Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.—Gustave Flaubert
The past is never dead; it's not even past.—Gwen Stevens (William Faulkner)
History teaches everything, even the future.—Alphonse de Lamartine
Thirty Years of Direct Action
NOEL MOLLAND
It is hard, if not impossible, to say when the animal/earth liberation movement first started. A study of the subject literally takes you back thousands of years to 200BCE, when people like Pythagoras advocated vegetarianism and animal compassion on spiritual grounds, and to the first century CE, when Plutarch wrote what is widely regarded as the first animal rights literature.
However, you will be delighted to know that I am not going to bore you to death with 2,000 years of waffle. Instead, I merely intend to look at what occurred 30 years ago this year [2002]. But first, to fully understand the events of 30 years ago, we must look slightly further back than that, to the events of 1964.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Britain saw a wealth of animal welfare and rights groups established. However, these groups by and large relied upon the parliamentary system of legal reform to achieve their aims. This process was incredibly slow and achievements were minor. Even the 1911 Animal Protection Act treated animals as property and offered no protection to wild-born creatures. By the mid-1960s people were looking around for other ways of campaigning, and in 1964 John Prestige found that new style.
In 1964 in Brixham, Devon, England, Prestige founded the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA), a group that would actively oppose blood sports. Rather than campaigning for parliamentary reforms, the members of John's new group were prepared to directly go out into the fields of Britain and do everything they could, within the law, to prevent the killing of British wildlife.
The popularity of this new form of campaigning was instant. Just a year after the HSA was founded, hunt saboteur groups were active across the English West Country in Devon, Somerset and Avon. Groups also started to emerge outside of the West Country in places like Birmingham, Hampshire and Surrey. Originally a single, Devon-based group, the HSA soon became a national network of dedicated activists using lawful methods to disrupt hunts and to prevent the “green and pleasant land” from literally becoming a killing field.
And so it was that, in 1971, as part of the ever-expanding HSA network, a new hunt sab group was formed in Luton, founded by a law student named Ronnie Lee. The Luton hunt sabs, like a lot of other hunt sab groups, soon became very successful in saving the lives of animals. Many a hunt soon found its sadistic day's entertainment ruined by the Luton Gang.
However, despite the success of the Luton hunt sabs in the field, it soon became apparent to some people within the groups that the strictly legal actions of the HSA could only ever go so far toward preventing animal suffering. The problem was that if a hunt is allowed to be active, no matter how good a hunt sab group may be, there is a chance that an animal may be harmed or killed.
Even if the sabs do manage to prevent an animal from being killed, the fear the hunted animal goes through is tremendous. Contemporary vet reports, gathered at the end of the twentieth century, corroborate this fact. Recognizing that strictly legal hunt sabotage couldn't totally prevent the hunted animals' suffering, Ronnie Lee and a few close friends came to the conclusion that the only real way to do so was to ensure that the hunt was never allowed to become active in the first place. With this aim in mind, Ronnie Lee and Cliff Goodman, and possibly two or three other people, decided to form the Band of Mercy in 1972.
The group's name was chosen because it had been the name of an earlier animal liberation direct action group. During the nineteenth century, an anti-slavery activist named Catherine Smithies had set up a youth wing of the RSPCA called the Bands of Mercy. By and large these youth groups were just normal young supporters of the RSPCA who told stories of heroic animal deeds and took oaths of compassion to the animals. However, some of these young Victorian animal rights activists were a little more zealous than others and went around sabotaging hunting rifles. The activities of the Victorian Bands of Mercy became so well known that there was even a theatrical play written in which a group of children sabotages a hunting rifle.
For Ronnie Lee and his companions, the Victorian Bands of Mercy were a fine example of direct action, so they decided to adopt their not-strictly-legal approach to saving lives. At first, the Band of Mercy concentrated on small actions directed against the hunt during the cub-hunting season. (Cub hunting is when young hounds are taught to tear young fox cubs apart in order for the hound to get the taste for killing.) The initial actions of the Band of Mercy were very simple and were basically designed around the idea of disabling the hunt vehicles in order to slow down or even stop the hunt from carrying out its murderous activities.
However, the Band of Mercy was very clear from the beginning that it was not merely carrying out acts of wanton vandalism against those whom they opposed; rather, their actions were designed around the idea of “active compassion.” Accordingly, the Band always left a message to the hunters explaining the reasons behind their actions and the logic of animal liberation. They also wished to show that the attacks were not motivated by personal animosity against any one individual.
The success of the Band of Mercy soon became apparent. By carrying out illegal direct action, the Band was able to prevent the hunts from starting, thus not only saving the lives of innocent animals, but also preventing the psychological suffering of “the chase.” Inspired by their early successes, the Band soon became much more daring. Toward the end of 1973 the Band learned about the construction of a new vivisection laboratory. The research laboratory was being built near Milton Keynes for a company called Hoechst Pharmaceuticals. As they visited the building site, two of the Band's activists realized that if they prevented the building from ever being completed, they could also prevent the suffering of the animals destined to be tortured within its four walls. The Band eventually decided that the best way to destroy the construction was through the use of arson. Even if the damage caused by the fire could be repaired, the restoration work would have to be paid for by Hoechst Pharmaceuticals (thus leaving the company with less money to spend on torturing animals).
