Matthew O'Connor's Speech at the Oxford Union on February 24, 2005
Matthew O'Connor is a member of the Fathers4Justice Group in Great Britain. He is one of the brave lads standing up to family court tyranny in the United Kingdom and around the world. On February 24, he was invited by the Oxford Union to give a speech. He sent me the text of his speech in e-mails and he graciously granted me permission to post it on this website. Here is what he said:
"This House Would Break the Law to Make a Point".
Jesus Christ. Mahatma Ghandi. Martin Luther King. Tony Blair.
It is, I'll admit, an unlikely line up. But there is one thing they all have in common. They are all lawbreakers or were born of lawbreakers.
Jesus Christ broke Jewish & Roman Law.
Mahatma Ghandi broke the law of the British when fighting for independence.
Martin Luther King broke the laws of segregation when fighting for the vote.
Tony Blair was born into a party forged in the fires of civil disobedience. Without the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists, the brave men and women of the Trade Union movement who fought so valiantly for workers rights and broke the law in doing so, this Labour Government would not exist.
Is it not then that our society and democracy has been shaped & moulded by lawbreakers who have challenged the status quo and asked not what was, but what could be without whom many of the fundamental freedoms we now enjoy would not exist?
Lord Hoffman recently said we have a long and honourable tradition of law breaking in this country when he referred to the Suffragettes who I have long admired and respected for their bravery, courage and sacrifice.
But it is not, as this motion says, about breaking the law to make a point.
It is about breaking the law to fight an injustice, for inevitably law breaking, in this context, is born out of injustice.
This week a columnist in the Guardian said that society was being overrun by minority interest groups whose media savvy tactics were about bullying the public and politicians into submission though a variety of illegal cunning stunts.
What she failed to point out is that this Labour administration is a minority administration.
It represents a minority of 24.1% of the British electorate.
And this, I would argue, is why you will see the emergence of more law breakers, more groups like Fathers 4 Justice, Outrage, The Hunting Lobby and others who not only feel disconnected from the Political process but feel that their views - which often hold wide public support - are not being represented either in Parliament or by Government.
The reason for this is self-evident. We have entered a new political age.
The old parties, lumbering into the 21st Century dragged down by their historical baggage, are out of touch and out of time. The reality is that every political party was born out of a special interest group.
The Liberals were born out of the Aristocracy. The Tories were born out of the Land Owners and the Labour Party, as we have said, was born out of the Trade Union Movement.
We now live in an age where the parameters and rules of politics have been radically changed. There is no left, there is no right. What there is though, is an unprecedented attack on our civil liberties and it is our duty to defend these by all peaceful non-violent means necessary.
Already, in some courts, the presumption of innocence has been removed. The burden of proof defined to be beyond all reasonable doubt, has been replaced by the "balance of probabilities." The Family Courts continue to operate cloaked in an omnipresent shroud of secrecy.
The Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill Under sections 121-123 will make protest, the distribution of leaflets, no matter how harmless or inoffensive, a criminal offence defining such activity as "harassment".
Maybe, but are we not supposed to be defending our way of life, our liberties from terrorists? I would argue that this Government who lied its way to war in Iraq is using this "threat", a similar threat they used to justify going to war, not against terrorists but against inconvenient thorns in the rectum of the establishment.
They have already set the precedent.
They came for the Muslims sweeping up any "terror" suspects and dumping them in Belmarsh jail.
Next they may come for the Animal Liberation Activists extreme end of protest.
Then they will come for the Anti-Nuclear Protestors threat to national security.
Then they will come for the Fathers 4 Justice activists under the pretence that we are causing economic damage which they have already described as "terrorism". Guantanamo Dads no less.
And then they will come for you.
If a government that has the support of just 24.1% of the electorate can do this to the remaining 75.9% majority, what choice do we have other than to break the law to defend our liberties for it is this government that posed the biggest threat to my family and my children and now poses the biggest threat to our society.
Those that would argue against this motion given what I have said, are not only wrong, they are acquiescent, complacent, gutless apologists for the erosion of our civil liberties, liberties they would not have enjoyed themselves had it not been for people who made the sacrifices they themselves are too frightened to make. And I ask them, Would they have obeyed the law in Hitler's Germany? Would they obey the law today in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe?
To make the bland assertion that every law is right is wrong. There is a lot of law in this land, but very little justice. We must differentiate between man-made law and moral law, between just laws and unjust laws.
Nobody expressed this more eloquently than Martin Luther King when he said in his letter from Birmingham Jail: " just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law."
And St Augustine said "an unjust law is no law at all."
At the Nuremburg Trials the excuse of "following orders" and obeying law was found not to be a defence as there was a higher moral imperative. Indeed unjust law is often proven through the negative outcomes they generate.
I can tell you from personal experience that anyone who breaks the law in this way does not do so lightly. The brave men and women at Fathers 4 Justice, who I have encouraged to become lawbreakers, do so in the knowledge that they risk life, limb and liberty in the pursuit of equality.
When Jason Hatch scaled Buckingham Palace, Sir John Stevens Head of the Met Police said he was within 18 seconds of being shot.
If you dismiss such bravery, because he wore his sons favourite superhero outfit, then you fail to understand the sacred bond between parent and child, because if you are not prepared to fight for your children, just what will you fight for?
And how, tell me how, can we send these same fathers off to risk their lives to fight a phoney war on behalf of a country that denies them the most basic of human rights, the right to be loving parent. It doesnąt matter if you are wearing army combats or a Batman outfit, it goes beyond breaking the law, it can mean you risking your life for a cause you believe in or somebody you love.
As it peddles its manifesto of fear and scorched earth policy on civil liberties, this Labour government is now turning defensive walls into prison walls. Turning watchtowers once looking out to protect us, into watchtowers looking in to control us.
Do you surrender your freedoms so lightly?
Do you surrender you right to be a parent so lightly?
Do you surrender your children so lightly?
We been fed the opium of the masses, an intoxicating diet of Big Brother, Booze and Birds and as we consume this lethal potion, we are sleep walking into an Orwellian Police state.
Wake up Oxford this - is your calling. Climb the roofs, close the roads, scale those dreaming spires. It is your right, it is your duty, to defend the rights our forefathers sacrificed everything to pass on to us. It is now our turn to break the law to ensure we pass those same precious liberties on to our children and our children's children.
Thank you.
Other examples of Fathers-4-Justice escapades include David Chick dressed as Spiderman while perched on a construction gantry over the Tower Bridge, and throwing a bag of purple flour at Tony Blair in Parliament. That bag hit the Prime Minister right between the shoulder blades! It was as if Harry Potter cast a spell on it to make sure it homed in on the target!
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