Selected articles from Arkangel No.3
Summer 1990
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Contents:
Beyond The Pale
by Val Graham
I am sure you will receive other letters like this over the
days ahead. I have been an admirer and supporter of the ALF
since its early days, taking every opportunity to speak out in
defence of previous direct action, in public meetings, in
print and radio debates. This brought me quite a lot of
criticism during the ten years I was involved with a national
society, but to do otherwise would have been hypocritical. It
has always exasperated me that most animal welfare spokesmen
will take any opportunity to slag off the ALF in the media,
refusing to give the slightest credit for the vast increase in
public awareness (and media interest} that has been generated
by them. Equally annoying are those who publicly condemn,
whilst privately admitting some sneaking admiration!
My standard response to those who call the activists thugs
or terrorists has been "Can you tell me of one single person
or animal that has been injured during an ALF action'!" What
am I going to say from now on? It would be comforting to think
that the recent car bombs have been a devilish plot by
vivisectors hoping to totally discredit the animal rights
movement, but 1 fear that would be clutching at straws. Nor,
given the obvious planning and technical expertise needed, can
we assume those involved were total morons. This leaves the
chilling conclusion that they realised perfectly well that
innocent bystanders could be hurt (maybe a vegan AR supporter
out walking a dog?) and did not care.
If I have never been mealy-mouthed in my praise of those
who risk their liberty to help animals, I cannot stay silent
now. The recent bombings were sick, indefensible and crassly
stupid - rather like vivisection in fact. Those who carried
them out have put themselves way beyond the pale, parting
company with the many decent, intelligent people who accept
that bad laws sometimes need to be defied, even if this
involves some force being used. Instead they have sunk to the
same level as the arrogant vivisector who distorts the truth
to justify the means used.
I have always been opposed to capital punishment (although
I don't think I'm a bleeding hearts liberal) even for the
vilest crime. It could be argued that those who torture
animals are of no use to the world, and I would not disagree.
However, I also think that people like Myra Hindley are a
total waste of space, but would not wish to see her hanged. I
can well understand the desire to hurt and punish those who
abuse animals, to give them a taste of the pain and fear they
inflict on helpless creatures, but in the end it will achieve
nothing but public outrage. I drew the line when the bomb hurt
the baby. Can we now expect those responsible to go the whole
hog, and start strapping explosives to dogs? After all, what
are a few animals lives when you are fighting for your
principles?
At a time when more and more people are sympathetic to the
plight of animals (partly thanks to the ALF) this stupid
action may well turn the clock back years. What wonderful
ammunition it will have given animal abusers who are probably
rubbing their blood stained hands together with glee at this
own goal, also wonder what kind of psychos, gun fanatics and
violent misfits will now be drawn to animal liberation.
Meanwhile, non-violent campaigns will no doubt be harassed and
treated with even more suspicion by the police when collecting
money and leafleting. I doubt if those prisoners hoping for
parole will get a fair hearing either. Try as I might, I can't
think of a single good thing to weigh against all the harm
caused. The vivisectors involved are now heroes and a little
baby and his parents have been caused great pain and fear.
lf the comments attributed to Ronnie Lee in the Sunday
Correspondent are correct, I'm deeply disappointed that he
appears to condone - or at any rate does not openly condemn -
these actions. Neither he nor John Curtin appeared to express
any genuine sympathy for the injured baby, though John did say
he now felt bombings were immoral. I can only hope that the
group or individual involved are as horrified at the outcome
as most of us, and that they will return to the kind of
activities that have won animal liberationists money and
support in this country, and the respect of animal groups all
over the world.
