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Fathers 4 Justice at the M4 toll bridge

While travelling to Wales this afternoon, I was entertained by three men dressed as Santa, dangling a banner from a motorway gantry on the M4 motorway, just after the Severn toll bridge. They were protesting for Fathers 4 Justice, which is a campaign for "truth, justice and equality in family law."

There were police cars on each side of the motorway, to alert people to the danger ahead. There were actually four men on the gantry, but I could only see three of them as we drove directly beneath them (I'm glad nobody fell off!). A large section of the motorway, and in fact the entire bridge, were subsequently closed in both directions, but we didn't know that at the time. Immediately after passing under them, I regretted not snapping a quick photo of them with the camera that was next to me (it was even as if they were posing for a photo!). Having seen the news coverage of it later in the day, I regretted that even more, as nobody seemed to have a good photo of the "incident". Perhaps I could have sold it to a newspaper or something :) I wasn't driving the car, before you ask.

So we spent a few hours in Wales doing some top secret stuff and then returned back to England. By late afternoon, the M4 motorway was practically at a standstill because of the earlier incident. The police had closed the entire bridge and were directing traffic over the second (older) bridge and things were not moving too smoothly at all when we were trying to escape from Wales. Aside: some news reports I have read stated there was very little disruption to traffic flow. What a load of bollocks!

Don't get me wrong - I'm generally in favour of what Fathers 4 Justice are protesting about, but today they messed up. Up until now, they have carried out amusing protests that have been both entertaining and newsworthy, without causing massive disruption to innocent people (trying to scale the walls of Buckingham Palace is a good example). But today, they totally bunged up a motorway and caused thousands of people to get home hours after they should have.

So what have Fathers 4 Justice achieved? Bugger all, really. There was a bit of press coverage, but no decent photos of it. The motorway was closed, so hardly anybody got to see their banner. I'd hazard to guess that most of the people stuck in the resulting traffic jams are a little bit pissed off with them now.

So yeah, I'm pissed off with them. Protesting is one thing, but inconveniencing your own supporters is just bloody daft.

28 Nov 2004 - 23:41:42 GMT
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