A man campaigning for the rights of fathers in separation and divorce cases was arrested on Friday after he handcuffed himself to Britain’s minister for children’s affairs, police said.
The minister, Margaret Hodge, was making a keynote address at a conference on family law in the northern English city of Manchester, when two men climbed on stage and one of them cuffed himself to her.
The Fathers 4 Justice group identified the men as Jolly Stanesby and Jason Hatch, a 32-year-old who made headlines in September when he scaled Buckingham Palace dressed as Batman to stage a five-hour protest.
Hodge was freed from the handcuffs in half an hour, and was unharmed, a police spokesperson said, adding that the man had been arrested.
An education department spokesperson said the minister was going ahead with her speech, while the matter is ”being dealt with by the police”.
Hatch triggered a security scare with his September stunt after he managed to slip through police cordons to scale the balcony of Queen Elizabeth II’s official London residence.
It was one in a string of high-profile protests staged by the small group of militants that has been lobbying for fathers to have greater access to their children after a divorce or separation.
Another activist in September dressed as Spider-Man scaled the London Eye, the jumbo Ferris wheel on the south bank of the River Thames, where he unfurled a banner marked ”In the name of the father”.
Two other men lobbed condoms filled with purple-coloured flour at Prime Minister Tony Blair from an upper gallery in the House of Commons in May.
The incident forced all the deputies to evacuate the building for an hour before it was deemed safe to return.
One has been given a suspended jail sentence, while the other was fined. — Sapa-AFP