ENGLAND – Fathers’ rights campaigners hold a torch of protest

Fraser Chatburn

Fraser Chatburn, who lives in Horninglow, will walk from the 2012 Games stadium to Downing Street in an eve of Father’s Day protest marking the 10th birthday of the organisers, Fathers 4 Justice (F4J).

“It is to highlight the fact so few games are played with dads in the event children have restricted access with them for no good reason,” the 44-year-old said.

“The sad fact is that every day 100 dads and members of their extended family lose contact with their children due to failings of family courts and recalcitrant activity by former partners and their legal representatives.”

Mr Chatburn, who has helped organise the event and previous protests, such as disrupting the National Lottery draw and enabling a campaigner dressed as Batman to climb Buckingham Palace, said marchers would carry a purple flame as the colour was associated with equality throughout the world.

On reaching Downing Street they plan to hold a minute’s silence.

“We have to cause controversy to get media attention and name and shame the Government, judges, solicitors and family court social workers,” the supply chain manager said.

“We have members who are doctors able to prescribe medicines to other people’s children but who never have the opportunity to cuddle their own when they are feeling unwell.

“We have several teachers who society leans on to educate their children but who will never share a bedtime story with their own offspring.”

A grandmother from the Burton area, whose name has been withheld to protect her family, said she would demonstrate on behalf of her son.

“Despite the fact my son has responsibility to protect children as part of his day-to-day work, he now has to fight in a family court for access to his own daughter while his ex-partner takes a share from the legal aid fund donated by the taxpayer,” she said.

Mr Chatburn said the ‘greed of recalcitrant mothers and the Rottweiler-style of solicitors’ had fragmented lives to such an extent that the traditional family would ‘soon be a thing of the past in the UK’.

The ‘social disorder’ already triggered was a factor in the UK having the highest teenage pregnancy rate and second highest juvenile crime figures in Europe, he said.

“All you need to do is read the Mail to understand the state of the feral kid generation on our streets, with no respectful father figure at the head of the family,” Mr Chatburn said.