What use protest, once nobody is permitted to hear your pain?

Chris Hawkins, wants his granddaughter in his life, what doting grandfather wouldn't? However over the years since the breakdown of his son's relationship with their mother he is learning the painful truth about family breakdown in Britain. When a mum wants out and takes the children with her, the family courts are just not able or willing to accommodate dads and grandparents in any meaningful way.

Chris said he and his son had been denied access for more than four years since the break-up of his son's marriage.

"I have given up taking legal action. It is a waste of time going through the courts," he said. Chris, 63, a retired lecturer, whose parenting skills have never been questioned before the split, finds that the state has decided he no longer exists, a form of grand patricide.

"When someone dies, the pain slowly heals and eventually you are left with only happy memories. But with my granddaughter the wounds are constantly re-opened because I am always wondering what she is doing and how she is."

Widower Chris began his fasting on Saturday 5 June, and says"no food will pass my lips until the government promises to reform the family courts system".

Chris Hawkins wants his action to draw attention to the failings of the Family Court system.

He said he had started the fast on Saturday out of "sheer desperation".

He decides to go on hunger strike so that the world should know the pain he is feeling at being removed from his grandchild's live completely and without cause. Doesn't anybody take on board that displaced granddads have feelings towards their grandchildren, or that these feelings can be as beneficial to the children as those of the mother?

Foreigners have commented on the British media elite's failure to care enough about free speech, let alone their lack of courage in scrutinizing facts when parents and grandparents get outraged about their treatment by the courts. So what use is protest once nobody knows you are crying out to be heard?

Chris believes he and his children have been totally let down by the English legal system, like thousands of others we never hear of.

When Chris tries to tell the world why he is starving himself, why he has voluntarily imposed a gag on his own nurturing, the English legal apparatus immediately places a gagging order on the media denying them the freedom to air Chris' story: Judge Shawcross issues an injunction against Granada TV forbidding them to interview Chris Hawkins for the ThisMorning show.

Chris is continuing with the hungerstrike. The Shawcross injunction has back fired by adding additional support to the wide publicity which this grandfather's hunger strike has since attracted on the web and from many newspapers.

Here is space for Chris's details:

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Len Miskulin

Len Miskulin starved himself for 63 days in a protest that ended 18-02-2001.

Len was only persuaded to end his hungerstrike (and save his life) after a group of caring fathers and grandparents offered him another route of expressing his protest against the injustices in Family Courts: They went with him on protest rallys to the homes and and villages where Family Court Judges lived.

The public protests that started with the end of Len's hungerstrike intensified after Mark Harris was jailed by Judge Munby for 10 months in jail for crimes such as waving Hello to his children. Since fathers 4 justice came on the scene, protests have closed bridges, building sites and attracted attention during film premiers. Outraged fathers have become very visible, dressed as super heroes they are striking ever new targets such as court roofs and even flower bombing the Prime Minister in the House of Commons. Nowhere is safe.

Clayton Giles

Clayton Giles is a fourteen year old Canadian boy who launched a hunger strike January 1, 2001 to protest that courts have made decisions in his parent's divorce that have caused him harm. Clayton ended his hungerstrike, on Friday, 19th January after 19 days. He intends then marched and cycled to the Canadian Parliament in the Spring.
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