Harman Protest, F4J Handbook and Fathers Day Demo 13th June - F4J E-Bulletin - 100608



Dear All,

In light of the amazing press coverage (see bottom of this email) after Sunday’s rooftop protest on Harriet Harman’s roof, both Mark Harris and Jolly Stanesby (aka ‘Cash Gordon’ and ‘Captain Conception’) have asked that eevryone attend dressed as superheroes this Friday, where they will be leading a demo to Minister Dawn Primarolo’s office in Bristol. All other details remain the same and don’t forget to register with us and everyone is welcome regardless of which group you belong to.

Good luck and we will see you there!
Matt O’Connor, Founder, Fathers 4 Justice.

THE FATHERS 4 JUSTICE DAY – FRIDAY 13TH JUNE 2008

Are you a redundant dad? Did you get your P45 but are still being fleeced? Are you angry with the CSA? Have they stitched you up? Now it’s YOUR turn to have YOUR say this Fathers Day.

Don’t let Labour Make Fatherhood Redundant! Ask ‘Flash’ Gordon why he doesn’t give a toss for fathers!

FATHERS 4 JUSTICE presents

THE FATHERS 4 JUSTICE DAY SUPERHERO PROTEST AGAINST THE CSA – FRIDAY 13TH JUNE

At Bristol Job Centre, The Pithay, Bristol, Avon, BS1 2NQ between 10.00am – 2.00pm on Friday 13th June 2008 where dads will be arriving looking for work as, er, dads.

Fathers are being made redundant in the family courts and by the CSA. As one dad said to us recently, “I used to be a dad, now I’ve been made redundant and instead of a redundancy package, I now have to pay through the nose for the privilege of not seeing my kids!”

What to bring: air horns, whistles, banners.

Dress: Superhero garb.

Music: Superhero Themes

PRE-REGISTRATION ESSENTIAL AT: office@fathers-4-justice.org
________________________________________________________________ ____
OUT TODAY!!! OUT TODAY!!! OUT TODAY!!! OUT TODAY!!! OUT TODAY!!!
THE OFFICIAL FATHERS 4 JUSTICE HANDBOOK – A SURVIVAL GUIDE TO THE CSA & FAMILY COURTS
By Nick Langford. £15.00

To purchase your PDF copy please visit the following link, or visit the F4J website "Books" Page:
http://www.fathers-4-justice.org/f4j//index.php?option=com_facileforms&Itemid=73
The Official Fathers 4 Justice Handbook provides advice and information for those who wish to navigate the Family Courts as litigants in person without the aid of ineffectual and prohibitively expensive lawyers. Designed to work alongside membership of Fathers 4 Justice, the Handbook leads the reader through the perils of divorce, parental responsibility and dispute resolution, with a view to helping him or her retain a meaningful and unobstructed relationship with his children.

If that goes wrong, as so often it does in the Devil’s Labyrinth, the Handbook provides further advice on putting together a case for shared residence or contact and presenting it in court, covering aspects such as,

· Position statements and bundles

· The use of McKenzie Friends

· Examining witnesses

· Dealing with CAFCASS

· The appeals procedure

· Countering false allegations and parental alienation

· Child abduction

In addition the Handbook contains a substantial section on Britain’s grossly unjust child support system and how best to engage with the CSA, and gives advice for grandparents and other family members, and on what to do if you are arrested.

The Fathers 4 Justice Handbook is essential reading for any parent experiencing divorce or at risk of divorce and who wants to ensure a continuing relationship with his or her children. It should also be read by anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the Fathers 4 Justice campaign and what it is that makes otherwise law-abiding men don the lycra and scale public buildings.

__________________________________________________ ____________________
MARK HARRIS AND JOLLY STANESBY – ROOFTOP PROTEST COVERAGE

Fathers 4 Justice today said that the media coverage gained over the Harriet Harman rooftop protest was estimated by one media monitoring company to be the equivalent of £11.2 million worth of advertising on a budget of just £200.

