7/1/09
During the past three years, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service have launched a new campaign against anti-corporate animal rights campaigns across the country. The crackdown has lead to the imprisonment of activists linked to Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) for a total of 50 years and the jailing of Sean Kirtley, who was linked to the Stop Sequani Animal Torture Campaign (SSAT), for four and a half years. The sentences, the charges and the nature of the prosecutions have all been political. Public opposition to the crackdown has been confounded by a media smokescreen thrown up by the press releases churned out by the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (NETCU), portraying activists as ‘extremists’ and disseminating misinformation. Many of those jailed have not committed any conventional crime but have been targeted by new legislation intended to counter the threat posed to the pharmaceutical industry by effective direct action.
The role of NETCUThe
National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit was set up partly as a replacement
for the Animal Rights National Index (ARNI). The creation of NETCU came at the
same time as a realisation by the police that the small, autonomous direct
actions against companies involved in vivisection in 1980s and 90s were being
replaced by mass campaigns such as the campaign to shut down the Hillgrove cat
breeders and, later, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).
NETCU monitors the
policing of animal rights campaigns and other political movements, often focused
anti-corporate campaigns; follows prosecutions through courts and cultivates
informants. One of NETCU’s most important roles, however, is the undermining of
campaigns through partisan use of the media and support for groups presenting
counter arguments to the dissenters NETCU is targeting. For instance, the NETCU
website hosted links to the pro-vivisection Research Defense Society and
articles praising PROtest. NETCU is also one of the least transparent of all UK
police departments and shrug off all requests for information about the work of
the unit. The political nature of NETCU’s work is illustrated by several press
releases boasting of activists being prevented from doing street collections and
leafletting (see, for example, ‘Animal rights campaign refused permission to
hold street collections in Sunderland’ at
www.netcu.org.uk/media/article.jsp?id=280 ).
The Sequani Six“All
effective campaigns that have tried to change the world have suffered severe
repression at the hands of the state. If the state isn’t interested, then you’re
not being effective.” – Sean Kirtley
An amendment to the
Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) in 2005 made it illegal to
“interfere with the contractual relations of an animal research organisation” or
to “intimidate” employees of an animal research organisation. One of the people
consulted during the drafting of the act was the CEO of Sequani labs in Ledbury,
Herefordshire. The labs had been the subject of protests due to their
involvement in animal testing.
On 9th May 2006,
coordinated dawn raids took place at various homes around the Midlands. The
massive police operation, dubbed ‘Tornado’, was given up-to-the-minute coverage
on the news section of the NETCU website. Computers and mobile phones were
seized as well as items like a plastic witch’s nose that were later exhibited in
court. Twelve people were charged under SOCPA. In the trial of the first seven
defendants, in January and February 2008, the prosecution alleged that the
events at 16 demonstrations against Sequani and related companies amounted to an
‘interference with the contractual relations’ of Sequani. The incidents related
to words spoken (allegedly offensive), acts of trespass and the sending of a
repeating fax message to block up company fax machines. All of these charges are
minor and would be extremely unlikely to carry a prison sentence. However, when
they form an element of a SOCPA offence, they can carry up to five years in
prison.
The 18-week-long
trial, subject to a media-gagging order imposed by the judge, examined reams of
computer and mobile phone evidence. The prosecution produced an ‘expert analyst’
who examined the network of phone calls between the defendants and presented
them as evidence that they were organising demonstrations. The very act of
planning to demonstrate against Sequani was portrayed as illegal. The
prosecution identified what they presented as a ‘hierarchy’ in the SSAT campaign
and portrayed certain defendants, including Sean Kirtley, as the ‘leaders’. Much
was made of the fact that Sean Kirtley’s computer showed that he had updated the
SSAT website. SMS messages and emails downloaded to computers, through email
clients like Thunderbird or Outlook, were read out in court.
What the defendants
were accused of essentially amounted to nothing more than a public, legal
protest campaign. Nothing the average person would perceive as illegal occurred.
No acts of direct action were relied upon by the prosecution and no physical
damage had been done to Sequani or any other company (except for one window
broken by accident).
The trial at Coventry
Crown Court took its toll on the defendants. According to Sean Kirtley,
defendants suffered “mental and physical exhaustion, nightmares and disturbed
sleep” as a result of the stress. Wendy Campbell told Corporate Watch, “It
nearly killed me but I was innocent, so I stood my ground.”
All defendants apart
from Kirtley were acquitted. The judge, a game-shooter, remanded Kirtley and
later sentenced him to four and a half years imprisonment and a five-year CRASBO
on release, which is an anti-social behaviour order (ASBO) imposed by a criminal
court.
So let us look for a
moment at the specific charges against Kirtley. He was not directly accused of
using offensive language: the prosecution admitted he was mostly silent at
demonstrations. Nor was he accused of sending disruptive faxes. The only charges
against him were of allegedly ‘organising’ demonstrations through phone calls
and emails and updating the SSAT website. The SSAT website was not offensive and
did not even advertise the demonstrations at Sequani. It merely discussed animal
abuse by Sequani and listed companies doing business with it. It also encouraged
readers to engage, politely, with these companies and not break the law. SSAT
was also a general animal rights resource with information about the fur and
dairy trades and anti-foie gras campaigns.
Thus, Sean Kirtley,
perhaps more than any other prisoner in the UK at the moment, is a political
prisoner punished for nothing but exercising his right to freedom of expression
and right to protest.
