0:00:00.864,0:00:05.109
Having spent 18 years as a child of the state

0:00:05.109,0:00:07.415
in children's homes and foster care,

0:00:07.415,0:00:10.463
you could say that I'm an expert on the subject,

0:00:10.463,0:00:14.021
and in being an expert, I want to let you know that

0:00:14.021,0:00:19.628
being an expert does in no way make you right

0:00:19.628,0:00:22.628
in light of the truth.

0:00:22.628,0:00:26.816
If you're in care, legally the government is your

0:00:26.816,0:00:30.543
parent, loco parentis.

0:00:30.543,0:00:34.492
Margaret Thatcher was my mother. (Laughter)

0:00:34.492,0:00:38.141
Let's not talk about breastfeeding. (Laughter)

0:00:38.141,0:00:41.279
Harry Potter was a foster child.

0:00:41.279,0:00:46.319
Pip from "Great Expectations" was adopted;

0:00:46.319,0:00:49.401
Superman was a foster child;

0:00:49.401,0:00:52.929
Cinderella was a foster child;

0:00:52.929,0:00:56.537
Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo,

0:00:56.537,0:00:59.459
was fostered and institutionalized;

0:00:59.459,0:01:03.834
Batman was orphaned;

0:01:03.834,0:01:07.532
Lyra Belacqua from Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights"

0:01:07.532,0:01:09.221
was fostered;

0:01:09.221,0:01:11.956
Jane Eyre, adopted;

0:01:11.956,0:01:16.539
Roald Dahl's James from "James and the Giant Peach;"

0:01:16.539,0:01:22.051
Matilda; Moses -- Moses! (Laughter)

0:01:22.051,0:01:24.498
Moses! (Laughter) --

0:01:24.498,0:01:28.994
the boys in Michael Morpurgo's "Friend or Foe;"

0:01:28.994,0:01:32.810
Alem in Benjamin Zephaniah's "Refugee Boy;"

0:01:32.810,0:01:35.394
Luke Skywalker --

0:01:35.394,0:01:38.265
Luke Skywalker! (Laughter) --

0:01:38.265,0:01:40.552
Oliver Twist;

0:01:40.552,0:01:44.763
Cassia in "The Concubine of Shanghai" by Hong Ying;

0:01:44.763,0:01:48.120
Celie in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."

0:01:48.120,0:01:52.732
All of these great fictional characters, all of them

0:01:52.732,0:01:56.729
who were hurt by their condition,

0:01:56.729,0:02:01.377
all of them who spawned thousands of other books

0:02:01.377,0:02:03.832
and other films, all of them

0:02:03.832,0:02:07.985
were fostered, adopted or orphaned.

0:02:07.985,0:02:13.549
It seems that writers know that the child

0:02:13.549,0:02:20.698
outside of family reflects on what family truly is

0:02:20.698,0:02:24.288
more than what it promotes itself to be.

0:02:24.288,0:02:29.255
That is, they also use extraordinary skills

0:02:29.255,0:02:34.084
to deal with extraordinary situations on a daily basis.

0:02:34.084,0:02:37.606
How have we not made the connection?

0:02:37.606,0:02:41.644
And why have we not made the connection, between

0:02:41.644,0:02:43.844
— How has that happened? —

0:02:43.844,0:02:47.412
between these incredible characters of popular culture

0:02:47.412,0:02:52.500
and religions, and the fostered, adopted or orphaned child

0:02:52.500,0:02:57.132
in our midst? It's not our pity that they need.

0:02:57.132,0:02:59.733
It's our respect.

0:02:59.733,0:03:02.350
I know famous musicians,

0:03:02.350,0:03:07.422
I know actors and film stars and millionaires and novelists

0:03:07.422,0:03:10.923
and top lawyers and television executives

0:03:10.923,0:03:13.373
and magazine editors and national journalists

0:03:13.373,0:03:16.214
and dustbinmen and hairdressers, all who were

0:03:16.214,0:03:19.750
looked after children, fostered, adopted or orphaned,

0:03:19.750,0:03:22.422
and many of them grow into their adult lives

0:03:22.422,0:03:26.693
in fear of speaking of their background, as if it may

0:03:26.693,0:03:31.000
somehow weaken their standing in the foreground,

0:03:31.000,0:03:35.042
as if it were somehow Kryptonite, as if it were a time bomb

0:03:35.042,0:03:39.089
strapped on the inside. Children in care,

0:03:39.089,0:03:42.223
who've had a life in care, deserve the right

0:03:42.223,0:03:48.073
to own and live the memory of their own childhood.

0:03:48.073,0:03:50.352
It is that simple.

0:03:50.352,0:03:54.358
My own mother — and I should say this here —

0:03:54.358,0:03:58.212
she same to this country in the late '60s,

0:03:58.212,0:04:01.977
and she was, you know, she found herself pregnant,

0:04:01.977,0:04:04.072
as women did in the late '60s. You know what I mean?

