and cases were only accepted once a case manager became
available.
In July a report by the National Audit Office censured CAFCASS for failing to tackle
organisational problems. Had it done so it might have been in a better position to meet the
sudden rise in demand following the 'Baby P' case. The report also highlighted poor morale and
high rates of sickness and absence. MPs demanded a full enquiry into the 'endemic problems' at
CAFCASS. The complacent response from CEO Anthony Douglas was typical,
I am pleased that the NAO has recognised the steps that we have taken to improve our
ability to provide a service to so many more children than ever before.

A large group of interested bodies including lawyers, social workers and adoption
agencies had come together to form the Interdisciplinary Alliance for Children (IAC), and they
greeted the NAO report with an unprecedented joint position statement expressing grave
concerns about CAFCASS and questioning whether its model of service delivery was the most
effective at securing beneficial outcomes for children or the most cost-effective. Concerns
included,
The unacceptable levels of backlog and delay;
The foiIure fo compIy wifh fhe Service's sfofufory obIigofions due fo o revision of
priorifies in Iine wifh operofionoI need rofher fhon chiIdren's weIfore, including the
unilateral re-writing of the Children Act;
An emergency footing intended to be temporary but which had lasted over a year,
under which CAFCASS was offering only a minimum service;
The assumption that what is best for CAFCASS will be best for children;
Increased bureaucracy; and
The inadequacy of the OFSTED inspection framework.
Once again CAFCASS CEO Anthony Douglas airily dismissed their concerns; the
comments of a former CAFCASS employee writing on an internet forum are enlightening:
It was my experience that it was a 'bullying' / seriously over-bureaucratic / unwilling to
listen / unwilling to be challenged and generally unfit for purpose organisation that
cerfoinIy didn'f puf chiIdren firsf ond offen cerfoinIy did nof do righf by mony parents.
Their pre-occupation with getting staff on 'Action Plans' rather than addressing the
weaknesses in staff moral and competence was just awful.
Whilst there was (and no doubt remains) a clear case for re-evoIuofing whof CAFCASS's
priorities ought to be, the centralised governance of the Organisation was impenetrable
- what Douglas and his cohorts said just went regardless of whether it made any
professional sense.
Douglas really should resign or be sacked - he refuses to accept the depths of the
problems and that in itself is unhelpful. The Unions and Professional Associations
appear united in sharing concerns - is everyone wrong but Anthony Douglas? - I think
not.

On the 9
th
of Augusf fhe chorify 8ornordo's worned fhof chiIdren were hoving fo woif an
average of 57 weeks for county courts to make care or supervision orders; in London the
average was 65 weeks. In September the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee
launched an enquiry into CAFCASS which fell a long way short of the detailed investigation MPs
had demanded and took oral evidence from only four witnesses, Anthony Douglas, David Bell,
Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education, Sir Nicholas Wall, President of the
Family Division, and Sir Mark Hedley, a High Court family judge; the Committee was chaired by
Margaret Hodge who said,
I will want to understand why, some seven years after it was formed, the organisation
lacked the managerial competence to deliver an effective service. The case of Baby P
highlighted serious underlying issues and we will want to understand whether backlogs
and delays were generated solely as a consequence or could have been avoided with
improved management practice.
Opening the proceedings she challenged Anthony Douglas and David Bell,
If you look at staff sickness and staff morale issues, they are dreadful. If you look at
fhe inoccurocy of dofo, if is shocking, If you Iook of fhe Ofsfed inspecfions, eighf ouf
of I0 foiIed... If you Iook of overspending,we hove hod fo boiI fhem ouf. AII fhof reods
to me as it is one of the most shocking reports that I have read-of an organisation that
is not fit for purpose; and you are responsible for it.
It is the responses from Anthony Douglas which make the most astonishing reading, and
demonstrate what had by this time become an almost pathological inability to face the
unremitting failure of CAFCASS to perform the role imposed on it by Parliament. Margaret
Hodge raised the issue of 'duty allocation' and made the distinction between allocating cases and
resolving them. An average delay of 58 weeks to receive a report meant that some cases were
waiting 3 or 4 years.
Pressed by committee member Stephen Barclay MP on what duty allocation actually
entailed, and whether it meant work had started or had merely been given a name, Douglas was
especially evasive. Barclay then tried a different tack and asked Douglas - who was being paid
more than the Prime Minister - whether he thought CAFCASS provided a world-class service, as
he had claimed in the 2004-05 accounts. The response is extraordinary,
Douglas: I believe it is.
Barclay: You believe it is.

