Talk:Fathers' rights movement in the United Kingdom

Untitled
Material in this page was originally moved from the fathers' rights page in order to focus on activism in the UK. The controversy primarily relates to whether there can genuinely be seen to be good faith on the part of the major players who are:


 * judges and others in the legal profession, whose livelihoods depend on there being litigation in the courts


 * politicians, whose livelihoods depend on them getting votes at elections and on being popular with their party political masters


 * parents (fathers primarily), whose relationship with their children is being disrupted by their ex-partner in so-called child custody disputes.

The material in the article that I have contributed comes from Internet news sources and my personal contact with various lobbyists, fathers, mothers, politicians and judges. Matt Stan 11:33, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In support of the view that the UK courts are not biased
This is a view often expressed by family court judges, and it is worth investigating its implications in order to keep this article NPOV. In a case known as V v. V, Judge Bracewell summed up the situation fairly succinctly in her judgment, from which I quote here, and which might usefully be included in the article:


 * At present, enforcement of contact orders creates insuperable problems for the courts. Currently, there are only four options available to the court and each is unsatisfactory: one, send the parent who refuses or frustrates contact to prison, or make a suspended order of imprisonment. This option may well not achieve the object of reinstating contact. The child may blame the parent who applied to commit the carer to prison. The child's life may be disrupted if there is no one capable of or willing to care for the child when the parent is in prison. It cannot be anything other than emotionally damaging for a child to be suddenly removed into foster care by social services from a parent, usually a mother, who in all respects except contact is a good parent. Two, impose a fine on the parent. This option is rarely possible because it is not consistent with welfare of a child to deprive a parent on a limited budget. Three, transfer residence. This option is not necessarily available to the court, because the other parent may not have the facilities or capacity to care for the child full-time, and may not even know the child. The current case is one in which this is a real option. Four, give up. Make either an order for indirect contact or no order at all. This is the worst option of all and sometimes the only one available. This is the option which gives rise to the public blaming the judges for refusing to deal with recalcitrant parents. This option results in a perception fostered by the press that family courts are failing in private law cases and that family judges are anti-father. The truth, however, is that without the weapons to use against what is in essence a small group of obdurate mothers, the ability of judges to do better for fathers is strictly limited. It is not commonly recognised by the public that, in order to have enforcement procedures which are effective, legislation by Parliament is necessary.

In the same judgment, Bracewell also put: "This is neither a unique nor even unusual case to come before the courts."

Thus one could conclude that the whole fathers' rights movement's underlying cause is "a small group of obdurate mothers" and a law that doesn't deal with them properly. It is a strange irony that the people whom many activists blame - the judges - are themselves shifting the blame on to mothers, something which fathers' rights campaigners themselves have been loathe to do, for fear that it will just be seen as sour grapes. Matt Stan 12:12, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The case of V v. V is fascinating and depressing reading, and was made public by the judge to expose some of the abuses that go on behind the normally closed doors of the family justice system - in this case four years of a mother telling lies and making false accusations about a good father's treatment of their two small girls. The judgment, made on 20th May 2004 in the High Court actually was:
 * Having considered all the factors, weighing all the risks and advantages, I am satisfied that the need for these children to have a relationship with their father can only be met by transferring residence to him. I am confident in his abilities. I, therefore, order a residence order to father.

i.e. the judge switched the residency from the mother to the father. Matt Stan 12:29, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Somebody asked me whereabouts on the web one can get the entire transcript of this judgment, which I think is only normally available on subscription law web sites, i.e. not in the public domain. I found the material copied above (together with much other salient material to do with this area of family law) in the members-only area of the FNF web site. Matt Stan 12:37, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