The coverage is significant in re-establishing Fathers 4 Justice in the national consciousness. The protest is one of the most successful ever staged by the group.
__________________________________________________ ______________________________

TV NEWS REPORTS

F4J Roof Protestor Jolly Stanesby Interview BBC News
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=L3RUjRVUXoE

F4J Roof Protestor Jolly Stanesby Interview Sky News
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=88OlCObD9nc&feature=related

F4J Founder Matt O’Connor Interview BBC News
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=i_Vro2ZAuTM&feature=related

Harriet Harman Interview
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j8lxZAfbsuc&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j8lxZAfbsuc

F4J Spokesman Darryl Westell on Sky News
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=EPkjjAHh_hg

More BBC Coverage & Interview with F4J Spokesman Darryl Westell
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jdWLUeJ1_0k&feature=related

General BBC News Coverage Live from the scene
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=N7D62fGN0Dc

More BBC News Coverage
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jdWLUeJ1_0k

Jolly Hanging Off Roof - BBC News Coverage
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ7A3n998RQ
__________________________________________________ _________________________________________

PRESS COVERAGE

The Sun, Tues, 10th June: Family breakdown is a bigger threat to UK than global warming says MATT O’CONNOR, Fathers 4 Justice founder
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...cle1269904.ece


TWO members of Fathers 4 Justice launched a protest on the roof of Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman’s home on Sunday. Jonathan Stanesby and Mark Harris, both dressed as superheroes, were campaigning for equal rights for dads. Fathers 4 Justice claim the exclusion of fathers from their children’s lives is causing untold damage to our society.

With Father’s Day this Sunday, founder and dad-of-three Matt O’Connor explains what drove the men to take their drastic action. He says:

“Family law in this country has become a national tragedy.

“Around 100 years ago women struggled in their battle for equality. The suffragettes understood that our country was founded on liberty and democracy.

“It was for those same reasons that two middle-aged dads, clad in Lycra, risked life, limb and liberty to climb on to the roof of the South London home of Harriet Harman.

“Mark Harris and Jolly Stanesby recognise the absurdity of a situation where we have a nation of parents who can see and be with anyone else’s kids, but not their own.

“For the last two years, Father’s 4 Justice has pursued a lower-profile campaign and exhausted every avenue in attempting to engage the Government in dialogue about family law reform – to no avail.

“Last year I tried to arrange a meeting with Ms Harman when she was Constitutional Affairs Minister. I did so through my MP Mark Oaten, only to be rebuffed.

“By Ms Harman’s own admission, more than one million families enter the family justice system every year. By our calculation, at least 500,000 children have lost either all or partial contact with one parent, normally the father, under this Labour administration.

“I recently met with Sir Paul Coleridge, a senior family court judge at the Royal Courts of Justice. He described family breakdown as a bigger threat to Britain than global warming.

“He said if this were a pandemic, the Government would pour massive resources into finding a solution.

“Instead the outcomes for our children continue to deteriorate. According to UNICEF, Britain was the worst country in the industrialised world for children to grow up in last year. One in four kids grow up in a fatherless family. In the black community, the figure is two in three. Without the love, guidance and discipline of a father, the only male role models they may have is the drug dealer or gang leader.

“The Government’s position on fathers’ rights is that it does not ‘believe a legal presumption to contact would be helpful’. However, you are duty bound to pay child support. In other words, you can abandon your kids tomorrow – provided you pay. You’re not a father, you’re a cashpoint.

“I realised when I was standing in this year’s London Mayoral election that we have a collective responsibility to our kids, yet we are failing them.

“When I started Fathers 4 Justice in 2002, I never imagined my party, Labour, would seek to make fatherhood redundant – emotionally through the family courts, financially through the child support agency and biologically through the Human Tissues and Embryology Bill.

“The reality for dads in 21st-century Britain is that as far as ministers like Ms Harman are concerned, in the words of Sir Alan Sugar, ‘You’re fired’.

“Nothing is more important than the children we love and cherish. Harriet Harman would do well to remember that this ‘Fatherless’ Day on June 15.”

ENDS

The Daily Mail, Tues 10th June: Justice 4 my father, says daughter of rooftop protester
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...protester.html


No one condones invading private property, but read the moving story of the man on Harriet Harman's roof who spent years fighting for the right to see his daughters ... only to find THEY wanted to live with HIM

On Sunday morning, just hours before he scrambled on to the roof of Harriet Harman's home dressed as a superhero, Mark Harris kissed and hugged his daughter Lisa and set off from the South Devon home they share.

'I told him I was proud of him,' says Lisa, a 21-year-old wages clerk. 'I said that however long he managed to stay up there, I would be cheering him on and sending him my love.'

In the end, Mark, who staged his weekend protest with fellow Fathers 4 Justice campaigner Jolly Stanesby, stayed on the roof of Ms Harman's elegant period home in Herne Hill, South London, for ten hours - an hour for every year that his own case wasn't resolved by the courts.

