Against All odds
Introduction
In 1984 the animal liberation movement enjoyed widespread public support and in that year anti-vivisection groups staged mass raids on six animal research laboratories. They searched for and found evidence of horrible cruelty at research premises belonging to Surrey University, I.C.I., Unilever, the Royal College of Surgeons, Bios and Wickham Research Laboratories. On several occasions evidence obtained in these raids was shown on headline television news, and on one occasion formed the basis of a cruelty charge against a laboratory.
The raids also resulted in over 80 people facing. criminal charges, and it was
not until June 1986 that the last of these charges was dealt with in the courts. On June 27th 1986, at Leicester Crown Court twenty four people were sent to prison for a total of forty one years for their part in an anti-vivisection raid on Unilevers multi-million pound research laboratory at Bedford.
This book traces the growth of the animal liberation movement from the early seventies, discusses the controversial Putting Animals into Politics campaign and details the major court cases arising out of the 1984 campaign. Finally we look at the development of the Animal Rights Militia and show how as mass support fell away a cult of militancy arose. In March 1986 the police raided homes in Sheffield, Liverpool and London, they arrested and charged 11 people with offences relating to incendiary devices. Most did not receive bail and it is expected that should they be convicted they will receive sentences of between five and eight years imprisonment. We ask what way forward now for a movement that has lost face with the
This book is vital reading for anyone inside the animal rights liberation movement, more importantly it is vital for anyone who wants to see an end to vivisection, but cannot stomach the ideology of the so-called hardline animal liberationists.
Dedication
This booklet is dedicated to
Sally 2 years, Lesley- 6 months, Bev 2 years, Virginia 18 months, Nancy 6 months, Debbie 2 years, Delia 2 years, Peter 2 years, Eric 18 months, David 2 years, Paul 25 years, Karl 18 months, Duncan 2 years, Jim 2 years, Nick 2 years, Nigel 2 years, Alistair 18 months, Carl 18 months, Boris 6 months, Gary 18 months, Keith 2 years, Mike 18 months, Julian 12 months, Alan 2 years, and Sally 12-months.
The Unilever 25, jailed for compassion.
AGAINST ALL ODDS
Animal Liberation 1972-1986
Copyright 1986 by J.J. Roberts
The Animal Liberation Front
its actions against vivisection.
This article traces the history of the early anti-vivisection raids and shows how throughout the seventies the Band of Mercy and later the ALF were steadily growing in strength, setting the scene for the early eighties which was to see the advent of the mass movement for animal liberation.
The Northern Animal Liberation League the theory behind the actions.
While the ALF continued into the 80s relying on small cells of activists, the NALL called for large scale invasions of laboratory sites. We examine the very different aims of the NALL to those of the ALF, and pay tribute to this group who first called for theory and policies within the direct action animal movement.
NALL on Trial twelve months of decline.
Following their April 1984 raid on ICI the NALL were faced with a trial for Unlawful Assembly. After 12 months on bail awaiting trial, and the longest trial ever held in Cheshire, eighteen of the nineteen defendants were convicted and the NALL collapsed. We look at the NALL s response both to the trial and to the ICI campaign.
The South East Animal Liberation League the fall and the fightback.
The SEALL were formed in the summer of 1983 they were to survive as an organisation for less than, two years, but their impact and most importantly their response to the most overtly political trial in the history of the animal liberation movement leaves many lessons.
The Wickham 19 court report.
Here we detail the daily events of a trial that threatened to be the most damaging the animal liberation movement has ever seen, but which resulted in the acquittal of twelve of the nineteen defendants. It gives some insight into the workings of a crown court trial which, if people s freedom did not hang in the balance, would be considered a farce.
Unilever the forgotten trial.
In stark contrast to the Wickham 19 where people were acquitted despite having raided the laboratories, in this trial 24 people were sent to prison despite the fact that in some cases they had merely waved a banner while the laboratory was raided. Unilever shows the dangers of approaching a court case in a demoralised and fatalistic manner.
The Logic of Direct Action the role of defence campaigns.
The law is not impartial, it has always denied protection to commercially abused animals and has always been used to subdue protest. This article discusses how groups can respond to the use of criminal law against animal rights campaigns.
