Domestic Abuse

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, on bringing up this really important issue of domestic violence. I have no answers—or few—but I have a few observations. I have no answers other than to find a way of incorporating into the very structure of our society the assurance that, if there is an emergency and somebody has to get out of their home, there is always a place that they can go to: a place of asylum; a place of refuge. It does not happen often enough. I know too many people, especially in and around homelessness, who are beaten quite regularly. We bring in the police and all sorts of people, yet very little is done because no opportunity is provided.

About 15 years ago, I saw an advertisement in the Big Issue for the Violence Initiative. I rang them up and said, “I’d like to come along and talk to you”. So I went along, and they were very pleased to see me and said, “We’d like to show you around”. I said, “Great. When do I start the course?” They said, “What do you mean, when do you start the course?” I said, “Well, I would like to start the course”. They said, “Oh, you want to see what it’s like to actually go through a programme”. I said, “The thing is, I’m a 58 year-old man, and I’m so aggressive that if I’m on a train, I’m aggressive if it’s late, for example. I’m about to remarry for the third time and I don’t want to be aggressive like I was when I was bringing up my children, because I will be having a new family”. They were absolutely astonished that this man from the Big Issue should be coming to them to ask for help, and they gave me help.

What I really liked about the help was that for the first time in my life, I could admit to somebody that I was aggressive, that I was overbearing. I might not beat up my children or my wife, but I had my finger in their faces on too many occasions and often destroyed the domesticity that we were supposed to be sharing. It was really interesting that I could be in a place where people said, “You are a victim. You have arrived at this because somebody else has done something to you”.

When I was 18, I came home from my reformatory, from boys’ prison, and one Sunday afternoon I found my father pouring a kettle of hot water over my mother. I rushed into the kitchen, beat my father to the ground, stamped on him, kicked him, did everything conceivable and said, “If you touch my mother again, I’ll kill you”. For the next nine years he did not touch my mother and actually, they grew in love with each other because, basically, let us not forget the fact that violence does not necessarily mean that one person hates another person; it is just that the real world—stuff like economic privation, lack of education, lack of opportunity, insecure housing—often overwhelm somebody who is passionately in love and they take it out on their children and their spouse. Often, afterwards they are crying and incredibly upset by the whole experience.

I gave my father nine years. Unfortunately my mother died very young from cancer due to being a night worker, a cleaner, and trying to hold the whole family together, but it was interesting to see that I established boundaries that my father could never cross again. I am not suggesting in this noble House that we now go around and beat up all the people who have beaten up their children and their wives, but I do feel it is necessary to address the cowardliness, the frustration that is shown towards the weak.

I went on and got married again. I have two beautiful children. I do not beat them up, I do not beat my wife up, I do not act aggressively towards them, and I thank God for the Violence Initiative, which was a private charity. What I would like to see in this debate and from Her Majesty’s Government is a balance in the way that we offer refuges. We must always give somebody the chance of escape, because it could be the thing that saves their life and their children’s lives. I would like to see Her Majesty’s Government put an enormous emphasis on helping people deal with the difficulty of being unable to control their anger and passing it on to their family.