When he climbed down on Sunday night, he was immediately arrested and detained by police, leaving Mr Stanesby perched precariously on the slates, stubbornly insisting he wouldn't descend until Mark had been released.

But then as Lisa points out, brushes with the law are nothing new to her 49-year-old father. During the decade he spent fighting for full access to his three daughters after his wife walked out and took them with her, the driving instructor faced 133 court appearances before 33 different judges, two stints in jail and went on a hunger strike.

The irony is that Mark's case is now resolved: Lisa, his eldest, now lives with him. So does his 17-year-old daughter. Another daughter, aged 15, lives nearby with her mother, but visits at least twice a week. He now has everything he fought for.

But he still donned Superman's leotard, tights and cape because while he is free to talk about the horrors he suffered at the hands of the British justice system, other fathers are not. Last year, the Lord Chancellor ruled that family court proceedings must remain secret and therefore, argue some, unaccountable.

'He hasn't forgotten what he went through,' says Lisa. 'He still has a lot of anger about it and he wants to do what he can to help other fathers in the same position.'

If it seems strange that Mark is still angry about his own ordeal, then as Lisa is quick to remind anyone who asks, until she was 16 - and legally able to choose for herself which parent she wanted to live with - she hardly knew her father at all.

Her life has been blighted by years of enforced separation from the father she clearly adores.

'Most people look back on their childhood and remember family days out at the seaside and birthday parties,' she says. 'My recollections are of Mum, sour-faced in a suit, heading off for yet another court appearance and endless interviews with social workers and child psychologists, all telling me that I didn't have to see my dad if I didn't want to.'

Speaking to the Mail on a previous occasion, Mark explained: 'I missed so much. They took my daughter's childhood, her formative years, from me. Lisa is 21 now. I didn't see her between the ages of ten and 16. An awful lot happens in a child's life in that time and I missed it all.'

Lisa, too, has suffered. For years, she believed her father had abandoned her and couldn't understand why.

'There were times when I needed a father figure - for reassurance and advice. There just wasn't one there.'

There are many gaps in their shared pasts, but one memory they both recall vividly is how, on the day Lisa returned home to her father she walked into her bedroom and threw out all the toys and mementoes Mark had clung on to from her childhood, laughing nervously as she did so.

'It struck me just how much time had passed and how far she had moved on,' said Mark. 'We might be father and daughter, but we were starting again from scratch.'

And despite her bravado as she threw away the dolls and teddies, Lisa admits that, in fact, her heart was breaking.

When I walked into my old bedroom and saw it was exactly as I had left it all those years ago, I wanted to sob,' she says. 'If I had ever doubted dad's love for me, here was the proof of just how unfailing it was. I didn't dare cry, because if I did I thought I might never stop.'

With their comic book character outfits and off-the-wall publicity stunt protests, it would be all too easy to dismiss the Fathers 4 Justice phenomenon out of hand. The group formed in 2002 and champions the reform of Britain's family law system and equal parenting rights for separated couples. It doesn't help, of course, that many of the group are legally prevented from speaking out and defending themselves.

And yet the personal story behind the group's latest desperate attempt to be heard is a salutary reminder that when family decision-making is handed over to the State, families can be ripped apart.

As Mark pointed out, he didn't walk out of his children's lives. He was ordered out by the secretive family courts. And when he objected, insisting upon his right to see them, he found himself on the wrong side of the law.

He married a former driving school pupil in 1986 after a whirlwind romance and Lisa was born the following year, her younger sisters arriving in 1989 and 1991. Back then in those heady days of early fatherhood, he could never have imagined that he would one day end up on national television protesting on top of a minister's home.

'When Lisa was born, I was overwhelmed with love,' he recalled. 'I felt the luckiest man alive. Being a father quickly became what defined me.'

He was, he said, a 'hands-on' father and aside from regular rows about his 'overbearing' mother-in-law, he thought his marriage was happy too.

His wife, however, clearly didn't agree. One day in November 1993, he returned home to find the four-bedroom family home in Plymouth ransacked. Most of the furniture and ornaments, as well as his wife and children, had gone.

'Later, she calmly explained that she no longer loved me, but that I could see the children whenever I wanted,' he said. 'She seemed so cold and uncaring - I didn't recognise her.

'I took the children home with me for a few hours and they spent the time crying, wanting to know when they could have their lives back. I didn't know what to say to them, because I was as bewildered as they were.'

