WEBVTT 00:00:00.864 --> 00:00:05.109 Having spent 18 years as a child of the state 00:00:05.109 --> 00:00:07.415 in children's homes and foster care, 00:00:07.415 --> 00:00:10.463 you could say that I'm an expert on the subject, 00:00:10.463 --> 00:00:14.021 and in being an expert, I want to let you know that 00:00:14.021 --> 00:00:19.628 being an expert does in no way make you right 00:00:19.628 --> 00:00:22.628 in light of the truth. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:22.628 --> 00:00:26.816 If you're in care, legally the government is your 00:00:26.816 --> 00:00:30.543 parent, loco parentis. 00:00:30.543 --> 00:00:34.492 Margaret Thatcher was my mother. (Laughter) 00:00:34.492 --> 00:00:38.141 Let's not talk about breastfeeding. (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:38.141 --> 00:00:41.279 Harry Potter was a foster child. 00:00:41.279 --> 00:00:46.319 Pip from "Great Expectations" was adopted; 00:00:46.319 --> 00:00:49.401 Superman was a foster child; 00:00:49.401 --> 00:00:52.929 Cinderella was a foster child; 00:00:52.929 --> 00:00:56.537 Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo, 00:00:56.537 --> 00:00:59.459 was fostered and institutionalized; 00:00:59.459 --> 00:01:03.834 Batman was orphaned; 00:01:03.834 --> 00:01:07.532 Lyra Belacqua from Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights" 00:01:07.532 --> 00:01:09.221 was fostered; 00:01:09.221 --> 00:01:11.956 Jane Eyre, adopted; 00:01:11.956 --> 00:01:16.539 Roald Dahl's James from "James and the Giant Peach;" 00:01:16.539 --> 00:01:22.051 Matilda; Moses -- Moses! (Laughter) 00:01:22.051 --> 00:01:24.498 Moses! (Laughter) -- 00:01:24.498 --> 00:01:28.994 the boys in Michael Morpurgo's "Friend or Foe;" 00:01:28.994 --> 00:01:32.810 Alem in Benjamin Zephaniah's "Refugee Boy;" 00:01:32.810 --> 00:01:35.394 Luke Skywalker -- 00:01:35.394 --> 00:01:38.265 Luke Skywalker! (Laughter) -- 00:01:38.265 --> 00:01:40.552 Oliver Twist; 00:01:40.552 --> 00:01:44.763 Cassia in "The Concubine of Shanghai" by Hong Ying; 00:01:44.763 --> 00:01:48.120 Celie in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple." 00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:52.732 All of these great fictional characters, all of them 00:01:52.732 --> 00:01:56.729 who were hurt by their condition, 00:01:56.729 --> 00:02:01.377 all of them who spawned thousands of other books 00:02:01.377 --> 00:02:03.832 and other films, all of them 00:02:03.832 --> 00:02:07.985 were fostered, adopted or orphaned. 00:02:07.985 --> 00:02:13.549 It seems that writers know that the child 00:02:13.549 --> 00:02:20.698 outside of family reflects on what family truly is 00:02:20.698 --> 00:02:24.288 more than what it promotes itself to be. 00:02:24.288 --> 00:02:29.255 That is, they also use extraordinary skills 00:02:29.255 --> 00:02:34.084 to deal with extraordinary situations on a daily basis. NOTE Paragraph 00:02:34.084 --> 00:02:37.606 How have we not made the connection? 00:02:37.606 --> 00:02:41.644 And why have we not made the connection, between 00:02:41.644 --> 00:02:43.844 — How has that happened? — 00:02:43.844 --> 00:02:47.412 between these incredible characters of popular culture 00:02:47.412 --> 00:02:52.500 and religions, and the fostered, adopted or orphaned child 00:02:52.500 --> 00:02:57.132 in our midst? It's not our pity that they need. 00:02:57.132 --> 00:02:59.733 It's our respect. 