On November 10th, 1973, the Band of Mercy conducted its first-ever action against the vivisection industry. Two activists gained entry into the half-completed building at Milton Keynes. Once inside, the activists set fire to the building. This action was a double watershed for the movement, as it was not only the Band's first action against the vivisection industry; it was also the Band's first use of arson. In that first fire an amazing £26,000 worth of damage was caused. Six days later, the Band of Mercy returned and started another fire in the same building, causing a further £20,000 worth of damage.
To make sure everyone knew why the building had been set alight, the Band of Mercy sent a message to the press. The statement read:
The building was set fire to in an effort to prevent the torture and murder of our animal brothers and sisters by evil experiments. We are a nonviolent guerrilla organization dedicated to the liberation of animals from all forms of cruelty and persecution at the hands of mankind. Our actions will continue until our aims are achieved.
After the Milton Keynes arson, the next major action occurred in June 1974, when the Band turned its attention to the bloody seal cull of the Wash along the Norfolk coast. The seal cull was an annual event and involved hunters going out in two Home Office–licensed boats and butchering seals. Seal culling is a bloody attack and the seal has no hope of escape. With the goal of preventing the cull from ever starting, and regarding the successful use of arson in the November 1973 action, the Band once again decided to use arson as a campaign tool to destroy the tools of animal murder.
In June 1974 the Band of Mercy set out on their second major action. Under the cover of darkness, two activists sought out the Home Office–licensed boats and set them alight. One of the boats was only slightly damaged by the fire; the other, however, was totally destroyed. This time, the Band of Mercy decided they wouldn't leave a message claiming responsibility. Instead, they wanted to leave the sealers wondering what on earth had happened, whether those responsible would return and whether, if new boats were provided, those vessels would meet with the same fiery fate.
That year there was no seal cull at all due to the actions of the Band of Mercy. Not only that, but because of the fire the owner of the two Home Office–licensed boats went out of business. Having seen one person's business totally destroyed by the actions of these anonymous arsonists, no one was keen to invest in a new business that might very well go the same way. Because of this fear, no one has ever attempted to re-start a seal culling business, and there has never been a seal cull at the Wash since. Because of the actions of two activists, countless numbers of seals have been saved from the bloody annual seal cull.
Looking back on the June 1974 action, it is clear that the attack on the boats was an amazing success. Not only de facto seals, but generations of seals to come, were saved from the seal cullers. Despite this success, however, not everyone in the animal liberation movement approved of the Band's tactics. In July 1974 a member of the Hunt Saboteurs Association offered a reward of £250 for information that would inform upon the Band of Mercy. Speaking on behalf of a local sab group, the spokesperson told the press, “We approve of their ideals, but are opposed to their methods.”
Fortunately, despite this act of treachery, the Band of Mercy had by now realized its power. By performing illegal actions the Band was able to directly save the lives of animals through destroying the tools of torture and death. Even if the weaker members of the movement rejected the Band's ideas, the Band realized its work had to continue. To stop would be to let the animals down.
Following the anti–seal cull action, the Band of Mercy launched its first intensive wave of campaigning against the vivisection industry. In the months leading up to the action at the Wash, the Band of Mercy had been able to gather some inside information about vivisection laboratory animal suppliers. All of this information was gathered and stored, waiting for the day it could be used to its fullest effect. And so it was that, following the action at the Wash, the Band was able to launch straight into a wave of actions against the vivisection industry. Between June and August 1974 the Band of Mercy launched eight raids against vivisection lab animal suppliers. The main emphasis of the actions was to cause economic sabotage by either damaging buildings or vehicles. But the Band also reached another landmark in their history by carrying out their first-ever animal rescue during this period.
The first Band of Mercy animal rescue happened in Wiltshire in the English West Country. A guinea pig farm was targeted and the activists managed to rescue half a dozen of the inmates. Besides being a land-mark action for being the first Band of Mercy animal rescue, the action also produced an unexpected but very welcome outcome. The guinea pig farm owner was so shaken by the raid that she began to fear that more activists would turn up during the night. Fearing that masked strangers might break into her home, this woman who profited from animal torture took the only sensible course of action: she closed her business.
Besides targeting the vivisection industry, the Band of Mercy continued to take actions against the hunt. But, not wanting to limit their actions to just two forms of animal abuse, the Band also targeted chicken breeders and the firearm lobby. In July 1974 a gun shop in Marlborough was attacked and damaged. The original Victorian Bands of Mercy could surely be proud that their great deeds were being continued in a twentieth-century form.
For a small group of friends, consisting of less than half a dozen activists, the Band of Mercy was able to make a tremendous impact against the animal abusers. In August 1974, however, the Band's luck ran out. After a successful action against Oxford Laboratory Animal Colonies in Bicester, the Band of Mercy made the mistake of returning to OLAC two days later. (I should point out that it's very easy with hindsight to say that it was a mistake to return, but back then it was a perfectly logical action.) On this second raid, a security guard spotted the activists, Ronnie Lee and Cliff Goodman, and called the police. Ronnie and Cliff were promptly arrested.
If the police had hoped that the arrests would bring an end to the Band of Mercy, they were mistaken. The arrest of Ronnie Lee and Cliff Goodman brought the group a fresh wave of publicity. Many people viewed the Band not as terrorists but as heroes, latter-day Robin Hoods for the animals. Ronnie and Cliff were soon lionized as the Bicester Two. Throughout the hearing, daily demonstrations took place outside the court. Support for the Bicester Two was very strong and came from the most unlikely of quarters. Even Ronnie Lee's local Member of Parliament, the Free Church Minister Ivor Clemitson, joined in the campaign for their release.