Over the next two months, Mark saw the girls nearly every day. Then, one day, two months after she had left, his wife asked if she could speak to him.

'She told me that she deeply regretted what she had done and asked if I would take her back,' said Mark. 'I refused. I was too hurt and angry. The following day, she changed her telephone number and from then on she refused even to answer the door to me, let alone let the children see me.'

Life soon became a round of court appearances. At first, Mark was granted unrestricted access. But at the same time his wife applied to have his visits reduced, saying it was ' confusing' for the girls to see him.

The Family Court agreed and cut his access from three times a week to once a week and finally to once a fortnight.

A year after they separated, the couple divorced. And that year, 1996, Mark returned to court in a bid to see more of his daughters. This time, he asked if they could come and live with him. His wife retaliated by saying that seeing him was unsettling the girls. The judge's response was astonishing by any standards: he severed all Mark's rights of access.

'I was devastated,' he said. 'But I couldn't let that stop me being a father to them.' To show he cared, he stood on the street and waved to them when their mother drove them to school each morning. His ex-wife took out an injunction to stop him.

Still he carried on waving at his children. 'I thought the whole ridiculous business would be cleared up at the next court hearing,' he said.

Instead, in November 1997, when he turned up at court, he was led away in handcuffs and jailed for four months. 'They said my waving was tantamount to stalking my wife.'

On his first night in jail, he shared a cell with a murderer. 'I pined for my girls,' he said. 'When I got out, it took me another year to convince the courts that I should be allowed to see the girls at all.' Finally, five years after being separated from Lisa and her younger sisters, Mark was granted permission to see them under the supervision of social workers. At first, Lisa refused to come, convinced that he hadn't seen her for so long because he didn't love her.

'It hurt to think she didn't want to see me. But it I hoped she would eventually come round.'

Then, in January 2001, at a court hearing he hoped would increase his children's visits, he was sentenced to ten months in Pentonville Prison for contempt of court. His crime?

Driving past his wife's house, trying to catch a glimpse of the girls between the six unsupervised visits he was allowed each year. He went on hunger strike for two weeks.

'I stopped only when I realised that if I died, I would never see my girls again.'

In the end, it was Lisa, not the courts, who resolved the situation-Over the years, she admits, she had given up on her father.

'We thought he didn't love us any more,' she says.

When her father was jailed, it served only to reinforce what she says were her mother's words: 'I told you he was a bad man.'

Mum’s hate for dad seemed to run so deep, to keep her happy and get the social workers off my back, I told them all I never wanted to see him again. Turning love to hate seemed easier.'

Over the years, she occasionally saw her father on TV. 'One day, I caught him being interviewed along with some other dads who were also banned from seeing their children,' she says.

'As I listened to them all talk about how all they wanted was to be allowed to be fathers to their own kids, I felt a pang for my own dad and what we'd lost.'

On March 21, 2001, she telephoned her father out of the blue, saying that she and her youngest sister were at a bus stop with their bags packed and wanted to come and live with him.

'Seeing Lisa again for the first time in six years was incredible,' recalled Mark, who has written a book, Family Court Hell, about his experiences.

'The last time we were together, she was a little girl - right then I didn't know how to speak to, or even how look at, the young woman before me, in make-up and high heels with her 6ft boyfriend in tow. In the end, we just fell into one another's arms and sobbed.'

Back home, he called a High Court emergency hotline. 'I managed to speak to a decent, and very humane, judge. I told him everything, he spoke to the girls, and ten minutes later faxed through a temporary residency order. In court, the following week, he cleared every previous court order and injunction that had been passed in the past ten years relating to our case.'

For Lisa, the reunion was hard at first. 'The last time I'd seen my dad I was ten and carried a skipping rope. Now I was 16, a young woman with a boyfriend in tow. Dad looked older and worn down by it all. It was a shock to see how he had aged.'

Today, she and her father are closer than ever, while her relationship with her mother is strained. 'As soon as the police release him, he's coming straight home,' she says. 'I can't wait to see him.'

Yet there is lingering regret too, for herself and for others who have to experience a similar ordeal. 'I wish to God that my parents had avoided the courts from day one and simply shared us, the children they created together,' she says.

'Instead, complete strangers were allowed to get involved in our lives to such an extent that everyone lost sight of the needs of us, the three people they were fighting over. All I ever wanted was to be allowed to love them both,' she says.

Harriet Harman may have been justified in refusing to meet this weekend's uninvited house guests and listen to their complaints, but, in the end, Lisa's words say it all.

