WHILE the French blockade ports, disgruntled Brits tend to take a less confrontational approach to protesting. Lobbying MPs and publishing surveys are more our style, which makes the success of Fathers 4 Justice even more remarkable.
The caped campaigners have generated more column inches in the past year than many larger organisations were able to achieve in a decade. Their supporter base has rocketed to 12,000 and they are taking their message to the United States.
Yet the publicity surrounding the group’s ever more florid stunts has not been entirely flattering, with some critics predicting that they will vanish in a puff of purple powder similar to the one that heralded their arrival.
Matt O’Connor, who founded the organisation to give fathers equal access to children, snorts at the suggestion. He says that the fuel protests, the anti-war demonstrations and the increasingly militant tactics employed by animal rights organisations prove that Britain’s appetite for direct action is growing.
“Government . . . does not represent the majority,” he says. “Direct action will be increasingly used by people who feel disenfranchised by the political process.”
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O’Connor is scathing of the “gutless” approach that many organisations, particularly other fathers’ groups, adopt to campaigning. “For 30 years Families Need Fathers has been eating Jammie Dodgers with the Government and they keep getting done over,” he says. “Politicians are the last people to change in any sort of movement. For us to engage with them at this time would be a waste of time. I did a bit of jaw-jaw with Lord Filkin in 2003. Lovely bloke; spine of a jellyfish. The only way we can achieve our goal is by lawful civil disruption.”
Fathers 4 Justice’s effectiveness poses questions for Britain’s 180,000 charities, the majority of which don’t take their messages to the streets, or generate the same interest. Have they become too meek and coerced by the Government, or is direct action not a sustainable approach in the long term?
That the Government contributes 37 per cent of voluntary sector income may indicate why campaigning organisations born out of anger grow quieter. How can they question ministers who can destroy them? Labour’s partnership approach has muted them further by ensuring that a Government priority is also a charity priority.
There is also a legal aspect: charities are not allowed to be too political, which is why Fathers 4 Justice, like Greenpeace and Amnesty International, does not have charitable status and does not receive the associated financial benefits.
Jim Parton, of Families Need Fathers, has a grudging respect for Fathers 4 Justice. “I regret that our polite lobbying was ignored for so long,” he says. “It took their stunts to embarrass the Government sufficiently to deal with the situation.” Parton, however, thinks that there is room for his organisation to work alongside Fathers 4 Justice to keep the heat on politicians. But he questions the wisdom of stunts such as the Tower Bridge protest that caused traffic chaos in Central London.
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Robert Whelan, deputy director of the right-wing thinktank Civitas, says it’s wrong for groups to break the law. “It’s counter-productive because you alienate supporters,” he says. “People who used to associate themselves with animal rights don’t want to be involved now that some activists are threatening the lives of people who work in laboratories.”
Greenpeace volunteers risk jail about eight times a year in protests. “We don’t take contributions from governments or companies so we’re not tied to anybody else’s perspective,” says Sarah North, head of the campaign against genetically modified food. She says that protests go ahead depending upon safety, disruption to the public and legal consequences.
Turning supporters into activists who risk a criminal record is a difficult challenge. “We tell them that they could go to jail and that there is no shame in backing out,” North says. It would appear, however, that the threat is greater than the reality. North can’t recall anyone going to prison in her eight years at Greenpeace.
O’Connor says that no one at Fathers 4 Justice has been locked up either. “Society works on fear,” he says. “Fear of being arrested and fear of going to prison. If you have no fear the options are endless.”