00:02:59.733 --> 00:03:02.350 I know famous musicians, 00:03:02.350 --> 00:03:07.422 I know actors and film stars and millionaires and novelists 00:03:07.422 --> 00:03:10.923 and top lawyers and television executives 00:03:10.923 --> 00:03:13.373 and magazine editors and national journalists 00:03:13.373 --> 00:03:16.214 and dustbinmen and hairdressers, all who were 00:03:16.214 --> 00:03:19.750 looked after children, fostered, adopted or orphaned, 00:03:19.750 --> 00:03:22.422 and many of them grow into their adult lives 00:03:22.422 --> 00:03:26.693 in fear of speaking of their background, as if it may 00:03:26.693 --> 00:03:31.000 somehow weaken their standing in the foreground, 00:03:31.000 --> 00:03:35.042 as if it were somehow Kryptonite, as if it were a time bomb 00:03:35.042 --> 00:03:39.089 strapped on the inside. Children in care, 00:03:39.089 --> 00:03:42.223 who've had a life in care, deserve the right 00:03:42.223 --> 00:03:48.073 to own and live the memory of their own childhood. 00:03:48.073 --> 00:03:50.352 It is that simple. NOTE Paragraph 00:03:50.352 --> 00:03:54.358 My own mother — and I should say this here — 00:03:54.358 --> 00:03:58.212 she same to this country in the late '60s, 00:03:58.212 --> 00:04:01.977 and she was, you know, she found herself pregnant, 00:04:01.977 --> 00:04:04.072 as women did in the late '60s. You know what I mean? 00:04:04.072 --> 00:04:06.021 They found themselves pregnant. 00:04:06.021 --> 00:04:10.695 And she sort of, she had no idea of the context 00:04:10.695 --> 00:04:14.815 in which she'd landed. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:14.815 --> 00:04:18.663 In the 1960s -- I should give you some context -- in the 1960s, 00:04:18.663 --> 00:04:22.014 if you were pregnant and you were single, 00:04:22.014 --> 00:04:24.915 you were seen as a threat to the community. 00:04:24.915 --> 00:04:30.774 You were separated from your family by the state. 00:04:30.774 --> 00:04:33.476 You were separated from your family and placed into 00:04:33.476 --> 00:04:35.598 mother and baby homes. 00:04:35.598 --> 00:04:38.739 You were appointed a social worker. 00:04:38.739 --> 00:04:41.129 The adoptive parents were lined up. 00:04:41.129 --> 00:04:45.214 It was the primary purpose of the social worker, the aim, 00:04:45.214 --> 00:04:48.555 to get the woman at her most vulnerable time 00:04:48.555 --> 00:04:53.908 in her entire life, to sign the adoption papers. 00:04:53.908 --> 00:04:55.793 So the adoption papers were signed. 00:04:55.793 --> 00:04:59.363 The mother and baby's homes were often run by nuns. 00:04:59.363 --> 00:05:02.539 The adoption papers were signed, 00:05:02.539 --> 00:05:06.235 the child was given to the adoptive parents, and the mother 00:05:06.235 --> 00:05:08.659 shipped back to her community 00:05:08.659 --> 00:05:11.650 to say that she'd been on a little break. 00:05:11.650 --> 00:05:14.336 A little break. 00:05:14.336 --> 00:05:16.014 A little break. 00:05:16.014 --> 00:05:19.579 The first secret of shame for a woman 00:05:19.579 --> 00:05:24.658 for being a woman, "a little break." 00:05:24.658 --> 00:05:27.749 The adoption process took, like, a matter of months, 00:05:27.749 --> 00:05:31.629 so it was a closed shop, you know, sealed deal, 00:05:31.629 --> 00:05:38.134 an industrious, utilitarian solution: 00:05:38.134 --> 00:05:41.492 the government, the farmer, 00:05:41.492 --> 00:05:45.339 the adopting parents, the consumer, 00:05:45.339 --> 00:05:50.141 the mother, the earth, and the child, the crop. NOTE Paragraph 00:05:50.141 --> 00:05:54.795 It's kind of easy to patronize the past, 00:05:54.795 --> 00:05:59.699 to forego our responsibilities in the present. 00:05:59.699 --> 00:06:03.551 What happened then is a direct reflection 00:06:03.551 --> 00:06:08.795 of what is happening now. Everybody believed themselves 00:06:08.795 --> 00:06:13.332 to be doing the right thing by God and by the state 00:06:13.332 --> 00:06:20.219 for the big society, fast-tracking adoption. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:20.219 --> 00:06:25.412 So anyway, she comes here, 1967, she's pregnant, 00:06:25.412 --> 00:06:30.490 and she comes from Ethiopia that was celebrating 00:06:30.490 --> 00:06:33.188 its own jubilee at the time 00:06:33.188 --> 00:06:35.958 under the Emperor Haile Selassie, 00:06:35.958 --> 00:06:41.084 and she lands months before the Enoch Powell speech, 00:06:41.084 --> 00:06:43.204 the "Rivers of Blood" speech. 