RICKY CANTY has become a familiar figure outside the County Court in Cardiff.
For the past 17 months, the 52-year-old former car salesman has waged a one-man campaign against the justice system with a variety of tactics, including hanging a sheet of allegations on the court building and dressing up as a kangaroo.
His protests concern a complicated land dispute in Barry dating back to 1978 and according to Ricky, the courts and various solicitors have been responsible for a catalogue of injustices.
"I thought everyone else was the same as me. If you had a wrong done to you and you knew you were right, you would probably feel the same way. Eighty per cent of people who come out of that court complain about the way they have been treated," he says. "I know I am right."
When asked why he is the one who pursues it, he says jokingly, "I'm half-Irish." But the humour belies a resilience to put a more half-hearted complainer to shame. But what motivates those who take such extreme action?
Standing on Cardiff's Havelock Street, he is protesting to salve his own sense of anger as well as on behalf of his mother, Rita Grace, and late father, Daniel who died in 1982.
In his usual uniform of navy wool over-coat, shirt and tie, smart trousers and black lace-up shoes, Ricky does not look out of place in the court's precincts. He appreciates the irony that passers-by, unaware he is responsible for the bed-sheet of accusations stretched across the building may think he is a solicitor or "one of them".
"It's my fiancee, Coleen Jones, who told me to dress like this. I would have turned up in jeans but she told me I should look respectable."
The routine is the same every weekday when he rises at 6.30am and drives to Cardiff, armed with his flask of tea, sandwiches and the cotton sheet of grievances.
"I try to get there for 9.15am," he says, with the resolve of a dedicated employee. "Then I'll eat the sandwiches, anything from 11.30 to 1pm and spend the rest of the time chatting with my friend, Paddy, or talking to passers-by."
He leaves the court by 3pm and returns to his Barry home, where he turns in at 11pm in preparation for a new day.
"I try to put in six hours a day. I just try to show them up. I feel like a lion. I'll go on forever. I've spent all my family's money but I won't give up on this farce."
His mother has visited a few times and his brother and sister are also supportive.
Ricky says around a dozen people a day will ask about his grievances. He knows he has become a part of the landscape.
In the 20-plus years he has pursued his case, Ricky has become well-versed in land law. At various hearings he has quoted from legal texts and says, with some relish that "the judge's head was on the table when I had finished talking to him".
Ricky says he has written to local MPs, John Major, the Queen, the Queen Mother, Jack Straw, Mr and Mrs Kinnock, and every paper and television company in the UK. He also says that in 1997, he sent 1,000 directions to the European Court in Strasbourg in 1997 - "in red, green, yellow and blue for clarity".
"You can't give up. Hope is better than hopelessness. I am thinking about it constantly but I have always been a good sleeper. My father used to call me the horizontal champion."
He says MI5 robbed his house last year and took 10 years of tape recordings and registered letters to "professional important people".
Despite being arrested and manhandled out of courts as well as a solicitor's office, he is adamant the routine will continue until he gets "justice" - costs from bringing all his cases, interest, and expenses.
For passing office workers in Cardiff, Ricky has provided a familiar diversion.
There was the occasion he dressed in a kangaroo outfit, hired from a fancy dress shop in Barry. "I had heard this phrase `kangaroo court' and thought that it applied in my case," he says. He stood sentry outside the court in full costume.
He has also dressed in a judge's outfit, hired again, calling himself Mr Justice Denied, climbed on to the ledge of the court and was arrested.
Ricky says that every member of staff has been told to use the court's other entrance and ignore him. He has been sent to jail on several occasions, including 28 days and 14 days for contempt of court.
"I have thought about smashing the two big plants in the court foyer to try and draw attention to my case but that would be causing damage." For his next trick, Ricky plans to dress up as a ringmaster.
Dr Allan Norris, a consultant clinical psychologist at Birmingham's Nuffield Hospital, says there are many reasons why an individual may deliberately make an exhibition of him or herself.
"Motives range from a powerful sense of injustice to mental illness. In cases where there is not a medical condition, such a response could be because something matters dearly to them - such as the recent case of the animal rights activist who starved himself to death.
"If people are not mentally ill, I suspect they become emotionally engaged and get very angry, hurt or anxious and it is then we stop thinking as logically as when we are calm and dispassionate.
"You only have to look at two people arguing, when the row becomes heated, to see that they stop discussing rationally."
Heightened emotions could be a likely in a "David and Goliath" situation. "One of the things that causes anger is frustration. If they feel frustrated by officialdom then I suppose it's quite likely their anger will increase. We have in this country an honourable tradition of protest and of people doing out of the ordinary things in order to draw attention to their cause which may mean they go to extremes." The Suffragettes were such a group. I don't want to judge people of another age by our standards today but at the time that was considered outrageous and anti-social but they were doing it to draw attention to their cause." catherine.jones@wme.co.uk
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