Fathers 4 Publicity

It is hard for anyone to criticise the aims of the group Fathers 4 Justice. However, you'd have to ask questions about their methods and their successes so far.

They rather cleverly gained publicity by invading tall buildings dressed as super heroes, and although they held traffic up and caused problems, you could see that they were raising their profile in a logical way. However, since the House of Commons incident when they threw flout at the Prime Minister, they have lost their way. They attacked Lib Dem candidate Jody Dunn at the count of the Hartlepool by-election because she was a family lawyer. interestingly, the newly elected government MP, a man who could directly affect government policy was not of interest to F4J ? Confused ?

Now today, they say they want a meeting with Harriet Harman. Harriet Harman rather interestingly then spoke to the cameras and said she was happy to meet but F4J had never requested a meeting with her !

Again, rather confusing or a rather warped sense of priorities it seems. It appears that the lure of publicity was more their driving force than the issue itself.

The other point though is that F4J don't seem to understand the British psyche. Governments don't often give way to threats (unless it is from their own MP's). The more that F4J do this, the more the chances are that the government will dig its heals in, and that would be the real tragedy because what F4J want, or what they say they want, is for fathers to be given more rights to go with their responsibilities, and that the works that goes on in family courts should reflect this.

I applaud their aims, but sadly I fear their message is getting lost in the delivery.