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http://thomaspainescorner.wordpress.com/2009/07/02/crackdown-on-anti-corporate-dissent-the-animal-rights-movement/
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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