Despite the strong public support for the Bicester Two, both Ronnie Lee and Cliff Goodman were given three years' imprisonment. A letter published in the Daily Telegraph shows the anger felt at the outcome of the first animal liberation trial.
Many would sympathize with their action against the utterly diabolical and largely unnecessary form of cruelty involved in animal experimentation. These young men, while defying the law, showed great courage, and the sentences of three years' imprisonment seems unrealistic and harsh.
Now, it is said you can't keep a good animal/earth liberation activist down. This is certainly true in the case of Ronnie Lee. After the sentencing, Ronnie and Cliff split up. Cliff went back to Oxford prison, where he and Ronnie had both been inmates while on remand, and Ronnie was moved to Winchester prison.
At Winchester prison Ronnie discovered that provisions for vegans in prison were less than desirable. So, in order to get a decent meal and vegan clothing, Ronnie went on a hunger strike. This hunger strike gained a great deal of media attention, bringing animal liberation again into public discussion. Ronnie soon expanded his hunger strike demands to include issues revolving around Porton Down, the Government's chemical and biological warfare research station, a site of horrific animal experimentation.
Faced with a rush of unwanted attention, Winchester prison soon had to back down and supply Ronnie with his vegan provisions. Sadly, the success of the strike did not extend to Porton Down. In order to keep the Ministry of Defense out of the media spotlight, all of the attention was focused on Ronnie himself, against his wishes. Recognizing that the media was moving the focus from animal abuse to the hunger strike, Ronnie decided to end his protest.
Despite Ronnie's good example, the other activists in the Band of Mercy brought the Band almost to a grinding halt while the Bicester Two were jailed. The only major event to take place during the time of the Bicester Two's imprisonment was in 1975, when Mike Huskisson managed to rescue two beagles from Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI). The beagles were being used in tobacco smoking experiments and were appropriately labeled as the “smoking beagles.” Mike was arrested for the action and charged with burglary. However, knowing how much public support there had been for the Bicester Two, ICI feared the adverse publicity of a trial. This meant Mike was acquitted of the charges, ICI's pointless animal testing was revealed, and the Bicester Two were given a moral boost by Mike's action.
Cliff Goodman and Ronnie Lee served only a third of their sentence and were paroled after 12 months in the spring of 1976. Being in jail had affected the two activists in totally different ways. Cliff Goodman came out of prison with just one thought: he didn't want to go back inside. He decided he wasn't a revolutionary and wanted to stick to strictly legal campaigning in the future. Sadly, Cliff decided to turn informer in prison and gave the police a great deal of information about the use of radios by the Band of Mercy. For this act of treachery, Cliff was given the title of the movement's first “grass” (police informer).
Ronnie, on the other hand, emerged with new determination. For him, prison life had called to mind the plight of imprisoned animals, inmates who, unlike human prisoners, have no “release date”—all that awaits them is suffering and death. Being a prisoner had reminded Ronnie how defenseless the animals are and how they need someone to stand up and fight on their behalf. Living in a cage gave him a new sense of solidarity and understanding and strengthened his resolve to fight for animal liberation.
Ronnie realized that there was widespread public support for animal liberation through illegal direct action. Upon his release, he gathered together the remains of the Band of Mercy along with about two dozen new recruits. This was a revolutionary group and everyone knew it. The only problem was that the name “Band of Mercy” no longer seemed appropriate. It didn't fit the new revolutionary feel. A new name was needed—a name that would haunt animal abusers, and whose very mention could symbolize the whole ideology of a revolutionary movement. With this in mind Ronnie selected the name, the Animal Liberation Front—the ALF.
This article originally appeared in No Compromise magazine.
Animal Liberation—By “Whatever Means Necessary”
ROBIN WEBB
This article originally appeared in a slightly different form as the sleeve notes to a benefit CD compilation album, This Is the ALF, published by Mortarhate Records of London.
“Animal lib loonies,” “terrorists,” “people haters” . . . all terms used by power-hungry, profit-motivated animal exploiters and the mass news media to describe the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and similarly inclined groups that work outside “The Law”—whose law?—in pursuit of justice for our brothers and sisters of other species, of the other nations much older than ours upon this earth.
The truth is very different. People from all walks of life and social backgrounds, of all ages, of all beliefs and of none—these are the compassionate commandos who constitute the ALF and like-minded groups.
Driven by an abhorrence of all abuse and exploitation of the weak and innocent, the activists break unjust laws and risk their freedom in pursuit of a rightful cause—animal liberation—in much the same way that campaigners in past struggles fought for the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of women. It used to be a “crime” to help a slave escape from bondage. It was—indeed, still is!—a “crime” to torch empty buildings in order to commit economic sabotage. How many thinking people would now condemn the abolitionists and Suffragettes for taking such extra-parliamentary actions?
So, what is animal liberation? It's not difficult to understand, it doesn't need a philosopher's lifetime work to explain and it won't take years wrestling with your conscience to come to terms with its logic.