Not A Game Of Cricket
by Catherine Spicer
As the father of a young lad and someone who is active in
the movement, the explosion under the car of a Bristol
vivisector initially focused my attention on two aspects, the
possible repercussions for the movement and whether there were
any permanent injuries to the child (fortunately there were
none). In retrospect I realised I showed no concern whatsoever
for the fate of the vivisector. I did, however, feel for the
activists - they too, I'm sure, were gutted by the outcome of
their action. It also has to be said that we should dispel
this notion, media and opposition based, that the activists
should be branded cowards. If we placed ourselves in their
position of actually assembling one of these devices,
transporting them and physically planting them, we can see, we
are talking about people who are prepared to make the ultimate
sacrifice only a utilitarian person can make, risk life and
limb for others, people with courage and conviction. The
tactics involved, though, are perhaps worth looking at. On the
one hand we still cannot be absolutely sure that they intended
to kill the vivisectors, though it appears likely. The problem
lies in the method and possibility of injury to others. If
people use such methods it is, at the end of the day, down to
them and it is not up to anyone else sitting in the comfort of
their armchair to tell them what they should and should not
do. Rather, we can, in the strongest manner possible, draw to
their attention our concern about methods that brought about
what happened in Bristol. For those with an intimate knowledge
of how things work in the movement, we can be sure they are
people in the movement. That no one seems to know who they are
is probably down to the fact that there is a growing tendency,
as regards damage actions, for groups to consist of just two
people, who keep to themselves and do not gossip about their
work. We can be equally sure that they are not ALF activists,
but people who have bypassed the ALF, presumably because they
feel that the present methods being employed to fight
vivisection are not quite enough to end animal abuse within
the foreseeable future.
It is all too easy to become complacent about the abject
misery and pain animals suffer before their untimely deaths at
the hands of vivisectors, factory farmers, hunters etc: Do we
wait another hundred years for the law to be changed on
vivisection, only to get another vivisectors charter? As one
commentator put it, the fight for animal rights "is not a game
of cricket".
I have to be honest and say with experience of all aspects
of the movement that it is inevitable that people within the
movement will not be bound by the present limitations placed
on them by the national animal rights organizations wish to
campaign through the usual procedures for reforms, or the ALF
policy of not carrying out actions against the abusers
personally for tactical reasons.
It may be helpful to new people in the movement if we look
closely at the difference between the national groups and the
ALF, so we can see how dissimilar this third emerging force
is. The national organisations are political reform
organisations hoping to gain reforms where possible on the way
to the abolition of animal abuse at some stage in the future,
whenever that may be. The problem is that after over a hundred
years of campaigning to have vivisection abolished, when the
law was finally changed in the eighties, not even cosmetic
experiments were banned, despite public opinion polls showing
a clear majority in favour of a ban. What we ended up with was
a vivisectors charter. If we look at hunting, for example, and
a bill to abolish live hare coursing it was passed by the
Commons in November 1975 with a majority of 117. When it went
to the Lords in 1976 some of them organised against it and
threw the bill out. As a result wild hares are still torn to
pieces today, despite public opinion polls consistently
showing a large majority against this barbaric practice. After
the failure of this particular bill many people began to
wonder if democracy was working for animals in this country.
If we turn to factory farming and the House of Commons Select
Committee on Agriculture, Report on Animal Welfare in Poultry
and Pig Production a group of MPs investigated factory farming
and caused considerable controversy when their report was
published in 1981. They condemned the factory farming of pigs
and recommended a five year run-down programme leading to a
permanent ban on battery cages for hens. Their proposals were
rejected by the Government. A more recent example concerns the
proposed reform by a Minister to have labels placed in fur
coats that are made from wild animals caught in leg-hold
traps, clearly showing that the coat is made from wild trapped
animals, presumably the idea is that people will choose a coat
made from fur bearing animals bred and reared in a factory
farm). Even this supposed reform has been blocked by the
Government, even though it was one of its own Ministers that
proposed it. Not content with that, Britain is now trying to
block this reform being adopted by the EEC.
Is it any wonder there is an ALF? Activists in their
literature say that they are as pleased as anyone when reforms
are granted - anything that helps the animals is welcome.
While the Draize Eye Test may go and the LD5O may be replaced,
perhaps other reforms may follow in the next fifty years.
Battery cages for hens, piglets, mink, foxes {and soon lambs}
may be made four or five inches longer/wider, hunting may be
banned on a Wednesday, but activists say they are not prepared
to wait another hundred years for possible abolition of this
abuse to sentient creatures. Activists act out of concern for
animals that are suffering today and want to see animals
helped today and the abuse centres closed now, not at some
time in the future, whatever that means. However, activists
say they take the view that both the reform organisations and
the activists compliment each other, that the activists have
such wide-spread support because many people in and out of the
movement realise that activists are not only helping the
animals in the here and now but provide that hard edge so
necessary to many liberation movements. They do not see animal
exploitation ending merely by sending letters and petitions to
the businesses involved or indeed to politicians of whatever
party (the parliamentary advisor for the fur trade is a
Labour: MP who receives a few thousand pounds a year to
represent the interests of this vile trade). Nor do they see
words like illegal and criminal, which they were taught in
early childhood, as concepts signifying something bad or
unjustified. They regard a person who "steals" battery hens
and places them in a good home as doing something morally
right and good, both for the hens and themselves. The
activists have re-evaluated such words and their meaning and
associations in their minds and frames of reference.
