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Having spent 18 years as a child of the state

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in children's homes and foster care,

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you could say that I'm an expert on the subject,

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and in being an expert, I want to let you know that

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being an expert does in no way make you right

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in light of the truth.

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If you're in care, legally the government is your

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parent, loco parentis.

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Margaret Thatcher was my mother. (Laughter)

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Let's not talk about breastfeeding. (Laughter)

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Harry Potter was a foster child.

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Pip from "Great Expectations" was adopted;

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Superman was a foster child;

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Cinderella was a foster child;

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Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the dragon tattoo,

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was fostered and institutionalized;

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Batman was orphaned;

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Lyra Belacqua from Philip Pullman's "Northern Lights"

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was fostered;

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Jane Eyre, adopted;

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Roald Dahl's James from "James and the Giant Peach;"

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Matilda; Moses -- Moses! (Laughter)

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Moses! (Laughter) --

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the boys in Michael Morpurgo's "Friend or Foe;"

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Alem in Benjamin Zephaniah's "Refugee Boy;"

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Luke Skywalker --

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Luke Skywalker! (Laughter) --

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Oliver Twist;

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Cassia in "The Concubine of Shanghai" by Hong Ying;

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Celie in Alice Walker's "The Color Purple."

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All of these great fictional characters, all of them

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who were hurt by their condition,

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all of them who spawned thousands of other books

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and other films, all of them

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were fostered, adopted or orphaned.

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It seems that writers know that the child

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outside of family reflects on what family truly is

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more than what it promotes itself to be.

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That is, they also use extraordinary skills

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to deal with extraordinary situations on a daily basis.

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How have we not made the connection?

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And why have we not made the connection, between

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— How has that happened? —

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between these incredible characters of popular culture

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and religions, and the fostered, adopted or orphaned child

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in our midst? It's not our pity that they need.

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It's our respect.

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I know famous musicians,

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I know actors and film stars and millionaires and novelists

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and top lawyers and television executives

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and magazine editors and national journalists

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and dustbinmen and hairdressers, all who were

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looked after children, fostered, adopted or orphaned,

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and many of them grow into their adult lives

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in fear of speaking of their background, as if it may

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somehow weaken their standing in the foreground,

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as if it were somehow Kryptonite, as if it were a time bomb

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strapped on the inside. Children in care,

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who've had a life in care, deserve the right

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to own and live the memory of their own childhood.

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It is that simple.

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My own mother — and I should say this here —

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she same to this country in the late '60s,

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and she was, you know, she found herself pregnant,

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as women did in the late '60s. You know what I mean?

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They found themselves pregnant.

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And she sort of, she had no idea of the context

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in which she'd landed.

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In the 1960s -- I should give you some context -- in the 1960s,

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if you were pregnant and you were single,

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you were seen as a threat to the community.

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You were separated from your family by the state.

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You were separated from your family and placed into

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mother and baby homes.

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You were appointed a social worker.

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The adoptive parents were lined up.

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It was the primary purpose of the social worker, the aim,

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to get the woman at her most vulnerable time

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in her entire life, to sign the adoption papers.

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So the adoption papers were signed.

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The mother and baby's homes were often run by nuns.

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The adoption papers were signed,

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the child was given to the adoptive parents, and the mother

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shipped back to her community

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to say that she'd been on a little break.

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A little break.

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A little break.

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The first secret of shame for a woman

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for being a woman, "a little break."

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The adoption process took, like, a matter of months,

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so it was a closed shop, you know, sealed deal,

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an industrious, utilitarian solution:

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the government, the farmer,

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the adopting parents, the consumer,

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the mother, the earth, and the child, the crop.

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It's kind of easy to patronize the past,

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to forego our responsibilities in the present.

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What happened then is a direct reflection

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of what is happening now. Everybody believed themselves

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to be doing the right thing by God and by the state

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for the big society, fast-tracking adoption.

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So anyway, she comes here, 1967, she's pregnant,

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and she comes from Ethiopia that was celebrating

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its own jubilee at the time

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under the Emperor Haile Selassie,

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and she lands months before the Enoch Powell speech,

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the "Rivers of Blood" speech.

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She lands months before the Beatles release "The White Album,"

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months before Martin Luther King was killed.

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It was a summer of love if you were white.

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If you were black, it was a summer of hate.

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So she goes from Oxford, she's sent to the north of England

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to a mother and baby home, and appointed a social worker.

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It's her plan. You know, I have to say this in the Houses --

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It's her plan to have me fostered for a short period of time

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while she studies. But the social worker,

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he had a different agenda.

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He found the foster parents, and he said to them,

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"Treat this as an adoption. He's yours forever.

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His name is Norman." (Laughter)

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Norman! (Laughter)

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Norman!

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So they took me. I was a message, they said.

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I was a sign from God, they said.

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I was Norman Mark Greenwood.

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Now, for the next 11 years, all I know is that this woman,

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this birth woman, should have her eyes scratched out

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for not signing the adoption papers. She was an evil woman

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too selfish to sign, so I spent those 11 years

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kneeling and praying.