It was once argued that the black races were inferior to whites and could therefore justifiably be used as slaves. It was also once argued that women were subordinates of men and thus could also be exploited. Sensible folk now know that such reasoning is offensive nonsense. All sentient beings are individuals to whom life is of intrinsic value; it's the only life they knowingly have. Each individual of whatever species has, in his or her own way, feelings of social awareness and family ties, together with the ability to suffer. So it must follow that we as humans do not have the right to abuse and exploit those of other species for our own ends, merely because we have the power so to do, any more than we had the right to use those of other races for the same reason. As was rightly said, “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Animal liberation covers all abuse and exploitation. It is the ultimate freedom movement, the “final frontier.” Once we learn to respect the right of individuals from other species to live their lives without abuse, exploitation or needless interference, we shall also have learned to respect that same right for our fellow members of the human race (after all, humans are animals, too).
That, all too briefly, is why the ALF exists. But how and when did it begin standing up to the animal-abusing Establishment and the State, asserting, “We won't allow it anymore—you either stop the obscenities or you pay the price!”?
Direct action against hunting with hounds began in England during 1963 when the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) was formed. Going out into the fields to place themselves between the hunters and the hunted, “sabs” were brutally attacked by blood-junkies with monotonous regularity. At that time many HSA members were pacifists who rarely fought back against the hunt thugs, amongst whom “sabbashing” became a rewarding alternative when the usual quarry wasn't around to be terrorized and tortured. This surely couldn't last, and it didn't.
By 1972 some sabs in the Home Counties of England became weary of spending their Saturdays being thrown into ditches, appreciating that if the hunt can't start, then it can't kill. Immobilizing hunt vehicles, including the hound van, super-gluing locks on gates—these and other tactics frustrated the hunters' evil exploits whilst protecting imaginative sabs from harm and giving them more free time to use fighting animal abuse.
This new radical group adopted the name “Band of Mercy” from the nineteenth-century Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' youth organization. Much to the pro-hunting RSPCA's embarrassment, the original Bands of Mercy performed plays, one of which, E. S. Turner's All Heaven in a Rage, features a scene in which Sarah Jane, the maid, empties a jug of water down the barrels of Mr. Quickshot the pigeon-shooter's gun and dips all his cartridges in warm water. The gun barrels subsequently burst in Mr. Quickshot's face. Was this really a course of action recommended by the RSPCA of days gone by?
Within a year the new Band of Mercy had expanded its range of targets to other areas of animal abuse, particularly the vivisection industry. Arson also began to be used as a tactic alongside liberation. Interestingly, the first Band of Mercy activist to be convicted (for torching boats owned by seal hunters) later went on to serve six years as a member of the RSPCA's national council . . . perhaps anticipating the late-1990s emergence of the Provisional RSPCA?1
More Band of Mercy activists were subsequently jailed for their deeds, but this in no way deterred others from taking up and continuing the fight against animal abuse with a total disregard for “The Law.” In 1976 the radical activists adopted the soon-to-be-infamous title of “Animal Liberation Front.” During those formative years many high-profile actions were carried out in the name of animal liberation, from the popularly acclaimed rescue of the “smoking beagles” from the hellhole laboratories of multinational Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) to the digging up of blood-junkie folk-legend John Peel's grave. Everyone kept wondering what would happen next.
The late 1970s and early '80s saw the media treating activists, to a large extent, as well-intentioned animal-lovers who, as true British eccentrics, were just taking things a little too far; they were the Robin Hoods of the animal welfare world. “Liberation Leagues” also sprang up for a while around this time, with mass daylight raids freeing animals and obtaining valuable information that revealed the greed-driven evils practiced behind the closed doors of animal Belsens.
By the mid-1980s economic sabotage had become a common tactic, from smashing windows of butchers' shops to the sustained campaign of arson attacks against department stores that sold furs. This really began to hurt the animal abuse–based institutions and multinationals in a way that demonstrations, leafleting and marches never could: It hurt them financially. The great god Profit was under threat.
Around that time, two even more radical groups emerged. The Hunt Retribution Squad, which began in 1984, concentrated on waging war against blood sports by extending the ALF's remit, stating that it would be prepared to inflict physical harm on blood-junkies to prevent them murdering wild animals. The Animal Rights Militia followed quickly in 1985, soon establishing its credentials. Early actions included sending letter bombs to prominent vivisectors. The ARM would surface sporadically to ever more dramatic effect; its city center arson attacks in 1994 caused over $6 million in damages on the Isle of Wight alone. My late friend Barry Horne was subsequently convicted of the latter action, and I narrowly escaped a conspiracy charge for the same deed.
The powers behind the news media began to lean hard on editors, and almost overnight the beagle-rescuing darlings were made over into dangerous fanatics who posed a threat to the very fabric of society. In other words, the State and the Establishment were getting a metaphorical kicking for a change and didn't like it at all.
Reprisal from the State was heralded by the creation of the Animal Rights National Index (ARNI) at Metropolitan (London) Police Headquarters, which, although a police department, was intended to work closely with the security services. ARNI's first major offensive came in 1986 with the arrest of ALF Supporters Group volunteers and other activists. The Sheffield show trial that followed in 1987 imposed jail terms of up to 10 years. An immediate flood of animal liberation actions ensued, completely destroying the claim that the trial had “smashed the ALF.” The oppressive sentences had proved conclusively that direct action worked and that the animal abusers were fighting a rearguard battle to protect their hellish interests. Nothing prompts a fiercer defense than the knowledge that you're losing.
