'Church Stretton was such a hotbed': How Fathers 4 Justice started in sleepy Shropshire
The founder of one of the UK’s best known campaign groups started his movement in a quiet Shropshire village and is still fighting today.
For a little while, it was the most influential guerrilla campaign in the world.
Fathers 4 Justice made nightly headlines as dads dressed as superheroes stormed Parliament, gatecrashed Buckingham Palace and highlighted the plights of fathers who were banned from seeing their children.
And remarkably, the nerve centre for that campaign was sleepy old Shropshire.
Dozens of men from around the UK descended on the former Stretton Hall Hotel, then run by Charlie Barker, to discuss tactics.
And some of the campaign’s most memorable stunts were drawn up right there.
F4J founder Matt O’Connor said: “Church Stretton, or All Stretton, was integral to F4J. For the first couple of years, around 2003-05, we were based there. It was the scene of many an interesting situation. We had undercover police and journalists following us around the streets of Church Stretton.
“The Buckingham Palace stunt was done there. We planned it on the Saturday and did it on the Monday. I think that was in 2004. It was literally a five-minute thing and we decided to go for it. Church Stretton was such a hotbed.
"We had a journalist from the New York Times fly in. We’d be there or out in Shrewsbury working out what to do next.
"Co-ordinators from across the UK would come down for the weekend. There were 46 people, a good crowd, and at the bar there’d be journalists who were snooping. In the end, Church Stretton got a bit like a John Le Carre novel. That’s really where it all started.”
The campaign was started to champion not just fathers’ rights, but the cause of equal parenting. And though F4J campaigners appear far less frequently on TV screens now, their campaign has mushroomed. O’Connor remains at the heart of it and is determined to achieve positive social change so that children are allowed access to both their mothers and fathers.
He explains: “Fathers have no rights, basically, in law, to see their children. Ninety seven per cent of residency is given to mother, so 97 per cent per cent of fathers are deemed to be unfit to co-parent.