So the line is clearly drawn. People in the animal rights
movement either campaign in the national animal rights
political reform organizations, hoping the politicians and
vivisectors, factory farmers, hunters etc. will occasionally
concede a reform and also hoping that within the next hundred
years vivisection etc will be abolished, or people join the
activists to stop exploitation within their own lifetimes by
rescuing animals now {the number depending on the availability
of good homes) and by closing down the abuse centres one by
one in the here and now with a policy of economic sabotage.
For example, there are no longer department stores with fur
departments. Some people are involved in both strands of work
in the movement.
With the devices recently being planted under the Porton
Down vet's vehicle and the Bristol vivisector's vehicle, is a
third force emerging?
Unjustifiable Explosions
by Ronnie Lee
There is little doubt that the June "car bomb" attacks
against vivisectors in Wiltshire and Bristol were both
tactically and morally wrong. Whether or not it is right to
attempt to kill a vivisector is a question for debate, but
actions such as "car bombs", that put passers by (which could
be animals as well as people) at such a high risk of death or
serious injury can surely not be justified. Even if personal
attacks on animal abusers can be justified, it is surely
possible for such, actions to be carried out without putting
innocent life in serious danger.
In the past there have been animal rights actions (such as
the ALF incendiary campaign against department stores selling
fur coats) which have posed some threat to innocent life, even
though that was not the intention. Such actions have been the
subject of a great deal of controversy, but it could be argued
that the level of risk was sufficiently low as to enable it to
be acceptable. It surely cannot be acceptable, however, to put
innocent life at the very high level of risk involved in "car
bomb" explosions. It is to be hoped, especially following the
injury to the little boy in the second explosion, that those
responsible will seriously reconsider their use of such a
tactic.
Another little unjustifiable explosion
occurred a little
later however, and that was the explosion of hysteria in the
media, in the aftermath of the "car bombs". One can expect
such a reaction from the gutter press and from journalists not
sympathetic to the cause of animal liberation, but once again
(as at the time of last year's Bristol University explosion)
we had to witness the spectacle of animal rights
"representatives" adding to the hysteria, with unjust and
harmful statements.
Once again, those who caused the explosions were termed
"lunatics", "terrorists" and "maniacs" by various
spokespersons for national animal protection societies, some
of whom even called for animal rights campaigners to help the
police "put away" the people responsible. One does not have to
agree with "car bombs" to see how this sort of reaction is
unjust. If during the war, partisans had tried to blow up Dr.
Mengele (who carried out cruel experiments on the Jews) and
the explosion had injured an innocent passer by, would it have
been correct to refer to those resistance fighters as
"lunatics" and "terrorists" and to call for them to be handed
over to the authorities? If not, how can it be right to react
in such a way towards animal rights activists who try to get
rid of animal torturers by the same method? Only those who
fail to understand animal rights theory would attempt to argue
a distinction and if people cannot comprehend the basic
concept of speciesism, one wonders what they are doing as
media spokespeople for the movement. As I've stated before,
the French Resistance killed and injured many innocent people
in their campaign. No matter how unjustifiable those deaths
and injuries may have been, it is interesting to note that it
was only the Nazis and their puppets who used the word
"terrorists" to describe the partisans.
As somebody who opposes the use of "car bombs"(because of
the high risk to innocent life) and wishes to see that
particular campaign come to an end, it exasperates me to see
animal rights "representatives" using words which will do
nothing to stop the "car bombs" and which may even ensure that
their use continues. By referring to those who caused the
explosions as "terrorists" and "maniacs", movement "spokes
people" can rest assured that the planters of the "car bombs"
will turn a deaf ear to anything sensible they may have to say
as to why such actions are morally and tactically wrong. One
only has to have a basic knowledge of human psychology to
understand that if you insult people they will not be willing
to listen to your views. These latest "car bomb" attacks may
well have their roots in the hysterical reaction of many
movement "representatives" to last year's Bristol University
explosion.
My own view is that the "car bombers" are neither
"terrorists", "maniacs" nor "loonies" but basically decent,
caring people who have become so enraged and upset by the
horrors of vivisection that they have tried to wipe out some
of the perpetrators of that evil crime without proper regard
as to the consequences of their actions. I believe they did
not properly foresee the level of risk to passers by and that
they were as saddened as any of us by the injury to the little
boy. I hope now that they will reconsider their tactics so as
to never put innocent life at such serious risk again.