Hodge: On what basis?

Douglas: We have represented in the course of our history from 2001 well over a million
children.
Hodge: Yes, buf fhof's numbers, fhof's nof quoIify.
In November the Public Accounts Committee produced its report; dramatically it
proclaimed CAFCASS to be 'nof fif for purpose': CAFCASS had failed to foresee the rise in
demand and had no contingency measures in place, it took far too long to introduce a
performance management framework and was suffering from under-performing staff, low
morale and unacceptable levels of sickness absence. Staff were not complying with new
requirements and this was undermining efforts to
improve performance. The poor quality of reports from
social workers was putting additional pressure on
CAFCASS staff who were having to redo the work.
The Committee recommended CAFCASS
introduce new action plans, management plans and
contingency plans, reporting back in a year. None of its
recommendations seemed likely to challenge the
steadfast resistance of the organisation to any
improvement during its entire history. To be fair it is
impossible to give any sensible suggestions on reform of
CAFCASS when the most obvious solution - abolition - is
unacceptable for political reasons. NAPO responded that the last thing CAFCASS needed was
yet more extremely expensive, top-heavy management; rather, there should be less bureaucracy
and staff should be allowed to get on with their jobs,

It is the best interests of children that is the paramount consideration here, not the
best interests of Cafcass fhe orgonisofion. ChiIdren's voices ore being siIenced by fhe
very agency that should be listening to them and ensuring that the court knows what is
happening to them. Above all we must preserve the important role that protects
children, even if we have to create a new way of delivering it.

Welfare or Farewell

The system does not work coherently. Organisations plan together only spasmodically.
There is distrust, with now a vicious circle of layers of checking and scrutiny that lead
to work being done less well in the first place. There are few means of mutual learning
and feedback. The lack of IT and management information is astonishing, with the
result - among other things - that little is known about performance and what things
cost. The system, in short, is not a system.
Sir David Norgrove, Family Justice Review: Interim Report

Shortly before the 2010 General Election the doomed Labour Government set up a
review of the family justice system. Once again it fell far short of the comprehensive analysis
demanded by parenting groups with a remit confined the promotion of informed settlement and
agreement and more efficient administration. As Sir Paul Coleridge said, the remit was
concerned only with procedure and not with principle. The Conservatives said it wos 'inodequofe
ond nof for reoching enough'.
The panel was drawn from a local authority child protection background representing
interests vested in the system, not families and children. Fathers 4 Justice submitted a
comprehensive package consisting of revised copies of its Family Justice on Trial report and the
Blueprint for Family Law in the 21
st
Century, as well as The Official F4J Handbook.
Concerned about possible disruption during the General Election David Cameron sent in
Shadow Justice Minister Henry Bellingham - whose own brother had had contact problems - to
meet a team from F4J wifh on 'offer' fhof wos coIcuIofed fo keep fhe compoigners quief ond
which they hoped would gain them a few more votes along the way. So devious was David
Cameron that he even used one of his
prospective MPs, Caroline Nokes, to
support the offer, setting her up with a
promise she was never going to be able to
keep to her constituents. In a joint
statement Bellingham committed the
Conservatives to the following remarkable
series of policies:

1. A new definition of cooperative parenting ensuring that parents know clearly what is
expected of them before they enter the courts, denying them the option of
prolonged litigation;
2. A legal presumption in favour of automatic shared parenting within a context of
equal Parental Responsibility (no rights without responsibility);
3. Early intervention and mediation before couples see a solicitor, provided through
Australian-sfyIe fomiIy jusfice 'hubs',
4. Enforceable Contact Orders and zero-tolerance of excuses, delay and false
allegations, including the withdrawal of benefits from parents who unreasonably
withhold access;
5. Granting grandparents the automatic right to make Section 8 applications without
having to apply for leave;
6. CAFCASS to have minimum intervention in private law cases and to concentrate their
role on public law cases and child protection issues;
7. A pro-active judiciary with more efficient handling of cases and greater judicial
continuity;
8. An urgent and thorough review of family justice through wide consultation with
interested groups leading to an interim report by the Autumn of 2010;
9. Reduction of the intolerable cost to the economy caused by family breakdown and
proIonged Iifigofion of foxpoyers' expense,
10. An end fo fhe ruinous desfrucfion of chiIdren's ospirofions ond pofenfioI coused by
family breakdown and conflict.
The reality of the Conservative/Liberal Coalition Government was a huge disappointment
to parenting campaigners. Far from adopting the coherent policies the Conservatives had spent
years developing, the Coalition mereIy foIIowed Lobour's programme and rhetoric, extending
rights to cohabiting couples and further undermining marriage. Rather than wait for the
outcome of the Family Justice Review the Government decided to initiate radical changes in the
family justice system, including the abolition from April 2012 of legal aid in all family cases
except those in which there was proven domestic violence. Fathers 4 Justice took the news on
the chin, they advised their members against the use of solicitors anyway. Lowyers'
associations, however, were incandescent. They were already sorely provoked: legal aid rates of
pay had been reduced 10% and in August the Law Society had announced it was taking the Legal
Services Commission to court seeking a declaration that the family tender process - which would
reduce the number of firms providing family work from 2,400 to 1,300 - was 'unlawful' and
asking for a suspension of the new contracts.
A month later the High Court declared the tender process unlawful and likely seriously
to reduce access to justice for children and their families. The LSC was forced to extend the
existing contracts until 30
th
November 2011. Shortly before Lord Justice Nicholas Wall became

President of the Family Division he delivered one of the most outspoken speeches ever made by
a family judge. The family justice system was, he said, in a 'porIous sfofe',
My anxiety is that - due largely to a lack of appropriate resources - neither the court
itself nor the out of court facilities is serving disadvantaged children, as both should.
There is, I think, a profound irony in the fact that family justice is funded by those who
know nothing about it, and have never practised it.
If the Family Justice System is not properly funded it will implode, and it is the children
who will suffer most. It really is welfare or farewell.
The themes hiding behind the clumsy word play are familiar: the system lacks
'resources', i.e. money - pump in more cosh ond oII wiII be weII, confroI of fhe sysfem's funding
should be handed to the judiciary. Wall had sent a letter to the Legal Services Commission
expressing his concern that the reallocation of legal aid contracts would lead to the loss of
competent and experienced lawyers, while inexperienced firms would take over much of their
work, leading to huge delays and an increase in litigants forced to represent themselves,
If we end up with an unworkable system, or a system operated by those who are
inexperienced and/or do not know fully what they are doing, everyone will lose out. The
principal losers, of course, will be those whom the system is most designed to protect,
namely vulnerable families and children. Cases will take longer, there will be many more
litigants in person, and there is a grave danger that the system will simply implode.
The previous week two lawyers representing the Association of Lawyers for Children,
Piers Pressdee and Alan Bean, conveyed similar fears in a letter to the Times,
Inexcusably, many of the most experienced children lawyers in the country are set to be
excluded from the system just when the need for them is greatest. Unless the
Government steps in, from October the family justice system, already creaking from
years of under-investment, will officially be in complete meltdown.
In November 2010 the outspoken Paul Coleridge returned to the debate; against a
background of rapidly increasing case load and a threatened 23% cut in spending he estimated
that 3 million children were directly affected by the family justice system. Coleridge warned
that the authority of the Family Courts was being undermined, that orders were not obeyed
promptly or fully, that it was time authority was reaffirmed. While rejecting the belief that
the system was on the point of collapse, he referred to the 'emerging crisis' and declined to

speculate about where the system would be in five years. The take-it-or-leave-it approach to
orders and the failure of the courts to enforce its orders was leading 'to ever more hearings
and ever more interventions by guardians, social workers, CAFCASS officers and child experts
of all descriptions. And this is extremely expensive of time (both in and out of court) and so
money and both are, as I say, in ever scorcer suppIy. We simpIy con no Ionger offord if'.
Addressing fhe judiciory of fhe Lord Moyor's dinner, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord
Judge, put the rhetorical question,
Does our traditional, adversarial system continue to provide the best means of enabling
judges to decide those desperately sensitive cases involving the future of children? We
really must consider whether these processes are the best in the year 2010.
These dire warnings didn't represent the first time anyone had expressed concern about
family justice; what was new were the sources: the doomsayers worked deep within the system.
What most of them were worried about, of course, was their wages. At a time when the public
finances had been bled dry by the previous administration, calls for more funding were
extraordinarily inappropriate and self-interested. The challenge for organisations campaigning
for reform was to take the argument in an entirely new direction, with a vision for a new system
of family justice which could operate with greater justice, greater efficiency and lower costs.
Fathers 4 Justice had first done this in 2003 in the Blueprint for Family Law in the 21
st
Century
which it had just rewritten.
In May 2011 Coleridge spoke again on the topic of whether or not family law shapes
society (it is surely the purpose of the law to change behaviour). Current family law, he said,
was essentially based on principles from the 1950s: it was a dead parrot. He dismissed the
Family Justice Review for being concerned only 'with money saving procedures not principles' and
condemned successive governments for failing to grasp the nettle of legislative reform, allowing
law to be made up by the judiciary in notable precedents such as White v White and
Radamacher v Granatino,
The result of this ducking of the unpleasant by the legislature is of course that all
important changes to family law property rights have been created, fashioned and
introduced by the courts and judges largely unnoticed by the general public.
As Fathers 4 Justice had done nearly 10 years before, Coleridge called for an
independent commission to be established to take a fresh look at the law,