BBC News: Fathers rooftop protest goes on
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7443284.stm


Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/news...9;s-house.html


Sky News Reports
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/...318456,00.html


Protester stays on Harman's roof
Monday, June 9, 2008

A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner remains on the roof of deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman's home, while another man has been arrested.

Jolly Stanesby, 41, climbed on to the roof of the house in south London on Sunday along with fellow protester Mark Harris.

Mr Harris came down from the roof yesterday and was arrested by police.

Mr Stanesby has now been on the roof of the house in Herne Hill for 24 hours.

The pair, wearing superhero costumes, unfurled a banner reading: 'A father is for life, not just conception.'

The group said they wanted to highlight the fact that fathers were being made redundant, emotionally in the courts and now biologically in the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

Mr Stanesby woke at about 6am after spending the night under a tarpaulin. Three police cars were parked at the address.

Mr Harris has written a book about his child custody battle, Family Court Hell.

Speaking by mobile phone from the roof on Sunday, Mr Harris insisted it was a peaceful protest but raised questions about Ms Harman's security arrangements.

He said: 'All we did was push open the gate, which wasn't even locked, put a ladder up and climbed up.'

Ms Harman, the Minister for Women and Equality, remained inside for more than seven hours on Sunday but eventually emerged to announce she was leaving until the protest was over.

Protester stays on minister's roof
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_08XK2UDueSEVyDNNwYQAv0i92A


A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner was maintaining his vigil on Monday on the roof of deputy Labour leader Harriet Harman's home in an "early Father's Day strike" against the Government.

Jolly Stanesby scrambled onto the roof of the Cabinet Minister's house in Herne Hill, south London, on Sunday morning, along with another activist, Mark Harris, who later climbed down.

Dressed as superheroes, the pair, both from south Devon - unfurled a banner reading "A father is for life, not just conception".
The group said they wanted to highlight the fact that fathers were being made redundant, emotionally in the courts and now biologically in the new Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

Ms Harman, the Minister for Women and Equality, remained inside on Sunday for over seven hours but eventually emerged to announce she was leaving until the protest was over.

She said: "We are going to move out and stay somewhere else. I don't think it's fair for police resources to be tied up outside my house by this demonstration."

During their protest Mr Harris and Mr Stanesby demanded a meeting with the Cabinet Minister, claiming she had refused to see them.

But Ms Harman denied this and said they could have attended her regular Friday constituency surgery at Southwark Town Hall two days earlier.

She said: "They have said this is because they want a meeting but I checked with my constituency office and they haven't requested a meeting. I checked with my ministerial office and they haven't requested a meeting there."

Fathers 4 Justice founder Matt O'Connor responded by saying he had asked Ms Harman for "urgent talks" over a year ago through his local MP in Winchester, Lib-Dem Mark Oaten. He said: "She wrote back and refused, as did other Ministers, such as Peter Hain."

The Times: Harriet Harman abandons home after Fathers4Justice protest on roof

[ame="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=j8lxZAfbsuc&feature=related"]YouTube - bbc news Harmen protest. Harmen interview[/ame]

Two Fathers 4 Justice campaigners scaled the roof of Harriet Harman's house today forcing the Leader of the House of Commons and her husband to abandon the property.

Dressed in red and blue Superman costumes, Jolly Stanesby, 39, and Mark Harris, 49, both from South Devon, unfurled a banner reading "A father is for life, not just conception" from the grey, slate tiles of the Deputy Labour Leader's semi-detached property in Dulwich, South London

The duo then relaxed on the gables in the sun, waving to neighbours and the gathering crowds in what is the latest of a series of high-profile fathers' rights protests by the group since it formed in 2002.

Ms Harman had remained oblivious to the "superheroes" on her roof until local children started waving up at them. However at 2.30pm Ms Harman emerged with her husband to declare they were leaving, to spare the public purse.

"We are going to move out and stay somewhere else. I don’t think it’s fair for police resources to be tied up outside my house by this demonstration and it’s not fair on the neighbours," she said.

"We came in through the side gate at 8.15 this morning," said Mr Harris, a driving instructor, speaking to The Times by mobile phone from the roof. "We just walked in.

"Then we climbed up the back extension onto the flat roof from where we could get to the very top. My own house is more secure than this."

He said he had asked police acting as mediators to present Ms Harman with a copy of his book, Family Court Hell, which details his decade-long struggle to gain access to his three daughters, including a prison sentences for waving to them across a supermarket car park.