With the fur trade now decimated and vivisection an established target, more attention was focused on the largest area of all animal abuse—the meat industry. Butchers' shop windows disappeared and locks were super-glued; shrink-wrapped meat on supermarket shelves was mysteriously pierced, prompting fears of contamination; and, in the major league, slaughterhouses and refrigerated meat trucks were torched. (And, of course, many individual chickens, goats, pigs, rabbits, turkeys and others of different nations found a new life free of pain and suffering.) A young vegan child observed that “If there weren't any slaughterhouses there wouldn't be any butchers' shops.” The financial year 1991–1992 saw around 100 refrigerated meat trucks destroyed by incendiary devices at a capital cost of some $10 million. Add to that the invisible costs of increased insurance premiums and security precautions, and you begin to get the kind of losses that worry the richest of businesses.
Late 1993 saw the birth of yet another group, as radical as the ARM. The Justice Department's first wave of anti-personnel devices was intercepted, but others—booby-trapped videocassette boxes and poster tubes, metal mousetraps primed with razor blades—soon began to reach their targets. Siding firmly with the Animal Rights Militia, the JD declared “We won't be asking anyone to stop messing with animals and will make no excuses for our violent intervention—they've had it too good for too long.”
Just a few months later the ARM began a series of attacks using powerful timed incendiary devices against “High Street animal abuse,” including pharmaceutical giant Boots, which at that time still owned laboratories that tortured animals in useless tests, intended as nothing more than protection against possible compensation claims from human victims of drug-induced side effects. Boots soon rid itself of those concentration camps.
The ALF has always followed a triad of policies within which anyone who was a vegetarian or, preferably, a vegan, could claim responsibility as an activist under its umbrella, and enjoy the backing of the ALF Supporters Group if unlucky enough to be caught. They were, basically:
To liberate animals from suffering or potential suffering and place them in good permanent homes or, where appropriate, release them into their natural environment.
To damage or destroy property and equipment associated with animal abuse by
a. taking that property out of the arena of animal abuse so it could no longer cause harm, and
b. inflicting economic loss on the abusers with the intention of driving them out of business.
To take all reasonable precautions not to endanger life of any kind.
As popular as those policies had been within the movement and despite the powerful effects wrought against animal abuse by their implementation, it became clear from the ARM, HRS and JD that anger was boiling over at the all-too-slow rate of progress towards animal liberation. The third ALF policy was becoming strained, even amongst some dedicated ALF supporters.
The arguments presented in favor of inflicting serious injury, even death, upon animal abusers were quite straightforward. Do you believe in animal liberation? Do you therefore believe that speciesism is as indefensible as racism? Did you support the African National Congress during its policy of armed struggle against apartheid? Would you therefore support an “armed struggle” by the ARM or Justice Department? Having answered each question honestly you may find some contradictions, and it's up to you to resolve them in your own mind; even Gandhi said “Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”
That argument continues so: while politicians talked and negotiated, Nazi Germany invaded neighboring countries and began building the concentration camps. It took the overwhelming violence of World War II, including the loss of many millions of innocent lives, to rid the world of that evil. Such an example suggests that short-term violence may be justifiable in pursuit of a longer-term peace.
Whatever form it takes, direct action in pursuit of animal liberation has now spread across the whole world. From New Zealand to New York, from Sweden to South Africa, the ultimate freedom movement is growing in strength and determination.
Animal liberation is not a campaign, not just a hobby to put aside when it becomes tiresome or a new interest catches your eye. It's a war. A long, hard, bloody war in which all the countless millions of its victims have, so far, been on one side only, have been defenseless and innocent, whose tragedy was being born nonhuman. The oceans, the land and the sky should be free to all rather than be the domain of whoever is most powerful in the human world. The methods to achieve a just world are many and varied, but all tactics are important. So many are working in so many different ways, the important thing is to work for the common goal and let your heart tell you what course of action is right for you.
Notes
1. The Provisional RSPCA began as a joke on British TV, “If you don't know who the ALF are, they're like the Provisional RSPCA.” This was, of course, based on the Provisional IRA in Ireland. Some people began undertaking liberations and sending out threatening letters to animal abusers using the name, thus highlighting the inadequacies of the RSPCA whilst annoying them at the same time.
A Personal Overview of Direct Action in the United Kingdom and the United States
KIM STALLWOOD
In the July–August 1998 issue of The Animals' Agenda, I published “Direct Action: Progress, Peril, or Both?” by Freeman Wicklund. This cover feature attracted a large reader response, some samples of which were published in a special Letters to the Editor section in the November–December 1998 issue. Freeman's article also inspired Karen Davis, President of United Poultry Concerns, to organize a conference, “Direct Action for Animals,” in 1999. This paper is based upon the presentation that I made at the conference.
My presentation will consist of a history of illegal direct action as well as personal observations of its evolution in the United Kingdom, and its impact on the future of the animal rights movement in the United States. I will also summarize the rationale behind publishing Freeman's article, and discuss readers' and others' responses. My presentation is based upon my own experiences as a professional animal advocate since 1976 in the UK. I also consulted three books, which were Animal Revolution by Richard Ryder, Animal Century by Mark Gold, and The Animal Rights Movement in America by Lawrence Finsen and Susan Finsen. Finally, I mined my own extensive personal collection of animal rights materials for original documents and publications by and about the ALF from the 1970s and 1980s. I conclude with my personal feelings on direct action for animals.