0:04:04.072,0:04:06.021
They found themselves pregnant.

0:04:06.021,0:04:10.695
And she sort of, she had no idea of the context

0:04:10.695,0:04:14.815
in which she'd landed.

0:04:14.815,0:04:18.663
In the 1960s -- I should give you some context -- in the 1960s,

0:04:18.663,0:04:22.014
if you were pregnant and you were single,

0:04:22.014,0:04:24.915
you were seen as a threat to the community.

0:04:24.915,0:04:30.774
You were separated from your family by the state.

0:04:30.774,0:04:33.476
You were separated from your family and placed into

0:04:33.476,0:04:35.598
mother and baby homes.

0:04:35.598,0:04:38.739
You were appointed a social worker.

0:04:38.739,0:04:41.129
The adoptive parents were lined up.

0:04:41.129,0:04:45.214
It was the primary purpose of the social worker, the aim,

0:04:45.214,0:04:48.555
to get the woman at her most vulnerable time

0:04:48.555,0:04:53.908
in her entire life, to sign the adoption papers.

0:04:53.908,0:04:55.793
So the adoption papers were signed.

0:04:55.793,0:04:59.363
The mother and baby's homes were often run by nuns.

0:04:59.363,0:05:02.539
The adoption papers were signed,

0:05:02.539,0:05:06.235
the child was given to the adoptive parents, and the mother

0:05:06.235,0:05:08.659
shipped back to her community

0:05:08.659,0:05:11.650
to say that she'd been on a little break.

0:05:11.650,0:05:14.336
A little break.

0:05:14.336,0:05:16.014
A little break.

0:05:16.014,0:05:19.579
The first secret of shame for a woman

0:05:19.579,0:05:24.658
for being a woman, "a little break."

0:05:24.658,0:05:27.749
The adoption process took, like, a matter of months,

0:05:27.749,0:05:31.629
so it was a closed shop, you know, sealed deal,

0:05:31.629,0:05:38.134
an industrious, utilitarian solution:

0:05:38.134,0:05:41.492
the government, the farmer,

0:05:41.492,0:05:45.339
the adopting parents, the consumer,

0:05:45.339,0:05:50.141
the mother, the earth, and the child, the crop.

0:05:50.141,0:05:54.795
It's kind of easy to patronize the past,

0:05:54.795,0:05:59.699
to forego our responsibilities in the present.

0:05:59.699,0:06:03.551
What happened then is a direct reflection

0:06:03.551,0:06:08.795
of what is happening now. Everybody believed themselves

0:06:08.795,0:06:13.332
to be doing the right thing by God and by the state

0:06:13.332,0:06:20.219
for the big society, fast-tracking adoption.

0:06:20.219,0:06:25.412
So anyway, she comes here, 1967, she's pregnant,

0:06:25.412,0:06:30.490
and she comes from Ethiopia that was celebrating

0:06:30.490,0:06:33.188
its own jubilee at the time

0:06:33.188,0:06:35.958
under the Emperor Haile Selassie,

0:06:35.958,0:06:41.084
and she lands months before the Enoch Powell speech,

0:06:41.084,0:06:43.204
the "Rivers of Blood" speech.

0:06:43.204,0:06:47.826
She lands months before the Beatles release "The White Album,"

0:06:47.826,0:06:50.510
months before Martin Luther King was killed.

0:06:50.510,0:06:52.961
It was a summer of love if you were white.

0:06:52.961,0:06:56.653
If you were black, it was a summer of hate.

0:06:56.653,0:07:02.303
So she goes from Oxford, she's sent to the north of England

0:07:02.303,0:07:06.663
to a mother and baby home, and appointed a social worker.

0:07:06.663,0:07:10.903
It's her plan. You know, I have to say this in the Houses --

0:07:10.903,0:07:15.174
It's her plan to have me fostered for a short period of time

0:07:15.174,0:07:18.749
while she studies. But the social worker,

0:07:18.749,0:07:21.743
he had a different agenda.

0:07:21.743,0:07:25.950
He found the foster parents, and he said to them,

0:07:25.950,0:07:29.782
"Treat this as an adoption. He's yours forever.

0:07:29.782,0:07:33.229
His name is Norman." (Laughter)

0:07:33.229,0:07:35.566
Norman! (Laughter)

0:07:35.566,0:07:38.278
Norman!

0:07:38.278,0:07:44.504
So they took me. I was a message, they said.

0:07:44.504,0:07:46.963
I was a sign from God, they said.

0:07:46.963,0:07:50.707
I was Norman Mark Greenwood.