To continue this essay, the next question might be, if the noble judge who made the statement above is right, and it is agreed that the problem rests with these obdurate mothers, why do they have the power that they do? I don't know that this question has been answered (and therefore if this essay is going to make a worthwhile contribution to a wikipedia article, some corroboration of the following will be required). One approach would be to look at the issue from the mother's rights perspective, or women's rights, which is a more current term. Over the last half of the 20th Century a major break-through for women's rights was the establishment in law that women could legally have an abortion. However the right of a father to determine the outcome for children in cases of partnership breakdown was removed by legislation much earlier (need to check date). Having the right to do what they wanted with their own bodies in respect of unborn children wasn't the whole story, however; women's rights campaigners also wanted to free, women to take other of other aspects of their lives. Thus it has come to be seen that because most mothers are directly involved in childcare then they have the majority stake when it comes to determining what family life should mean for those children. There was a tacit acceptance of this development. It suited some men after all: they could get off the hook; they could remain lads (rather than dads) without having the obligation to bring up their own children. The removal of this obligaion seems to have gone hand-in-hand with an erosion of the children's right to have a father even when there is one willing able to participate. One only has to look at the views expressed about men by the voices raised against the fathers (either he isn't spending enough time with the children, or he must be prevented from spending more time with the children) to confirm the notion that it is mothers who in the driving seat when it comes to the children's relationship with their dad. If there was equality, we wouldn't be hearing these sort of arguments. A fundamental piece of legislation, which would clarify and hence, it can be argued, resolve the problem should specify what the rights of the child to family life means. It could say, for instance, that when it came to determining the child's lifestyle, the best use should be made of both parents' resources, both material and emotional. And it should end the perception that the child's rights are subsumed under the mother's. Then, if a mother obstructed a child's right to be with its dad, became one of the 'obdurate mums' she need not be party to any proceedings that the dad might take to establish that child's right. Conversely if there were issues to do with either parent's care of the children these should be handled as would concerns about any child, rather than used to fuel family court residency disputes. The holy grail of the fathers' rights movement therefore would seem to be to get this fundamental piece of legislation passed - to ensure that children's right to family life in the widest sense cannot be subverted by one of its parents. On the political front there is caution because it would affect both the obdurate and the non-obdurate mothers, and that would be seen as a set-back for the rights of women to make decisions. On the other hand, if this step isn't taken, the notion of fatherhood, which is taken seriously in intact families, will effectively become obsolete for the children of dysfunctional single parent households, leading to persistent polarisiation between the children of these families and the rest. Some argue, however that consistent judicial support for the idea of some form of shared parenting in all cases where both parents have a part to play may lead to a sufficient improvement toi outcomes without the need for new legislation. Matt Stan 17:31, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

David Blunkett Story
This story almost exactly models a case that FNF has held up as a conundrum for some time, that is, should the natural father-child relationship be preserved in a case where the child was the result of the mother's infidelity to the step-father? I posed this question to my teenage children in the company of several of their friends some while ago. They uniformly took the line that the children should not be deprived of their natural father just because of the mother's previous indiscretions. They effectively took the moralistic line that the mother should live with the consequences of her actions, and that preservation of the natural father-child relationship outweighed all other considerations when it came to that child's welfare.Matt Stan 10:34, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Though I have not seen this discussed elsewhere, the underlying issue of jurisprudence here and in most cases of hostile mother syndrome seems to me to be one of undefined rights. Simply put, should the mother have the unassailable right to determine who the social father of her offspring is going to be, or does the natural father and/or other person acting as father over a period have rights in this respect? The general observation seems to be that some mothers evidently do appear to claim such a right, and it is only assailable in a court of law, and then only after having overcome considerable hurdles put in place by her and by the system. It would arguably be better to clarify in legislation that there is no such right for a mother to choose who is going to act as the child's social father when the natural father wishes to be involved as a parent. The step-father's rights in this regard would necessarily be subordinate to the natural father's rights, though in the case of a dispute between the father and the step-father the circumstances could mitigate towards the involvement of both the natural and the step-father in appropriate ways. Matt Stan 22:56, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Absurd, and makes a mockery of one of the major purposes of the institution of marriage. If the woman is married at the time, the assumption is that her children are a product of that union unless her husband denies it, and he is the 'father' not the 'step-father'. That's the 'consequence' which is upheld in a court of law, regardless of what some teenagers may think about crime and punishment. 22 Dec 2004