Two things are important for me to make clear at the beginning. First, the Animal Rights Network Inc., the not-for-profit publisher of The Animals' Agenda, has a policy of support for nonviolence. Second, I have never been involved with ALF actions. I know myself well enough to know that I would not be very good at clandestine activities. I would be more of a hindrance than a help. Soon after I became involved with animal rights in 1976 I was close with those who did do direct action. I may not have been a firsthand participant but I did carefully watch what happened and was indirectly involved.
The first direct action for animals in the present era of animal advocacy, which I date as being post–Second World War, began in England in the early 1960s with the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA). In 1963 journalist John Prestige was assigned to report on the Devon and Somerset Staghounds. When he witnessed the hunters drive a pregnant deer into a village and kill her, he vowed to act. The first hunt he and his friends sabotaged was the South Devon Foxhounds on the day after Christmas Day, which is traditionally an important date in the fox hunting calendar. They fed meat to the hounds to satisfy any appetite that the dogs may have had for chasing and killing a fox.
“Sabbing” really came into its own in the mid-1970s after enjoying some favorable publicity in the British media. “Sabs” (now using vegan tactics!) disrupted the hunt by laying false scents, wiring up gates to slow down the hunt's progress, and setting off fireworks in woods to scare the foxes away. Some sabs developed an amazing expertise with a hunting horn and even succeeded in gaining control of the pack from the hunt master.
Hunters, of course, retaliated by attacking sabs. In 1976 the Joint Master of the Essex Union Foxhunt was widely quoted as saying, “Horsewhipping a hunt saboteur is rather like beating a wife—they're both private matters.” In 1991 Mike Hill became the first sab to die while sabotaging a hunt in Cheshire. In 1993 15-year-old Thomas Worby died when a vehicle from the Cambridgeshire Hunt struck him during a sab.
In 1972 some sabs thought that more militant action for animals was required and consequently formed the Band of Mercy. The original Bands of Mercy were formed in the 1870s as children's clubs that were dedicated to fostering kindness to animals. Those Bands of Mercy modeled themselves on Bands of Hope, which were clubs for children who pledged themselves never to drink alcohol. I often read that the Victorian Bands of Mercy sabotaged fox hunts, but I have never been able to find evidence to substantiate this claim.
In 1975 the first animal activist to be convicted was Robin Howard, who had damaged two Lincolnshire sealing boats. Later that year Ronnie Lee and Cliff Goodman were sentenced to three years in prison for causing damage to equipment at various animal research laboratories in England and Wales during the two preceding years.
Released after one year, Goodman established an animal rescue group and Lee, acting as spokesperson for the Band of Mercy, renamed it the Animal Liberation Front in 1976. In 1977 Lee served another prison sentence for stealing some laboratory mice.
The ALF's early actions were premised upon a philosophy of non-violence. In April 1974 Ronnie Lee wrote in Peace News, a biweekly nonviolent revolution newsmagazine, that militant action should be “limited only by reverence for life and hatred of violence.” In a 1979 issue of the anarchist biweekly newsmagazine Freedom, Gary Treadwell and Ronnie Lee wrote:
The ALF is not violent in that much care is taken to prevent injury to people and many raids have been called off because of possible confrontation. In any case our aims are for human as well as (other) animal liberation. The ALF is destructive, but only to property used to inflict, promote or transport animal exploitation.
The first illegal direct action activities elicited surprisingly sympathetic coverage in the media. For example, in 1975 Mike Huskisson rescued two beagles from tobacco research at Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI)'s laboratories. The media portrayed Huskisson as a liberator and ICI as a callous corporation. Media coverage of illegal direct action at this time tended to focus on the liberated animals and less on any damage caused. The imprisoned activists were accurately portrayed as caring people who put their own liberty at risk to save animals from cruel situations.
At first the publicity inspired others with the same altruistic motivation for animal liberation, and they organized independent cells of activists. They did not always seek publicity. They met their own costs of organizing direct action. They simply wanted to liberate animals and place them quietly into good homes. It is, of course, very difficult to succeed in breaking into research laboratories and factory farms to liberate animals. This was the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, when the animal exploitation facilities had yet to become as security conscious as they are today. What's more, the police were not particularly interested in the ALF actions.
The media coverage tended to glamorize the people and the actions and, as it continued, a new wave of activists became interested in direct action. This new group tended to be younger, unemployed, and anarchist. They placed animal liberation within a larger context of opposition to the state, the military-industrial complex, capitalism and socialism. They did not embrace nonviolence. They saw illegal direct action for animals as opportunities to violently confront the society they rejected. Consequently, their motivation for helping animals was not exclusively focused on liberating animals from exploitation, as it was for the ALF founders and originators. At the same time, it became increasingly more difficult to successfully liberate animals because security and police activity increased. This caused a shift primarily toward acts of “economic sabotage,” which included “bricking” butcher's shop windows, arson, food poisoning threats, letter bombs, incendiary devices, and so on. What's more, Ronnie Lee began speaking out in favor of violence toward people as an acceptable direct action tactic. For example, in an article signed “R.L.” in the October 1984 ALF newsletter he proposed that activists should set up “fresh groups . . . under new names whose policies do not preclude the use of violence towards animals abusers.”