0:07:50.707,0:07:54.126
Now, for the next 11 years, all I know is that this woman,

0:07:54.126,0:07:56.714
this birth woman, should have her eyes scratched out

0:07:56.714,0:07:59.716
for not signing the adoption papers. She was an evil woman

0:07:59.716,0:08:02.793
too selfish to sign, so I spent those 11 years

0:08:02.793,0:08:05.549
kneeling and praying.

0:08:05.549,0:08:08.670
I tried praying. I swear I tried praying.

0:08:08.670,0:08:12.478
"God, can I have a bike for Christmas?"

0:08:12.478,0:08:16.826
But I would always answer myself, "Yes, of course you can."

0:08:16.826,0:08:18.440
(Laughter)

0:08:18.440,0:08:21.177
And then I was supposed to determine whether that

0:08:21.177,0:08:24.709
was the voice of God or it was the voice of the Devil.

0:08:24.709,0:08:32.068
And it turns out I've got the Devil inside of me.

0:08:32.068,0:08:34.476
Who knew? (Laughter)

0:08:34.476,0:08:37.372
So anyway, two years sort of passed,

0:08:37.372,0:08:39.150
and they had a child of their own,

0:08:39.150,0:08:41.614
and then another two years passed, and they had another child of their own,

0:08:41.614,0:08:43.905
and then another time passed

0:08:43.905,0:08:46.482
and they had another child that they called an accident,

0:08:46.482,0:08:49.890
which I thought was an unusual name. (Laughter)

0:08:49.890,0:08:53.619
And I was on the cusp of, sort of, adolescence,

0:08:53.619,0:08:58.024
so I was starting to take biscuits from the tin without asking.

0:08:58.024,0:09:01.801
I was starting to stay out a little bit late, etc., etc.

0:09:01.801,0:09:05.204
Now, in their religiosity, in their naivete,

0:09:05.204,0:09:07.641
my mom and dad, which I believed them to be forever,

0:09:07.641,0:09:10.909
as they said they were, my mom and dad

0:09:10.909,0:09:17.718
conceived that I had the Devil inside of me.

0:09:17.718,0:09:19.776
And what -- I should say this here, because this is how

0:09:19.776,0:09:21.735
they engineered my leaving.

0:09:21.735,0:09:25.124
They sat me at a table, my foster mom, and she said to me,

0:09:25.124,0:09:27.192
"You don't love us, do you?" At 11 years old.

0:09:27.192,0:09:30.701
They've had three other children. I'm the fourth. The third was an accident.

0:09:30.701,0:09:34.746
And I said, "Yeah, of course I do." Because you do.

0:09:34.746,0:09:36.897
My foster mother asked me to go away to think about love

0:09:36.897,0:09:39.741
and what it is and to read the Scriptures and to come back tomorrow

0:09:39.741,0:09:42.684
and give my most honest and truthful answer.

0:09:42.684,0:09:45.524
So this was an opportunity. If they were asking me

0:09:45.524,0:09:47.860
whether I loved them or not, then I mustn't love them,

0:09:47.860,0:09:50.725
which led me to the miracle of thought that I thought they wanted me to get to.

0:09:50.725,0:09:53.396
"I will ask God for forgiveness and His light will shine

0:09:53.396,0:09:57.164
through me to them. How fantastic." This was an opportunity.

0:09:57.164,0:09:59.949
The theology was perfect, the timing unquestionable,

0:09:59.949,0:10:02.852
and the answer as honest as a sinner could get.

0:10:02.852,0:10:07.540
"I mustn't love you," I said to them. "But I will ask God for forgiveness."

0:10:07.540,0:10:10.092
"Because you don't love us, Norman,

0:10:10.092,0:10:12.436
clearly you've chosen your path."

0:10:12.436,0:10:15.234
Twenty-four hours later, my social worker,

0:10:15.234,0:10:18.283
this strange man who used to visit me every couple of months,

0:10:18.283,0:10:21.495
he's waiting for me in the car as I say goodbye to my parents.

0:10:21.495,0:10:24.071
I didn't say goodbye to anybody, not my mother, my father,

0:10:24.071,0:10:25.899
my sisters, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles,

0:10:25.899,0:10:29.528
my cousins, my grandparents, nobody.

0:10:29.528,0:10:33.075
On the way to the children's home, I started to ask myself,

0:10:33.075,0:10:36.050
"What's happened to me?"

0:10:36.050,0:10:39.203
It's not that I'd had the rug pulled from beneath me

0:10:39.203,0:10:44.018
as much as the entire floor had been taken away.

0:10:44.018,0:10:47.818
When I got to the —

0:10:47.818,0:10:52.201
For the next four, five years,

0:10:52.201,0:10:57.054
I was held in four different children's homes.