Discrimination
As used in the 1st para is probably not NPOV, but it nevertheless reflects the views of activists that it is discriminatory per se for them not to be able freely to consort with their grandchildren, subject to the sensitivities required in light of a failed romance. Others hold that the law, as constituted, is not discriminatory. Cynics might claim that just because a piece of legislation is careful not to use sexist language in its draughtsmanship doesn't mean that it cannot be used in way that discriminates. Matt Stan 17:44, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Kerry v Bush: Who won the Shared Parenting vote?(McKenzie 63)
Kerry v Bush: Who won the Shared Parenting vote? Well neither, but an interesting side show was the placing of a question about “joint custody” on the Massachusetts State ballot. Around the world, shared parenting has become a left-right issue. Massachusetts is an interesting little laboratory of voting intentions. It is a “liberal” state, that is to say, it went for Kerry and returned a Democrat Senator. One of the obstacles facing the shared parenting movement worldwide is that, for no obvious reason, it gets marginalised as a “right-wing” issue. So all the negative press about the Geldof on Fathers programme was in liberal-left papers like the Guardian, Observer and Independent. Especially where it concerned Gelfdof’s views on marriage (he thinks couples give up on it too quickly) they lost no time in aligning him with those terrifying bogeymen of the sinister “Christian Right” – Bush voters! Yet Massachussetts voters went 8 to 1 in favour of shared parenting. (see page 5). In the UK, Margaret Hodge, after some rhetoric in which she decried the Tories turning of parental equality into a party political issue, turned it into, er, a party-political issue. When FNF visited Shadow Attorney-General Dominic Grieve MP about a year ago, he, like Hodge, said this must not happen; up, he warned, would go the shutters against any meaningful reform. We’d get window dressing instead. He wasn’t far wrong; July’s Family Resolutions Green Paper does look like window dressing. Yet when Grieve’s very reasonable Children Bill amendment was placed, asking for a presumption of equality, Hodge was withering in her dismissal of it, accusing Grieve of “Jumping on a band-wagon” and of “opportunism”. The amendment was roundly rejected. Labour has spent a century championing equality trotting, yet all their MPs - including some who support shared parenting, obediently trotted through the “No” lobby, while Tories and Lib-Dems went through the “Aye” lobby. There were no exceptions, no rebels, no MPs voting acccording to conscience. It was as if this were an issue comparable to high or low tax. The strange thing about this polarisation is that both John Baker, FNF chair, and Martin Crapper, vice-chair have been Labour activists. FNF has always been the broadest of churches, with members from all races, all classes and all political persuasions, absolutely not identified with left or right.

For Fathers' rights movement in the UK

Merge UK specific material from Fathers' rights article
As discussed on the Talk:Fathers%27_rights.

A lot of the detail should go to Fathers' rights movement in the UK, this article (Fathers' rights) should have a summary of the issues. -- Paul foord 22:04, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support: Excellent idea. This is currently being tried over at fox hunting with fox hunting legislation and so far seems to be working... -Rorybowman 23:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Support: Will make the main article less UK centric.

Portal needed
This article ranges all over the place and covers numerous related but different issues arising in any number of jurisdictions. I think it would greatly benefit from creation of a Portal and urge you please to vote in favour on page Portal/Proposals - -  Kittybrewster 22:11, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Unbalanced tag
Added the unbalanced tag and several citation needed tags. I've highlighted a few paragraphs I have issues with below:

''F4J achieved its main objective of bringing to the issues to the public's attention, creating fear in men who have not yet faced the dilemmas of divorce that their relationship with their children could be devastated if they fell out with their partners. By having generated this fear, campaigners are optimistic that governments must now be seen to be actually doing something that will palliate public concerns and fears''

This needs a citation. Also, I suggest that it should be rephrased in some way. I very much doubt that F4J were out to create fear in men who haven't 'yet' faced divorce. The 'yet' is also perhaps inappropriate. Not all marriages end in divorce!

