"Social alienation and selfishness,
has been created as a result of the familial alienation
which has been officially forced upon so many of us."


Julian Fitzgerald on our "Autistic Society"

It's not this pathetic excuse of a policeman who has forgotten that it is us, the general public, who employ him. It is us who have forgotten that we live under one of the most powerful and unaccountable bureaucracies of all time, and that in order to confront such a bureaucracy, one has to do rather more than British people are accustomed to doing. The normal reaction to physical NVDA now is to weather it like a storm, give in only where absolutely necessary and hype this for all you are worth, then wait until the impetus has dissipated.

In order for this not to happen, we need to have a rather clearer and rather more all-embracing (ie: attractive, reasonable-sounding and applicable at many levels to a very great number of people) agenda for change than that we have so far allowed ourselves. Such an agenda does exist. But whilst some of us may feel slightly euphoric to have penetrated the publicity barrier, those who have had experience of the same in other walks of activist life will know that this should not be viewed as an end but a beginning. More of the same publicity-barrier breaking stunts will simply invite abuse and boredom, without far more substance behind them.

One only needs to look at the consequences of any meaningful victories we may achieve in REALLY changing family law for future generations, to realise quite how much upheaval is involved for those alive today, the present generations.

Social alienation and selfishness, what I have sometimes referred to, half-jokingly, for the term has little scientific meaning, as "Autistic Society" has actually been created as a result of the familial alienation which has been officially forced upon so many of us. The official invitation to fail to differentiate between different qualities of relationship, for instance those between parent and child as opposed to those between parent and parent, has resulted in massive and generationally cyclical emotional betrayal and alienation, a sort of perpetual re-enactment of trauma and the evil that is done to one, in many families throughout this land.

If equal parental rights are for the future, then they are also for those wronged in the past, with lives ahead of them of thirty, forty or fifty years and more. They are for fathers and daughters who need a completely altered paradigm of social decency, one where alienation and relational maltreatment are not indelible, but solvable. They are for those mothers and daughters who would, but for the ability to forgive and compensate for past wrongs, become completely hostile to each other as the child turns into an adult and slowly realises quite what has been done to her in her relationship with a loving father.

The whole sorry, degrading mess which has been almost entirely the result of brutal official attitudes to basic human social commitments has to be unravelled, and as a consequence, and if we are to retain any faith in those structures and individuals who have committed such evils, the ability to find a path towards reconciliation, before people's fathers and other alienated relatives die and the grief is made permanent, requires great changes.

This is a powder keg of injustice waiting to blow, and I am not sure our country has ever had to face quite such a resolute, mature and unjustifiably wronged selection of people before. This is a generational movement in so far as it covers ALL the generations, children, parents AND grandparents.
Decision-makers are used to dealing with the evils committed by bureaucrats by deliberate obfuscation and denial, as though these structures were far more important to preserve than those individuals whose lives they have wreaked harm upon. Unlike many other Western countries, the UK has never really had to face large proportions of its own bureaucracy and say "you have betrayed the trust placed in you and you must make real amends". This is what it has to be forced to do now.

The culture of lies, deceit and exclusion has to be eradicated, and this will carry a cost for many, many individuals now in positions of power. Will they have the maturity to accept their responsibilities, or will they simply fight to defend their interests? Either way, a resolute movement for change will need to deal with these factors, and the sooner it realises that there is no quick and painless panacea, the better.

Julian Fitzgerald
Date: 07 November 2003 00:40