Why an independent Commission? Because it has to be completely non- political,

independent and authoritative. This is not the stuff of a page or two in a party political
manifesto.
No political party, by itself, has the will to make the changes because any change will
attract flack from one quarter or another, or may be all four simultaneously. And
everyone has a point of view and an agenda. Despite brave attempts and good intentions
government has shrunk from reforming both the law of divorce and cohabitation; it is
simply too hot to handle and very consuming of parliamentary time.
Divorce reform is long overdue for attention by parliament. They need to put their
minds fo fhese issues, don'f you fhink7
The Coalition Government continued the political ossouIf on fomiIies. On Fofhers' Doy
2011 Prime Minister David Cameron made the tactical error of using an article in the Telegraph
to deride all absent fathers,
We need to make Britain a genuinely hostile pIoce for fofhers who go AWOL. If's high
time runaway dads were stigmatised, and the full force of shame was heaped upon them.
They should be looked at like drink drivers, people who are beyond the pale.
Contrary to what his apologists said, Cameron made no attempt to distinguish between
those fathers who abandoned their responsibilities and those who were absent through no fault
of fheir own. For Comeron, fo be obsenf wos o moroI ond socioI foiIing. Moff O'Connor
responded with a hunger strike outside Comeron's consfifuency home foIIowed by o
demonstration outside Buckingham Palace; he was, he said, bringing the campaign home to the
nofion's Ieoders. Comeron wos forced fo send o humiIiofing Ieffer of cIorificofion fo F4J which
only served to expose how pififuIIy few ond inodequofe were his governmenf's poIicies on
families.
The scale of the family justice crisis is huge, engulfing more families and their children
every year. The confrontational, adversarial courts are not the place to negotiate delicate
parenting disputes. Only 11% of successful contact arrangements are ordered by the Family
Courts; generally, when contact is made to work, it is achieved by the couple themselves,
through mediation, or through negotiation with a solicitor. Although divorce is in decline
because fewer couples are getting married - down to 128,837 petitions in 2008 from a high of
191,615 in 1990 - it is still estimated that 1 in 3 children under 16 and half of children born now

will experience their parents' divorce. This situation is worsening: disputes over children are
increasing.
Since the introduction of the order in 1989 the Family Courts have issued well over a
million orders for contact. Between 75% and 86% of these followed applications from fathers,
and fathers make up an astonishing 97% of so-called 'non-residenf porenfs'. Mosf confocf
orders are obstructed to some degree; a study by the Cheltenham Group for Families Need
Fathers found complete non-compliance in 60% of contact orders and some degree of
obstruction in 80%. A study by the Department of Social Security (DSS) showed that 40% of
mothers even admit obstructing contact as a way of punishing their former partners. A 2009
study by lawyers Mishcon de Reya revealed that half of parents deliberately spin out
proceedings, and a fifth make them as unpleasant as possible for the other party. As a result
many children lose all meaningful contact with their 'non-resident parent' over time - estimates
range from 15% to 40% within two years, to as high as 60% overall. An estimated 1,000
children a week lose all or significant contact with a parent; a total of well over half a million
over the duration of the last Labour Government. The courts do little to prevent this calamity
unfolding: contact orders are not monitored for compliance or for their efficacy, and fewer
than 2% of resident parents defaulting on contact orders face any consequence.
Far from being a service to help parents cope with the difficulties of separation, the
family justice system has allowed itself to become a weapon wielded by vengeful ex-partners,
and it cannot cope: it is collapsing under the weight of applications. Every week another 3,000
recently separated couples will commence a battle which could last a decade and cost them tens
of thousands of pounds. Fathers will apply for largely worthless orders allowing them 'contact'
with children whom they have been prevented from seeing and mothers will try in vain to
prevent contact between their children and violent or abusive fathers. At the same time about
400 individual parents or couples will be involved in public law disputes, often with local
authorities wanting to take their children away for adoption. Many children will lose all
meaningful contact with their parents by the end of these processes. Despite this, the Family
Courts continue to offer parents a service which they have never been able to discharge; a
resolution to conflict which cannot be achieved.
The Final Report of the Family Justice Review - which is where we shall conclude this
brief history - proved to be the stitch-up expected. It revealed that after decades of blindly
making decisions which no one monitored for compliance and no one followed up for efficacy the
system knew no more about itself than the FCWS had.

