Matt O'Connor

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Matt O’Connor is the founder of the fathers' rights pressure group Fathers 4 Justice. Denied access to his children by the Family Courts, O’Connor created Fathers 4 Justice to demand reform of the family courts and government policy on parental access.

O’Connor has three boys, Daniel aged 10 and Alexander aged nine from his previous marriage and Archie aged one with his partner Nadine.

In 2005 he was one of twenty people shortlisted for the Great Briton of the Year Awards. The judges said,:As founder of the pressure group Fathers4Justice, the judges felt he had displayed great humour, eccentricity and innovation in raising awareness of a very serious social issue. Through his efforts he has succeeded, with minimal funds and minimal infrastructure, to take the issue of access for fathers to a point where, in a short space of time, the huge majority of people in Britain is now fully aware of the issue.

He was also named GQ Magazine’s 92nd Most Powerful Man In Britain & 7th Top Communicator in the UK and was also named as Esquire Magazine’s 35th Most Powerful Man In Britain Under 50.

He has spoken at the Oxford Union on numerous occasions and is currently writing his first book which is due to be published in the summer of 2007. A film about his life story is in development with Miramax.

In a GQ Magazine Feature on Matt O'Connor, June 2006, Author Will Self said of him, "He is fiercely intelligent, charmingly foul-mouthed and has a fantastic turn of phrase…few could equal O'Connor when it comes to taking a conversational thread, yanking, unravelling and generally running with it.”

In November 2006 O'Connor committed to running Fathers 4 Justice full-time and has announced a "Fathers 4 Justice Day" demonstration on Friday 15th June 2007. The new strategy being promised is being carefully kept under wraps but their web site www.fathers-4-justice.org is being re-launched in December 2006.

At around the same time, he was named by GQ magazine as the ninety-second most powerful man in the UK. [1]