From 1981 to 1986 I was the national organizer for the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) in London. From 1981 to 1984 the BUAV donated part of its offices rent-free to the ALF Supporters Group (ALF SG), which included Ronnie Lee and Vivien Smith. BUAV's board of directors and staff, including myself, were pro-ALF. We routinely reported on ALF actions in BUAV's bimonthly newspaper, The Liberator, which I edited. The BUAV was the only established organization in the early to mid-1980s that was willing to stand alongside the ALF and its supporters' group. The BUAV probably extended more support to the Animal Liberation Front in the form of free office space, resources, and uncritical publicity than any other animal rights group ever has.
This was also the same period that the ALF moved from a position of nonviolence to support violence toward people. It also became apparent that despite BUAV's support and generosity, the ALF SG was attempting to seize control of BUAV through the latter's democratic membership structure. There was also a disagreement over strategy. BUAV's leadership believed in a dual strategy of political action and direct action; the ALF leadership, who were anarchists, believed all political action was a waste of time and money. The ALF wanted BUAV and its considerable resources so that they could redirect all of it toward direct action. BUAV's board could not accept that the ALF SG was moving to a position of no longer supporting nonviolence. They also could not accept that the ALF SG was attempting to challenge BUAV's leadership when it had provided so much support to them. Finally, the BUAV board, although a supporter of illegal direct action, reluctantly expelled the ALF SG from its offices in 1984.
It is important to note that ALF SG/BUAV disagreement over political action coincided with the unsympathetic Conservative government's passage of legislation that regulated the use of animals in scientific research. The coalition of four national anti-vivisection organizations that I helped lead at that time laid the foundation for the progress that the present Labor government is now making. This includes the abolition of animal research for cosmetic testing, including ingredients, alcohol and tobacco research, and all experiments with great apes. This movement-wide political campaign would have stopped if the ALF SG had seized control of the BUAV.
The change in philosophy, from a nonviolent strategy of illegal direct action to a violent one, cost the ALF its sympathetic media coverage and growing public support. It also forced other animal advocacy organizations to defensive positions, thereby making their already difficult work that much harder. The ALF SG became isolated and received little or no support from the animal rights movement once it had lost BUAV's assistance. Further alienation occurred in 1984 when Peace News, which since the early 1980s had provided the ALF with a mailing address, withdrew its support because ALF actions were increasingly about causing economic sabotage and threatening human life, not freeing animals.
The Animal Liberation Front was not the only organization that organized illegal direct action in the 1980s. The Northern Animal Liberation League (NALL) was the first of a series of regional liberation leagues whose strategy was to organize the largest number of people to illegally enter a research laboratory or a factory farm in broad daylight on a Sunday when the institution had little or no staff on duty. The minimum amount of damage was caused to gain entry. The raid's objective was to rescue animals, take photographs, and steal information, to enable the greatest number of people to witness animal exploitation hidden from public view. These raids, which were well planned and disciplined in their execution, usually lasted about 30 minutes. This ensured that the activists had dispersed by the time the police arrived. The information taken from the raids was then distributed in towns near the action so that local residents could learn what was happening on their doorstep. A 1981 NALL raid on Sheffield University's laboratories resulted in returning a stolen dog to his human companions.
The liberation league raids became a regular feature on the animal rights calendar. Some of the raids involved two groups of activists. One group demonstrated outside the gates to a laboratory while a second group was inside. The second “inside” group quickly joined the first “outside” group who were legally demonstrating; thus by the time the police arrived they could not prove who had been inside and who had not.
In 1977 the first US animal liberation action was conducted by the Undersea Railroad, who released two porpoises from a Hawaii research lab. The first US ALF raid was in 1979, when five animals were rescued from the New York University Medical Center. Slowly, ALF actions began occurring throughout the US. Perhaps one of the most notable was the 1984 raid on the University of Pennsylvania's Head Injury Lab, operated by Thomas Gennarelli. More than 60 hours of videotape taken by the researchers themselves was stolen by ALF and given anonymously to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). PETA produced a videotape summary, called Unnecessary Fuss, which was widely distributed. After a year-plus campaign, which included demonstrations, civil disobedience, and political and media lobbying, the laboratory's funding from the National Institutes for Health was canceled.
The trend in illegal action for animals in the UK and US over the last two decades has not been as sophisticated in its ability to combine it with other forms of action. Instead, it has tended toward the use of violent methods that place humans and animals at a perceived and/or real risk. For example, an explosion at a research laboratory at Bristol University in England used high-powered explosives that placed people at risk. A pipe bomb underneath a car owned by a researcher in England exploded and harmed a nearby baby in a stroller. In the US several pipe bombs were placed at the Utah Fur Breeders Agriculture Cooperative near buildings that housed mink. Telephoned bomb threats have also been made to hotels hosting fur sales. Allegations of poison-laced turkeys have coincided with recent Thanksgiving holidays.
Clearly, much more can be said about the evolution of illegal direct action for animals, the organizations, and the players. I have chosen to focus on this early history because it is important to know that direct action began as nonviolent direct action and later became violent direct action. It was initially carried out by people whose paramount interests were to rescue animals and cause damage only to property that directly harmed animals while taking extraordinary measures to not place anyone—human or animal—at risk.
It was in this context that I wanted to publish a cover article on this subject in The Animals' Agenda. I was seriously concerned that illegal direct action had lost its ethical foundation; that it had become an opportunity for misfits and misanthropes to infiltrate the ALF and perhaps seek personal revenge for some perceived social injustice. Where was the intelligent debate about tactics and strategies that went beyond the mindless rhetoric and emotional elitism pervading much of the self-produced direct action literature? In short, what had happened to the animals' interests?