00:06:43.204 --> 00:06:47.826 She lands months before the Beatles release "The White Album," 00:06:47.826 --> 00:06:50.510 months before Martin Luther King was killed. 00:06:50.510 --> 00:06:52.961 It was a summer of love if you were white. 00:06:52.961 --> 00:06:56.653 If you were black, it was a summer of hate. 00:06:56.653 --> 00:07:02.303 So she goes from Oxford, she's sent to the north of England 00:07:02.303 --> 00:07:06.663 to a mother and baby home, and appointed a social worker. 00:07:06.663 --> 00:07:10.903 It's her plan. You know, I have to say this in the Houses -- 00:07:10.903 --> 00:07:15.174 It's her plan to have me fostered for a short period of time 00:07:15.174 --> 00:07:18.749 while she studies. But the social worker, 00:07:18.749 --> 00:07:21.743 he had a different agenda. 00:07:21.743 --> 00:07:25.950 He found the foster parents, and he said to them, 00:07:25.950 --> 00:07:29.782 "Treat this as an adoption. He's yours forever. 00:07:29.782 --> 00:07:33.229 His name is Norman." (Laughter) 00:07:33.229 --> 00:07:35.566 Norman! (Laughter) 00:07:35.566 --> 00:07:38.278 Norman! NOTE Paragraph 00:07:38.278 --> 00:07:44.504 So they took me. I was a message, they said. 00:07:44.504 --> 00:07:46.963 I was a sign from God, they said. 00:07:46.963 --> 00:07:50.707 I was Norman Mark Greenwood. 00:07:50.707 --> 00:07:54.126 Now, for the next 11 years, all I know is that this woman, 00:07:54.126 --> 00:07:56.714 this birth woman, should have her eyes scratched out 00:07:56.714 --> 00:07:59.716 for not signing the adoption papers. She was an evil woman 00:07:59.716 --> 00:08:02.793 too selfish to sign, so I spent those 11 years 00:08:02.793 --> 00:08:05.549 kneeling and praying. 00:08:05.549 --> 00:08:08.670 I tried praying. I swear I tried praying. 00:08:08.670 --> 00:08:12.478 "God, can I have a bike for Christmas?" 00:08:12.478 --> 00:08:16.826 But I would always answer myself, "Yes, of course you can." 00:08:16.826 --> 00:08:18.440 (Laughter) 00:08:18.440 --> 00:08:21.177 And then I was supposed to determine whether that 00:08:21.177 --> 00:08:24.709 was the voice of God or it was the voice of the Devil. 00:08:24.709 --> 00:08:32.068 And it turns out I've got the Devil inside of me. 00:08:32.068 --> 00:08:34.476 Who knew? (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:08:34.476 --> 00:08:37.372 So anyway, two years sort of passed, 00:08:37.372 --> 00:08:39.150 and they had a child of their own, 00:08:39.150 --> 00:08:41.614 and then another two years passed, and they had another child of their own, 00:08:41.614 --> 00:08:43.905 and then another time passed 00:08:43.905 --> 00:08:46.482 and they had another child that they called an accident, 00:08:46.482 --> 00:08:49.890 which I thought was an unusual name. (Laughter) 00:08:49.890 --> 00:08:53.619 And I was on the cusp of, sort of, adolescence, 00:08:53.619 --> 00:08:58.024 so I was starting to take biscuits from the tin without asking. 00:08:58.024 --> 00:09:01.801 I was starting to stay out a little bit late, etc., etc. 00:09:01.801 --> 00:09:05.204 Now, in their religiosity, in their naivete, 00:09:05.204 --> 00:09:07.641 my mom and dad, which I believed them to be forever, 00:09:07.641 --> 00:09:10.909 as they said they were, my mom and dad 00:09:10.909 --> 00:09:17.718 conceived that I had the Devil inside of me. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:17.718 --> 00:09:19.776 And what -- I should say this here, because this is how 00:09:19.776 --> 00:09:21.735 they engineered my leaving. 00:09:21.735 --> 00:09:25.124 They sat me at a table, my foster mom, and she said to me, 00:09:25.124 --> 00:09:27.192 "You don't love us, do you?" At 11 years old. 00:09:27.192 --> 00:09:30.701 They've had three other children. I'm the fourth. The third was an accident. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:30.701 --> 00:09:34.746 And I said, "Yeah, of course I do." Because you do. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:34.746 --> 00:09:36.897 My foster mother asked me to go away to think about love 00:09:36.897 --> 00:09:39.741 and what it is and to read the Scriptures and to come back tomorrow 00:09:39.741 --> 00:09:42.684 and give my most honest and truthful answer. 00:09:42.684 --> 00:09:45.524 So this was an opportunity. If they were asking me 00:09:45.524 --> 00:09:47.860 whether I loved them or not, then I mustn't love them, 00:09:47.860 --> 00:09:50.725 which led me to the miracle of thought that I thought they wanted me to get to. 00:09:50.725 --> 00:09:53.396 "I will ask God for forgiveness and His light will shine 00:09:53.396 --> 00:09:57.164 through me to them. How fantastic." This was an opportunity. 00:09:57.164 --> 00:09:59.949 The theology was perfect, the timing unquestionable, 00:09:59.949 --> 00:10:02.852 and the answer as honest as a sinner could get. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:02.852 --> 00:10:07.540 "I mustn't love you," I said to them. "But I will ask God for forgiveness." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:07.540 --> 00:10:10.092 "Because you don't love us, Norman, 00:10:10.092 --> 00:10:12.436 clearly you've chosen your path." NOTE Paragraph 00:10:12.436 --> 00:10:15.234 Twenty-four hours later, my social worker, 00:10:15.234 --> 00:10:18.283 this strange man who used to visit me every couple of months, 00:10:18.283 --> 00:10:21.495 he's waiting for me in the car as I say goodbye to my parents. 00:10:21.495 --> 00:10:24.071 I didn't say goodbye to anybody, not my mother, my father, 00:10:24.071 --> 00:10:25.899 my sisters, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles, 00:10:25.899 --> 00:10:29.528 my cousins, my grandparents, nobody. 00:10:29.528 --> 00:10:33.075 On the way to the children's home, I started to ask myself, 00:10:33.075 --> 00:10:36.050 "What's happened to me?" 00:10:36.050 --> 00:10:39.203 It's not that I'd had the rug pulled from beneath me 00:10:39.203 --> 00:10:44.018 as much as the entire floor had been taken away. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:44.018 --> 00:10:47.818 When I got to the — 00:10:47.818 --> 00:10:52.201 For the next four, five years, 00:10:52.201 --> 00:10:57.054 I was held in four different children's homes. 00:10:57.054 --> 00:11:00.331 On the third children's home, at 15, 00:11:00.331 --> 00:11:03.498 I started to rebel, and what I did was, 00:11:03.498 --> 00:11:07.827 I got three tins of paint, Airfix paint that you use for models, 00:11:07.827 --> 00:11:11.658 and I was -- it was a big children's home, big Victorian children's home -- 00:11:11.658 --> 00:11:13.498 and I was in a little turret at the top of it, 00:11:13.498 --> 00:11:16.801 and I poured them, red, yellow and green, 00:11:16.801 --> 00:11:21.842 the colors of Africa, down the tiles. 00:11:21.842 --> 00:11:24.346 You couldn't see it from the street, because the home 00:11:24.346 --> 00:11:26.798 was surrounded by beech trees. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:26.798 --> 00:11:31.754 For doing this, I was incarcerated for a year 00:11:31.754 --> 00:11:34.739 in an assessment center which was actually 00:11:34.739 --> 00:11:39.459 a remand center. It was a virtual prison 00:11:39.459 --> 00:11:43.357 for young people. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:43.357 --> 00:11:45.410 By the way, years later, my social worker said 00:11:45.410 --> 00:11:46.869 that I should never have been put in there. 00:11:46.869 --> 00:11:49.524 I wasn't charged for anything. I hadn't done anything wrong. 00:11:49.524 --> 00:11:54.250 But because I had no family to inquire about me, 00:11:54.250 --> 00:11:59.001 they could do anything to me. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:59.001 --> 00:12:02.355 I'm 17 years old, and 00:12:02.355 --> 00:12:05.996 they had a padded cell. 00:12:05.996 --> 00:12:11.956 They would march me down corridors in last-size order. 00:12:11.956 --> 00:12:14.221 They -- I was put in a dormitory 00:12:14.221 --> 00:12:18.141 with a confirmed Nazi sympathizer. 00:12:18.141 --> 00:12:21.463 All of the staff were ex-police -- interesting -- 00:12:21.463 --> 00:12:23.477 and ex-probation officers. 00:12:23.477 --> 00:12:27.540 The man who ran it was an ex-army officer. 00:12:27.540 --> 00:12:30.700 Every time I had a visit by a person who I did not know 00:12:30.700 --> 00:12:34.434 who would feed me grapes, once every three months, 00:12:34.434 --> 00:12:36.645 I was strip-searched. 00:12:36.645 --> 00:12:39.898 That home was full of young boys who were on remand 00:12:39.898 --> 00:12:45.166 for things like murder. 00:12:45.166 --> 00:12:49.198 And this was the preparation that I was being given 00:12:49.198 --> 00:12:55.249 after 17 years as a child of the state. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:55.249 --> 00:12:57.832 I have to tell this story. 00:12:57.832 --> 00:13:00.102 I have to tell it, because there was no one 00:13:00.102 --> 00:13:03.055 to put two and two together. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:03.055 --> 00:13:06.082 I slowly became aware that I knew nobody 00:13:06.082 --> 00:13:09.576 that knew me for longer than a year. 00:13:09.576 --> 00:13:12.425 See, that's what family does. 00:13:12.425 --> 00:13:14.816 It gives you reference points. 00:13:14.816 --> 00:13:17.304 I'm not defining a good family from a bad family. 00:13:17.304 --> 00:13:19.120 I'm just saying that you know when your birthday is 00:13:19.120 --> 00:13:21.776 by virtue of the fact that somebody tells you when your birthday is, 00:13:21.776 --> 00:13:23.723 a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle, 00:13:23.723 --> 00:13:25.733 a cousin, a grandparent. It matters to someone, 00:13:25.733 --> 00:13:28.020 and therefore it matters to you. Understand, 00:13:28.020 --> 00:13:32.249 I was 14 years old, tucked away in myself, into myself, 00:13:32.249 --> 00:13:37.031 and I wasn't touched either, physically touched. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:37.031 --> 00:13:45.158 I'm reporting back. I'm reporting back simply to say that 00:13:45.158 --> 00:13:48.373 when I left the children's home I had two things 00:13:48.373 --> 00:13:52.170 that I wanted to do. One was to find my family, 00:13:52.170 --> 00:13:53.700 and the other was to write poetry. 00:13:53.700 --> 00:13:56.249 In creativity I saw light. 00:13:56.249 --> 00:14:01.411 In the imagination I saw the endless possibility of life, 00:14:01.411 --> 00:14:07.312 the endless truth, the permanent creation of reality, 00:14:07.312 --> 00:14:13.775 the place where anger was an expression 00:14:13.775 --> 00:14:17.523 in the search for love, a place where dysfunction 00:14:17.523 --> 00:14:22.241 is a true reaction to untruth. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:22.241 --> 00:14:25.788 I've just got to say it to you all: I found all of my family 00:14:25.788 --> 00:14:29.151 in my adult life. I spent all of my adult life finding them, 00:14:29.151 --> 00:14:33.166 and I've now got a fully dysfunctional family just like everybody else. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:33.166 --> 00:14:36.906 But I'm reporting back to you to say quite simply 00:14:36.906 --> 00:14:42.418 that you can define how strong a democracy is 00:14:42.418 --> 00:14:47.651 by how its government treats its child. 00:14:47.651 --> 00:14:49.707 I don't mean children. I mean the child of the state. 00:14:49.707 --> 00:14:54.674 Thanks very much. It's been an honor. (Applause) 00:14:54.674 --> 00:14:57.126 (Applause)