The SHAC Seven
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) is perhaps the most ambitious and most effective anti-corporate campaign against vivisection in the world. Its aim is to close Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe’s largest animal testing laboratory. In its attempts to do so, it has aimed to persuade companies to desist from investing in, supplying or providing services to HLS. This tactic recognises that corporations cannot do business in a vacuum but rely on other companies to provide a network of services to them.
In May 2007, police
arrested 32 people in raids dubbed ‘Operation Achilles’. Since then, 15 people
have been charged with ‘conspiracy to blackmail’ and are being tried in two
separate cases, of which the trial of the ‘SHAC 7’ was the first.
The charges related to
six years of campaigning against HLS, which the prosecution claimed was
‘blackmail’. Blackmail is defined as “making an unwarranted demand with
menaces.” The alleged blackmail in the three and a half month long trial at
Winchester Crown Court takes a little bit of creative thinking to understand.
SHAC, in which all seven on trial were allegedly active, published publicly
available company details of customers, investors and other companies doing
business with HLS. SHAC supporters were encouraged to write to them or protest
against them in the hope that they would cease trading with HLS. SHAC always
added a caveat that actions should remain within the law. In fact, SHAC went to
such lengths to remain within the law that Natasha Avery, one of the defendants,
entered into long correspondences with the police over SHAC-related
demonstrations, even praising the policing of some as even-handed.
Throughout the history
of the SHAC campaign, autonomous direct actions, often under the banner of the
Animal Liberation Front (ALF), have taken place against HLS, secondary and
tertiary companies and their employees. Cars have been paint-strippered, company
property damaged and letters threatening more damage have been sent to company
offices and, sometimes, to directors’ homes. Hoax bombs have been sent and, on
one occasion, an incendiary device was placed at the home of a company director
of a related company. These actions are not alleged to have been carried out by
SHAC. However, during the trial a spreadsheet, allegedly pieced together from
fragments of a document linked to a computer in the house where the SHAC office
was based, was produced. The spreadsheet detailed actions against HLS, including
the sending of letters accusing directors of being paedophiles and damage to
cars, giving the place and the date when the actions occurred. The prosecution
alleged that other documents recovered from computers provided tenuous links
between some defendants and the spreadsheet.
Thus, the alleged
‘unwarranted demand’ was what SHAC had asked companies: to sever links with HLS.
The supposed threat, or ‘menace’, was that of direct action carried out by
others. The existence of some evidence, albeit weak, of links between some of
the people on trial and direct action was an added extra for the prosecution.
A further complication
was that three people had pleaded guilty. A SHAC statement said that this was
because they “could not hope for a fair trial” and that the government “had a
political will to find them guilty of something.” However, this effectively
meant that it was accepted that blackmail had occurred, although the other five
defendants denied conspiracy. The trial, therefore, was about how much the
remaining defendants could be linked to this ‘blackmail’. Much of the evidence,
including the aforementioned spreadsheet, could not be challenged as the
defendants who pleaded guilty were not cross-examined.
Although it was
technically accepted that blackmail had occurred, the prosecution never
specified the exact nature of the blackmail. At its highest, the prosecution
case linked most defendants to direct action through the computer evidence.
However, the evidence of such a link was tenuous to non-existent. Failing that,
the prosecution essentially argued that SHAC operated legally but gave tacit
support to direct action. In some cases, particularly where activists had not
been involved in SHAC for long and could not be painted as organisers, the
prosecution argued that words they had said on demonstrations, ranging from
threats to articulate speeches about the need to end vivisection, were evidence
of ‘conspiracy to blackmail’. The judge even instructed the jury that simply
being on demonstrations where threatening statements were uttered could be
evidence of ‘conspiracy to blackmail’.
When the jury found 7
out of the 8 defendants guilty, it remained unclear which one of the
prosecution’s many definitions of the charges they accepted. It may be that they
were simply influenced by the media storm whipped up by NETCU press officers or
the wealth of irrelevant allusions to actions not carried out by the defendants,
such as the theft of the body of Gladys Hammond in the completely separate
campaign against Darley Oaks Guinea pig farm. It is evident that the defendants
were convicted, to a large extent, through guilt by association with the actions
of others.
At the three-day-long
sentencing in January 2009, Judge Butterfield sentenced the defendants according
to how he saw them in the supposed hierarchy of the SHAC campaign, not according
to the evidence against them. Thus, Greg and Natasha Avery were given the
heaviest sentences possible but were given credit for their guilty pleas and
sentenced to serve nine years each. Heather Nicholson, who plead not guilty,
received the longest actual sentence, eleven years. Gavin Medd Hall was
sentenced to eight years; Daniel Wadham, five years; and Daniel Amos and Gerrah
Selby were each sentenced to four years.
So what does this mean
for free speech and anti-corporate dissent in the UK? By the same logic, an
anti-war campaign that publishes information on the whereabouts of a military
base or arms factory and calls for its closure could be put in the frame for the
same crime if that base was then the subject of an arson attack. All it takes is
for the police to imply that the people running the public campaign are linked
to those involved in direct action. Consequently, campaigners might feel
compelled to publicly distance themselves from acts of direct action lest they
find that, unbeknown to them, those involved in public action are responsible
for the covert actions too and the whole movement is charged with ‘conspiracy’.
In fact, the use of such charges is a classic police tactic aimed at spreading
paranoia and convicting as many activists as possible for acts carried out by a
few anonymous people. The other aim is to minimise public support for ‘illegal’
actions by harassing and criminalising those who speak up in solidarity.
For more on the crackdown on animal
rights activists, see:
www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3179
www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3191
www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3194
www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=3385
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