Changes in the Law a legal discussion.
This interview covers the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and the forthcoming Public Order Bill, it shows the far-reaching ways in which the new government proposals will criminalise traditional forms of protest.
The New Public Order Proposals the effect on animal rights groups.
The new laws are designed to limit organised opposition to government policy, but local animal rights groups need to respond with an increase rather than a decrease in their scope of activities.
ALF the way we were.
A rare insight into the thinking and strategy of an ALF cell operating in the early eighties. It shows how they planned and executed their raids.
Sabotage or Terror effective action or selfdelusion.
We discuss the ideas behind the Hunt Retribution Squad and the Animal Rights Militia and ask why have a small group of people adopted the media stereotype of animal rights fanatics?
The Seven Point Program a guide for action.
The anti-vivisection movement has seen the collapse of the political campaign, the degeneration of the popular direct action campaign and the waning of public support. The program rejects the failed ideologies and calls for a realistic alternative based on the strength of animal rights groups.
Glossary and further reading includes photograph references.
The Animal Liberation Front its actions against vivisection
Right from those days in the last century when vivisection began there have been, from time to time, people who have taken direct action against it. Now and again one hears tales of the rescue of animals from laboratories by intrepid individuals many decades ago but these were isolated incidents and did not form part of a campaign. The current campaign of direct action against vivisection has its origin only as far back as the early 1970 s.
It was only in 1972 that a few people involved in the Hunt Saboteurs Association decided to embark on a campaign of direct action against vehicles and other property used by the hunt. In order to do this, a group called the Band of Mercy was formed and proceeded to carry out raids on fox hunt kennels in the South of England.
In the autumn of 1973 members of the Band of Mercy decided that their campaign should expand to include all forms of animal abuse and during November two arson attacks were carried out (causing over 45,000 damage) on a laboratory being built for the Hoechst drug company at Milton Keynes.
The Band of Mercy then decided that its next major action would be against sealhunting boats on the Wash the following June, and very little activity took place until that time. During this period of quiet the group received inside information about the whereabouts of laboratory animal suppliers and following the successful destruction of the seal hunters most important vessel an intensive campaign against these firms began.
Eight raids were carried out on the premises of lab animal suppliers between June and August 1974, mostly involving damage to property, usually vehicles. The one raid where animals were rescued had an unexpectedly successful outcome with the owner of a Wiltshire guinea pig farm deciding to close her business down (out of fear of people coming in the night) after half a dozen inmates had been taken.
The last series of raids resulted in the arrest of two activists who were caught while preparing to do damage at oxford Laboratory Animal Colonies near Bicester and with their subsequent imprisonment the activities of the Band of Mercy virtually ground to a halt.
1975 was enlivened only once by Mike Huskisson s famous rescue of two of the ICI smoking beagles. He was later charged with Burglary and then acquitted after ICI bottled out, fearful of the adverse publicity the trial would bring them.
In June 1976 the ALF was born with the remnants of the Band of Mercy and a couple of dozen new activists coming together to create the new organisation. The publicity gained through the imprisonment of the Band of Mercy members and the smoking beagles rescue had galvanised support for the direct action struggle.
The handful of veterans of the Band of Mercy blinked in surprise at this new phenomena. Up until this time there had been virtually no support for their activities from the rest of the animal protection movement and two Band of Mercy members had been thrown off the HSA committee (they were later reinstated) when it was suspected they were involved in illegal activities .
The ALF took up where the Band of Mercy left off, and carried out ten raids6 against vivisection targets in the remainder of 1976. Action was, once again, mainly against the property of animal suppliers.
The first ALF animal rescue took place when three pregnant beagles were taken from the Pfizer laboratory at Sandwich in a well planned raid in which activists crossed a river in a stolen boat to avoid security guards. Later in the year 13 beagles were rescued from a lab animal supplier in mid Wales.
In November a professionally executed break-in at the Research Defence Society s London offices yielded much information and caused a great deal of consternation amongst vivisectors who now feared that their homes would be attacked.
Over three years would pass, however, before the first raid on the home of an animal experimenter.