When Agenda's managing editor, Kirsten Rosenberg, brought to my attention the strategy guide called Strategic Nonviolence for Animal Liberation, I at last thought I had found some serious writing on illegal direct action. Although I had only met the author, Freeman Wicklund, once, and was not familiar with the activities of the Animal Liberation League, which published the guide, I was impressed with its contents. Kirsten and I proceeded to work with Freeman on the writing of the cover feature, which was published in 1998.
Readers' response to the article was polarized; some liked it, some hated it. The Animals' Agenda was subjected to a letter-writing and e-mail campaign, including a petition, that demanded we publish a cover feature on the ALF in the next issue. I remember reading a number of letters and e-mails that were remarkably alike and were clearly written by people who hadn't read the article. The cover feature preceding Freeman's was about animal rights and abortion. I had deliberately structured that article so that there were two viewpoints equally along-side each other. Some readers felt that this was how the article on direct action should have been structured, but to do so would have missed the point of Freeman's article. His article discussed the history of illegal direct action and critiqued its overall effectiveness. It was not—nor was it intended to be—an anti-ALF article, which is how some readers saw it.
I carefully considered all of the comments received, especially the critical ones. Our response was to: (1) publish two pages of readers' letters in the second issue after the one that included Freeman's article;(2) start publishing in every issue a new department, “ALF Action Digest,” reporting recent ALF activities; and (3) publish a cover feature interview with Rod Coronado, who had completed a five-year prison sentence for ALF actions.
I am very proud to have published Freeman's outstanding article. It has significantly contributed to the debate about illegal direct action for animals. I applaud Karen Davis and United Poultry Concerns (UPC) for organizing a forum on direct action, and hope that one result of forums such as theirs is that illegal direct action for animals will return to its original and ethical foundation of nonviolence to all beings.
Finally, my personal feelings on direct action for animals have considerably evolved over the last 30 years. I supported the ALF in its formative period in the 1970s and the emergence of the Animal Liberation Leagues (the precursor to open rescues) in the 1980s.
Currently, I view animal advocacy within the framework of four core values: compassion, truth, nonviolence or ahimsa, and “interbeing” (the understanding that everything, including thoughts and actions, is interrelated). I evaluate all actions for animals, including direct action, by these four core values. Consequently, I believe in direct action that
· is motivated by a sense of compassion for all beings (human and nonhuman alike);
· tells the truth about animal cruelty and all resulting harms it causes to people and the environment;
· is accomplished with adherence to nonviolent principles to all beings (human and nonhuman alike) and property; and
· is undertaken only after all consequences of the direct action and its impact on all people and animals are carefully considered by the protagonists, who are willing to honestly and openly accept the consequences.
I therefore conclude that much of what is done in the name of illegal direct action for animals is harmful to animals, humans, and the environment because it conflicts with the four core values.
Conversely, the actions of the Animal Liberation Leagues in Britain in the 1980s, and the more recent development of the open rescue strategy started in Australia and adopted by groups in the United States, are to be encouraged because I believe they sufficiently meet the standards of the four core values. I like open rescues because
· they tell the truth about cruel practices toward animals by documenting them with videotape footage, photographs, and reports, which are used to educate the public, secure media coverage, and challenge appropriate authorities;
· they clearly demonstrate a compassionate attitude among the advocates toward the cruelly exploited animals by, for example, providing bottled water to dehydrated chickens in battery cages, which inspires others to think positively about animal advocates and the animal advocacy movement;
· they respect the property of others, causing the minimum amount of damage to gain entry, including leaving replacement locks if any have been destroyed; and
· the truth telling, compassionate action, and demonstrated respect reveal the animal advocates' larger understanding (“interbeing”) of their actions.
With respect to violence against humans, animals, and inanimate property as a strategy and tactic in the animal rights movement, I conclude that all acts of violence toward humans and animals as well as the vast majority of acts of violence toward property are incompatible with the four core values in animal advocacy of truth, ahimsa/nonviolence, compassion, and interbeing.
I believe that the only compatible acts of violence against property are those that meet the four core values. For example, as in acts of open rescue, prying open and permanently damaging a lock or padlock is acceptable when the intent is to gain access to documents and evidence of animal cruelty and suffering. As in the practice with open rescues, a replacement lock is left at the site of the damaged lock. Also, in certain circumstances, carefully selected property damage that renders inoperable equipment that is directly used to cause suffering and pain to animals is compatible with the four core values. This also includes similar minimal property damage to free animals from oppression. As with leaving a replacement lock, some form of compensation to the minimal damage caused should be made, which serves as a symbolic and actual reparation.
Clearly, what is incompatible with the four core values of animal advocacy is gratuitous violence, including graffiti, wanton property destruction or vandalism, and home demonstrations.
Compatible with the four core values of animal advocacy is a statement explaining why such action was taken and urging the owners, management, and workers of the business or institution to end their practices of animal exploitation and explaining why such action will benefit humans and animals.
Finally, the application of the four core values of animal advocacy to direct action also helps to prevent the media from framing the action as a “caring scientific researcher dedicated to saving humanity versus a misanthropic animal activist who cares more about a rat than a baby.”
Instead, as in the case of Mike Huskisson, the media is more likely to accurately portray animal advocates as caring passionately about animals and acting compassionately and nonviolently to protect them.