The Report was driven by the fundamental presumptions that bureaucratic efficiency
should take precedence over the promotion of settlement, and that any failings in the system
are the fault of the parents who use it. On fhe issue of 'fronsporency' the panel had no view,
despite the fact that it had formed part of their remit. They took no evidence on the question
of public access and made no recommendations concerning the openness of the courts. They
refused, in effect, to answer the question.
The panel recommended the establishment of a new Family Justice Service under the
aegis of the Ministry of Justice which would administer budgets and also take on the current
role of CAFCASS and thus be staffed mainly by former CAFCASS employees. To some extent
this would merely reverse the reform of 2004 which transferred CAFCASS from the Lord
ChonceIIor's Department to the Department of Education.
The aspect of the report which attracted greatest publicity - and generated greatest
anger - was its outright rejection of a presumption of equal
parenting,
We remain firm in our view that any legislation that might risk
creofing on impression of o porenfoI 'righf' fo ony porficuIor
amount of time with a child would undermine the central
principle of the Children Act 1989 that the welfare of the child
is paramount.
The panel also rejected the feeble recommendation
they themselves had made in the Interim Report of 'inserfing o
generoI sfofemenf of infenf, which would reflect the case law on contact, reinforcing the
importance of the child continuing to have a meaningful reIofionship wifh bofh porenfs'. The
case law on shared parenting shows clearly its potential to reduce parental conflict and to
reduce litigation (see Family Justice on Trial); in the US Richard Kuhn showed that states which
more offen oword joinf cusfody 'hove shown significonfIy greofer decIines in divorces, compored
wifh ofher sfofes.'
Morgrove's justification was to wring his hands and regref how 'dreodfuI' fhe sifuofion
was for excluded parents and how glad he was not to be one of them but to insist there was
nothing the law could do about it. Morgrove's poneI hod reIied excIusiveIy on fhe AusfroIion
experience of shared parenting, and a specifically negative response to it by Jennifer McIntosh,
but the official AIFS evaluation confrodicfed Morgrove's occounf, concIuding fhof shared
parenting was a success and worked in 81% of cases, while litigation had been reduced by 22%;

more cases were being resolved through mediation with only the more complex cases reaching
court. AusfroIion judges rejecf McInfosh's evidence when she oppeors os on experf wifness, so
why do we have to accept her bigotry in the UK? The need to reduce conflict is undeniable, and
the surest way to reduce the pressures on the system and its costs which impoverish public
funds and families alike.
The report reflected the fears of the governments which had commissioned it. The
panel was less influenced by the legitimate concerns of parents for their children than by a
judiciary fretting about mounting pressure on them, lawyers' anger over legal aid revision and
the fact that CAFCASS union NAPO had received overwhelming support for strike action at its
2011 AGM. F4J's Modine O'Connor soid,
The review is a monstrous sham and a
bureaucratic exercise in improving the efficiency
of injustice. It will feed the epidemic of mass
fatherlessness and lead to further social unrest.
This report condemns children to a life without
fathers with catastrophic social consequences.
Press coverage was unexpectedly enthusiastic;
F4J was referenced in the majority of reports while Matt
and Nadine responded energetically to the demand for
radio and television interviews. Remarkably, there wasn'f
the usual criticism of F4J; it was as if the Report had
finally rammed home the message that fathers were
indeed being discriminated against in the Family Courts.
Moff O'Connor used the opportunity to announce
the next milestone on the Fathers 4 Justice journey: the
launch of a ground-breaking new political organisation
created by ordinary people, not politicians, and founded
on the three key principles closest to his heart:
protecting families, defending liberties and building a
better tomorrow for our children, free from the politics
of the past.
Fathers 4 justice 2011