"We have asked her to read it and then we're going to ask her some questions on it," he said. "If she can answer them all correctly, then we will come down."

Championing the reform of Britain's family law system and equal contact and parenting rights for separated parents, Fathers 4 Justice members have become infamous for breaching public buildings and scaling them dressed as larger-than-life comic book characters.

Ms Harman's suburban red-brick home is a far cry from the Royal Courts of Justice or Buckingham Palace, which Fathers 4 Justice members scaled in 2003 and 2004. But the group insisted Ms Harman was an obvious target.

"Harriet Harman is part of a Government that has presided over the chaos of family law for ten years," said Darryl Westell, a 26-year-old member who arrived to cheer on his friends. "She and her party have advocated the total removal of fathers' rights."

Mr Westell, who spent "£20,000 and a lot of heartache" fighting for the right to see his five-year-old son after he separated from the boy's mother, said he was supposed to be on Ms Harman's roof himself, but his alarm had failed to go off that morning.

"I'm probably lucky," he admitted. "They will stay up there for as long as it takes. These guys are determined."

In January 2004, Mr Stanesby, a registered child minder and father-of-one, sat on top of Tamar Bridge in Plymouth for seven days. Ms Harman's roof, in comparison, was quite luxurious, he said.

"It's beautiful up here. It's hot and sunny and we've got great views of London."

"We've got plenty of food and water and a couple of books – I'm reading Martin Luther King's autobiography.

"And if we need the loo, we're hoping Harriet might let us use hers."

The Daily Mail - Harman hounded out: Rooftop protest by fathers' rights pair drives minister from her home
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ster-home.html

Harriet Harman was forced from her family home last night after two fathers' rights campaigners dressed as comic book superheroes climbed on to her roof and refused to leave. The deputy leader of the Labour Party and Minister for Women refused to meet the pair. Six hours later, she temporarily moved out of her South London address.

Banner protest: 'A father is for life - not just conception'

Miss Harman, 58, said it was not fair to waste police time or disturb her neighbours so she was going to stay elsewhere.
Last night police began a security review and will want to know why the Fathers 4 Justice campaigners were able to scale the walls of Miss Harman's home so easily.

The men claimed they had simply entered through an unlocked gate and propped a ladder up against the wall of the three-storey house.
Miss Harman was targeted because, in her previous Whitehall job as Solicitor General, campaigners say she did not do enough to open up access to the family courts.

High profile: The protesters (circled) on the roof behind Miss Harman

It was also claimed that she had hinted at support for the aims of Fathers 4 Justice, but had done nothing.
The drama started at about 8.15am. Once the two Fathers 4 Justice protesters were on the roof they unfurled a banner reading 'A Father is for life, not just conception'.

The pair from Devon were Mark Harris, dressed as 'Cash Gordon', and Jolly Stanesby in a Superman outfit but describing himself as 'Captain Conception'.

Mr Harris, speaking to the Daily Mail by mobile phone from the roof, insisted the stunt was a peaceful protest, but said it raised questions about Miss Harman's security arrangements.

'All we did was push open the gate, which wasn't even locked, put a ladder up and climbed up,' he said.
'In this time of heightened terror alerts I can't believe Harriet Harman has such lax security.'

A spokesman for the militant group - whose previous stunts including throwing flour at Tony Blair in the House of Commons and scaling Buckingham Palace - said yesterday's demonstration was intended as an 'early Father's Day strike' against the Government over fathers' access to their children.

With no end to the stand-off in sight, Miss Harman emerged from the home she shares with husband, Jack Dromey, treasurer of the Labour Party, to condemn the protest.

The mother-of-three said that nobody from Fathers 4 Justice had tried to contact her to ask for a meeting and nobody from the group had come to her constituency surgeries either.

Fathers 4 Justice spokesman Darryl Westell challenged Miss Harman's claims.

'It's rubbish,' he said. 'She has been approached through Matt O'Connor, the founder, and Mark Oaten, the MP for Winchester. She refused.'

Mr Harris later came down from the roof but Mr Stanesby pledged to remain 'as long as possible'.

Last night security expert Dai Davies, a former head of the Met's Royalty Protection Squad, said: 'It is ironic that at a time when the Government is trying to extend the detention period for terrorist suspects - supposedly because 2,000 individuals are plotting against us - that security should be so lax at the home of the deputy leader of the Labour Party.

Gulf Daily News
http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/Story.asp?Article=219806&Sn=WORL&IssueID=31081