''In 2004, it became very apparent (because of the qualification always provided by politicians that they were in favour of fathers' rights provided it was safe), that there was a desire to create an innuendo that men are intrinsically unsafe. This was then followed by the Metropolitan Police launching a large advertising campaign in early 2005 explicitly decrying male domestic violence.''

I was tempted to remove this outright. Not only does it lack any citations, but it seems to be suggesting that politicians and the police are trying to convince people that men are unsafe. I suggest that this paragraph be removed.

'' If she can show she has fears about domestic violence, and, in extreme cases, may have driven her partner into appearing to be a perpetrator, then she "wins" the children. Whilst fathers' groups make a unified plea for a child's right to a father and for a presumption of shared parenting, this is viewed cautiously by those in power as a potential threat to the advance of feminism, and possibly as a slap in the face to those who want any social engineering efforts to be focused against the scourge of male domestic violence.''

Again, this seems to have been written with an agenda. Firstly, I think the word 'wins' is inappropriate. It's discussing children, not prizes. I also have issues with 'may have driven her partner into appearing to be a perpetrator'. What is meant by this? That mothers drive purposefully their partners to domestic violence in order to gain custody of children? Also I very much suggest that everything after 'shared parenting' be removed, as it sounds like a conspiracy theory. I would agree on including something about fathers fearing exaggerated claims of domestic violence, but this entire paragraph needs to be rewritten.

The section on F4J is quite negative. I suggest a re-write to highlight that that have done some good, and attracted quite a bit of support.

''Some observers have expressed regret that this has become a party political issue, but this development goes to the heart of gender politics and could become an important vote swinger at the forthcoming General Election. The Labour Party is seen to support the status quo, reflecting the radical feminist stance taken by CAFCASS's trade union NAPO. This position, originally detailed in NAPO's anti-sexist policy document (which includes the statements: Family Court work is an important opportunity to build on the strengths and the expansion of women's roles and ...to develop policies and strategies which challenge the discrimination against women in contested residence and contact decisions), espouses the view that women in society need to be supported in their decision-making capacity in order to resist the forces of patriarchy.''

To be honest, this comes across as extremely paranoid, and is beginning to border on misogynistic. The fact that there are no citations makes it look even worse. I suggest removal. A section on the party political views would be good, but preferably not one that focuses quite so heavily on 'radical feminism' and 'resisting the forces of patriarchy'.

The Fathers Rights' movement has drawn attention to the marginalisation of men in society by this radical feminist tendency, supported by the Government most particularly in the appointment of Margaret Hodge, a skilful non-denial denier and feminist who is a key figure in the ministerial sisterhood, that group of long-standing feminist friends who have managed to network their way into the very heart of government

I'm not even sure this has anything to do with the father's rights movement. Again, this sounds like a paranoid conspiracy thoery written by someone with a serious problem with women. I suggest removal. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.149.84.64 (talk) 20:28, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Since there's been no response to this, I'm going to remove the most unbalanced paragraphs.89.240.132.9 (talk) 21:43, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I see that absolutely nothing has been done, only endless talk and no action to solve the problems. My case was 15 years ago and because of this unjust system I now no longer have any connection to my children. I left and turned my back on the UK in total disgust at the injustice. I curse them all.

Very Weak Wikipage
This is an important social, political, legal area, and the wiki page really needs to be improved a lot. Many parts of it are opinionated and anecdotal, demonstrating clear bias. I'm pro-fathers' rights, I think it can be explained better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.100.251.189 (talk) 10:51, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

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