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I tried praying. I swear I tried praying.

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"God, can I have a bike for Christmas?"

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But I would always answer myself, "Yes, of course you can."

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(Laughter)

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And then I was supposed to determine whether that

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was the voice of God or it was the voice of the Devil.

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And it turns out I've got the Devil inside of me.

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Who knew? (Laughter)

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So anyway, two years sort of passed,

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and they had a child of their own,

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and then another two years passed, and they had another child of their own,

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and then another time passed

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and they had another child that they called an accident,

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which I thought was an unusual name. (Laughter)

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And I was on the cusp of, sort of, adolescence,

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so I was starting to take biscuits from the tin without asking.

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I was starting to stay out a little bit late, etc., etc.

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Now, in their religiosity, in their naivete,

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my mom and dad, which I believed them to be forever,

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as they said they were, my mom and dad

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conceived that I had the Devil inside of me.

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And what -- I should say this here, because this is how

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they engineered my leaving.

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They sat me at a table, my foster mom, and she said to me,

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"You don't love us, do you?" At 11 years old.

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They've had three other children. I'm the fourth. The third was an accident.

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And I said, "Yeah, of course I do." Because you do.

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My foster mother asked me to go away to think about love

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and what it is and to read the Scriptures and to come back tomorrow

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and give my most honest and truthful answer.

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So this was an opportunity. If they were asking me

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whether I loved them or not, then I mustn't love them,

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which led me to the miracle of thought that I thought they wanted me to get to.

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"I will ask God for forgiveness and His light will shine

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through me to them. How fantastic." This was an opportunity.

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The theology was perfect, the timing unquestionable,

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and the answer as honest as a sinner could get.

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"I mustn't love you," I said to them. "But I will ask God for forgiveness."

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"Because you don't love us, Norman,

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clearly you've chosen your path."

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Twenty-four hours later, my social worker,

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this strange man who used to visit me every couple of months,

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he's waiting for me in the car as I say goodbye to my parents.

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I didn't say goodbye to anybody, not my mother, my father,

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my sisters, my brothers, my aunts, my uncles,

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my cousins, my grandparents, nobody.

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On the way to the children's home, I started to ask myself,

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"What's happened to me?"

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It's not that I'd had the rug pulled from beneath me

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as much as the entire floor had been taken away.

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When I got to the —

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For the next four, five years,

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I was held in four different children's homes.

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On the third children's home, at 15,

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I started to rebel, and what I did was,

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I got three tins of paint, Airfix paint that you use for models,

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and I was -- it was a big children's home, big Victorian children's home --

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and I was in a little turret at the top of it,

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and I poured them, red, yellow and green,

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the colors of Africa, down the tiles.

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You couldn't see it from the street, because the home

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was surrounded by beech trees.

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For doing this, I was incarcerated for a year

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in an assessment center which was actually

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a remand center. It was a virtual prison

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for young people.

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By the way, years later, my social worker said

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that I should never have been put in there.

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I wasn't charged for anything. I hadn't done anything wrong.

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But because I had no family to inquire about me,

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they could do anything to me.

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I'm 17 years old, and

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they had a padded cell.

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They would march me down corridors in last-size order.

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They -- I was put in a dormitory

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with a confirmed Nazi sympathizer.

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All of the staff were ex-police -- interesting --

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and ex-probation officers.

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The man who ran it was an ex-army officer.

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Every time I had a visit by a person who I did not know

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who would feed me grapes, once every three months,

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I was strip-searched.

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That home was full of young boys who were on remand

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for things like murder.

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And this was the preparation that I was being given

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after 17 years as a child of the state.

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I have to tell this story.

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I have to tell it, because there was no one

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to put two and two together.

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I slowly became aware that I knew nobody

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that knew me for longer than a year.

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See, that's what family does.

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It gives you reference points.

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I'm not defining a good family from a bad family.

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I'm just saying that you know when your birthday is

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by virtue of the fact that somebody tells you when your birthday is,

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a mother, a father, a sister, a brother, an aunt, an uncle,

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a cousin, a grandparent. It matters to someone,

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and therefore it matters to you. Understand,

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I was 14 years old, tucked away in myself, into myself,

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and I wasn't touched either, physically touched.

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I'm reporting back. I'm reporting back simply to say that

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when I left the children's home I had two things

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that I wanted to do. One was to find my family,

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and the other was to write poetry.

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In creativity I saw light.

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In the imagination I saw the endless possibility of life,

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the endless truth, the permanent creation of reality,

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the place where anger was an expression

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in the search for love, a place where dysfunction

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is a true reaction to untruth.

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I've just got to say it to you all: I found all of my family

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in my adult life. I spent all of my adult life finding them,

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and I've now got a fully dysfunctional family just like everybody else.

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But I'm reporting back to you to say quite simply

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that you can define how strong a democracy is

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by how its government treats its child.

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I don't mean children. I mean the child of the state.

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Thanks very much. It's been an honor. (Applause)

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(Applause)