There is little doubt that the explosion which injured the
young boy in Bristol caused some damage to our movement in
terms of losing public sympathy for the cause of animal
rights. It is, however, the duty of those who represent animal
protection societies to attempt to limit their damage, rather
than make it worse, which many of them did through their
hysterical statements in the media. Unfortunately several
spokespersons exaggerated and harped on about the damage
caused to public support, thereby undermining the confidence
and enthusiasm of local animal rights campaigners, who are the
people in vital direct contact with the public.
It is also very unfortunate that at least one
representative of an anti-vivisection society appears to have
said that "animal research in the past may have done some
good". That is the sort of statement, which should never be
made by AR spokespersons, who should instead be pointing out
the tremendous damage to human health caused through the
vivisection method and the fact that an increasing number of
doctors and scientists are totally opposed to animal
experimentation on scientific grounds.
It is vital that the movement doesn't allow itself to be
thrown onto the defensive by events such as the "car bombs",
It was a tragedy that an innocent child was injured, but how
many innocent animals have been injured (and tortured and
slaughtered) by the human race? You couldn't even begin to
count them. The horror of what happens to the animals and the
evil of such practices as vivisection, should always be
emphasised to the public and the media at every opportunity
and should be the main focus of any press statements.
Finally it is sad that the Animal Liberation Front was
blamed by the media for the "car bombs", because there is no
way that they were ALF actions, being totally in breach of the
ALF policy of not going out to kill or injure. Just because
someone purportedly "claimed responsibility" in the name of
the ALF is neither here nor there. Anyone can pick up a
telephone and make a claim of responsibility on behalf of any
organisation whatsoever. Had the "caller" claimed they were
from the RSPCA that wouldn't mean that the RSPCA was
responsible for the explosions and the same applies to the
ALF.
In fact there is some evidence that whoever made the claim
of responsibility was not actually responsible for the "car
bombs" at all. At the time of last year's explosion at Bristol
university there was a genuine claim of responsibility
(because it was made before the event took place) by a group
referred to in the press as the "Animal Abused Society". After
the explosion received press and TV publicity, somebody made a
"claim" on behalf of the ALF, which was viewed by police as
doubtful because of its inaccuracy. The same group of people
that carried out that explosion may well have been responsible
for the more recent "car bombs" because plastic explosive was
used in all three attacks and once again we have the ALF
"claim" coming only after the events had received widespread
publicity.
Why then should someone wish to make the ALF "responsible"
for actions which it could not have carried out? It seems to
me that there are three possibilities. Firstly, it could be an
animal abuser or member of the authorities seeking to cause
damage to the animal liberation movement. The ALF campaign to
rescue animals from suffering and cause damage to the property
of those involved in animal persecution has been a
controversial one, but it has achieved considerable success.
If people could be deterred from taking part in that campaign
by associating the ALF with attempts to blow people up and
with the reckless injuring of a young child, that would cause
considerable relief both to the abusers of animals and to the
powers that be.
Secondly, the "claim" could have come from somebody in the
movement who dislikes the ALF and has allowed this personal
hatred to out weigh their, concern for the animals.
Unfortunately, knowing the irrationality of some people in the
movement, this is by no means beyond the bounds of
possibility.
Hopefully, events such as the "car bombs" will not occur
again, but if they did it is vital that movement
"representatives", and indeed the movement as a whole, reacts
in a more rational manner. Such occurrences must always be
seen against a backdrop of thousands of years of vicious
persecution of other creatures by the human species and we
must never allow anything to divert our efforts from the vital
task of bringing that persecution to an end let us never
forget and never cease to insist, that the real terrorists are
the animal abusers.
Thirdly, it could be someone who wants ALF activists to set
about trying to kill and injure animal abusers and who hopes
that the "claim" might somehow push them into doing this. But
many ALF campaigners are just not into personal violence and
might cease carrying out ALF activities altogether if they
thought the ALF was somehow involved in bomb attacks against
people. Thus any effort to put the name of the ALF to events
like the "car bombs" is likely to have a negative effect on
the overall campaign against animal persecution.
(Editor's note - Bristol police investigating the "car
bomb" actions, recently stated that there was no claim of
responsibility on behalf of the ALF as far as they were
aware.)
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