Friday, October 29, 2004

Radical Dads Storm Extremist Conference

Fathers 4 Justice today disrupted the conference on 'Contact Today - The Challenge of Parental Separation', held in the isolated compound of the feared National Council For Voluntary Organisations in the notorious neo-Feminazi enclave of Islington.

Among the speakers - the leader of the movement to separate children from their fathers - and the woman who released the Bulger killers - Dame Elizabeth Butler Sloss.

Fortunately this blog had a social-worker spy inside the conference. When I spoke to her she had had a few gins and could hardly stand up. But the truth of what she was saying shone from her eyes.

"We were well into Dame Elizabeth's big speech. We'd started with a Ten Minute Hate, with pictures of men projected on a wall for us to boo and shout at - George Bush got the most boos ! then at last ... the lights went down and Aretha Franklin's 'Respect' hit the sound system, smoke machines started up - we all started chanting 'LIZ-ZIE ! LIZ-ZIE !'. Then she came in - it was unbelievable. Lord Filkin, Lord Justice Wall, Anthony Douglas and John Baker came in crawling on their hands and knees. Dame Elizabeth sat on their backs, wearing a tiara and waving a wand - we just went beserk as they carried her to the podium and hundreds of pink ribbons came down from the ceiling. Awesome.

When the applause died down she began. Her theme was that men were basically all the same, they were only after one thing, and that none of them could be trusted - not one. We'd heard it all before - at University, on our Social Work training, in the Guardian, on Woman Sour. Yet when she spoke it was as if we were hearing it for the first time. People were whooping and crying - the girl in front of me wet herself. When I say girl - I think she was quite old, judging by the dungarees and Doc Martens, although blue is a really good colour for covering grey hair.

Suddenly there were bangs and shouting from outside. People came running in saying there was a fire-bomb attack on the front entrance. The alarms started to go off, and we looked for the rear exit to escape, but Dame Elizabeth didn't want us to leave. 'Stand and Fight !' she cried, 'Is this what Emily Davison brought off the biggest betting coup of 1913 for ?', but the security guards were quite insistent and we had to leave. As we were queuing to get out, we could see out of the side windows a man jump - naked ! - into the canal and climb out - right by the windows ! He was shouting something but we couldn't hear what. Dame Elizabeth went for him, banging on the windows and shouting. As we filed out I could hear her screaming 'I'll cut it off ! I'll cut it off!'


UPDATE - the traumatic events appear to have had a sequel.




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