0:10:57.054,0:11:00.331
On the third children's home, at 15,

0:11:00.331,0:11:03.498
I started to rebel, and what I did was,

0:11:03.498,0:11:07.827
I got three tins of paint, Airfix paint that you use for models,

0:11:07.827,0:11:11.658
and I was -- it was a big children's home, big Victorian children's home --

0:11:11.658,0:11:13.498
and I was in a little turret at the top of it,

0:11:13.498,0:11:16.801
and I poured them, red, yellow and green,

0:11:16.801,0:11:21.842
the colors of Africa, down the tiles.

0:11:21.842,0:11:24.346
You couldn't see it from the street, because the home

0:11:24.346,0:11:26.798
was surrounded by beech trees.

0:11:26.798,0:11:31.754
For doing this, I was incarcerated for a year

0:11:31.754,0:11:34.739
in an assessment center which was actually

0:11:34.739,0:11:39.459
a remand center. It was a virtual prison

0:11:39.459,0:11:43.357
for young people.

0:11:43.357,0:11:45.410
By the way, years later, my social worker said

0:11:45.410,0:11:46.869
that I should never have been put in there.

0:11:46.869,0:11:49.524
I wasn't charged for anything. I hadn't done anything wrong.

0:11:49.524,0:11:54.250
But because I had no family to inquire about me,

0:11:54.250,0:11:59.001
they could do anything to me.

0:11:59.001,0:12:02.355
I'm 17 years old, and

0:12:02.355,0:12:05.996
they had a padded cell.

0:12:05.996,0:12:11.956
They would march me down corridors in last-size order.

0:12:11.956,0:12:14.221
They -- I was put in a dormitory

0:12:14.221,0:12:18.141
with a confirmed Nazi sympathizer.

0:12:18.141,0:12:21.463
All of the staff were ex-police -- interesting --

0:12:21.463,0:12:23.477
and ex-probation officers.

0:12:23.477,0:12:27.540
The man who ran it was an ex-army officer.

0:12:27.540,0:12:30.700
Every time I had a visit by a person who I did not know

0:12:30.700,0:12:34.434
who would feed me grapes, once every three months,

0:12:34.434,0:12:36.645
I was strip-searched.

0:12:36.645,0:12:39.898
That home was full of young boys who were on remand

0:12:39.898,0:12:45.166
for things like murder.

0:12:45.166,0:12:49.198
And this was the preparation that I was being given

0:12:49.198,0:12:55.249
after 17 years as a child of the state.

0:12:55.249,0:12:57.832
I have to tell this story.

0:12:57.832,0:13:00.102
I have to tell it, because there was no one

0:13:00.102,0:13:03.055
to put two and two together.

0:13:03.055,0:13:06.082
I slowly became aware that I knew nobody

0:13:06.082,0:13:09.576
that knew me for longer than a year.

0:13:09.576,0:13:12.425
See, that's what family does.

0:13:12.425,0:13:14.816
It gives you reference points.

0:13:14.816,0:13:17.304
I'm not defining a good family from a bad family.

0:13:17.304,0:13:19.120
I'm just saying that you know when your birthday is

0:13:19.120,0:13:21.776
by virtue of the fact that somebody tells you when your birthday is,

0:13:21.776,0:13:23.723
a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle,

0:13:23.723,0:13:25.733
a cousin, a grandparent. It matters to someone,

0:13:25.733,0:13:28.020
and therefore it matters to you. Understand,

0:13:28.020,0:13:32.249
I was 14 years old, tucked away in myself, into myself,

0:13:32.249,0:13:37.031
and I wasn't touched either, physically touched.

0:13:37.031,0:13:45.158
I'm reporting back. I'm reporting back simply to say that

0:13:45.158,0:13:48.373
when I left the children's home I had two things

0:13:48.373,0:13:52.170
that I wanted to do. One was to find my family,

0:13:52.170,0:13:53.700
and the other was to write poetry.

0:13:53.700,0:13:56.249
In creativity I saw light.

0:13:56.249,0:14:01.411
In the imagination I saw the endless possibility of life,

0:14:01.411,0:14:07.312
the endless truth, the permanent creation of reality,

0:14:07.312,0:14:13.775
the place where anger was an expression

0:14:13.775,0:14:17.523
in the search for love, a place where dysfunction

0:14:17.523,0:14:22.241
is a true reaction to untruth.

0:14:22.241,0:14:25.788
I've just got to say it to you all: I found all of my family

0:14:25.788,0:14:29.151
in my adult life. I spent all of my adult life finding them,

0:14:29.151,0:14:33.166
and I've now got a fully dysfunctional family just like everybody else.

0:14:33.166,0:14:36.906
But I'm reporting back to you to say quite simply

0:14:36.906,0:14:42.418
that you can define how strong a democracy is

0:14:42.418,0:14:47.651
by how its government treats its child.

0:14:47.651,0:14:49.707
I don't mean children. I mean the child of the state.

0:14:49.707,0:14:54.674
Thanks very much. It's been an honor. (Applause)

0:14:54.674,0:14:57.126
(Applause)