Early ALF members were, by and large, opposed to such activity and imposed restraints on their actions which do not exist within the ALF today. During one raid ALF members found a considerable amount of money in an office and, rather than take it to finance further raids, tore the notes in half and left them for fear of being considered common thieves.
On another occasion an activist who jumped upon a vivisection breeder s reading glasses, which were found during a break-in, was severly rebuked by his fellow raiders. Many activists at the time were only happy with damage if it was done to property directly connected with animal abuse. The idea of more general economic sabotage had not yet come into being.
In 1977 the ALF carried out 14 raids against vivisection and liberated over 200 animals from laboratory suppliers.
The hardest hitting ALF raid so far was carried out when activists broke into the Condiltox lab in North London and caused 80,000 damage. Quite soon afterwards the lab went out of business.
An American group calling themselves Undersea Railroad released two porpoises from a Hawaii research lab at about the same time.
By this time there was considerably more support for the ALF amongst other animal protection groups, especially from the HSA and the BUAV, but the National Anti-Vivisection Society continued to condemn the activists in its publications.
In late 1977 and early 1978 the authorities struck a telling blow against the ALF with the imprisonment of half a dozen of the most active members. For a while this had a crippling effect on the organisation with several other good activists being frightened off and it was not until well into 1979 that a recovery began to be made.
Even then it was action abroad rather than in England which was getting the attention. The American ALF carried out their first raid in March, posing as lab workers to rescue five animals from New York University Medical Centre, and on Christmas night the newly formed Dutch ALF rescued 12 beagles from a laboratory at Zeist.
In the meantime a French group calling themselves Commando Lynx rescued 57 dogs from a lab animal supplier in Pourrain.
The French direct action set-up was very different than that in other countries, with ad-hoc commandos being formed to carry out specific actions rather than the same organisation claiming responsibility for a number of raids. Unlike the ALF, the French commandos were opposed to damage against property. Many of their early activists were not vegetarians. Today there is a French ALF which operates seperately from the commandos and takes action against all animal abuse.
Early in the year there was a split in the ranks of the activists regarding the use of fire and ALF policy swung first against arson and then back in favour of it, a decision which was celebrated in August by a blaze at the Essex offices of lab supplier Tuck and Sons, which caused 20,000 damage.
This was the second ALF raid on the Tucks, and many more attacks on the premises were yet to come. In 1980 there were about half a dozen ALF raids against vivisection targets including the first attack on a vivisector s home when Wellcome animal torturer George Sabey had his garage daubed with paint the first of many attacks to come against Wellcome vivisectionists. It was not however the ALF, but the Northern Animal Liberation League which hit the headlines that year with their raid on the Agricultural Research Council s Animal Physiology Institute at Babraham in June.
The NALL, a regional umbrella group for animal rights activists in North West England, did comparatively little damage during this action but the fact that over 200 people were involved in the raid, and the very revealing photos taken of grotesque experiments on farm animals, ensured widespread national publicity.
The policy and tactics of the NALL were very different to those of the ALF, with the emphasis on exposing vivisection , laboratories to the public rather than causing damage. They believed in involving large numbers of activists in a raid whereas the ALF used the minimum necessary.
In July animal rights activists were suspected when a house at Tadworth, Surrey, due to be converted into a Beecham s vivisection lab, was destroyed by fire.
1981 began with a night of action against the homes of animal experimenters in various parts of the country. The ALF claimed that as many as 40 attacks, mainly with paint, had taken place on the houses and. cars of vivisectionists. A further 18 attacks on vivisection targets were due to take place before the end of the year.
These included a raid on Wickham Laboratories in March, when 11 beagles were rescued (and on which the famous picture-used on ALF leaflets-of an activist holding one of the dogs, was taken) and an action two months later at a farm near Doncaster belonging to pet stealer Ellis Fox, in which ten dogs and several other animals were taken. ALF activist Sue Merrikin was charged with robbery in connection with this raid but was finally acquitted on the direction of the trial judge.
The first ALF raid in Canada occurred when several windows at the McGill University animal lab in Montreal were broken and the Scottish ALF opened their account with attacks on Glasgow Technical College and the home of a vivisector in Bearsden. In December West German activists rescued 48 dogs from a lab in Hamburg.
Blackie, a mongrel dog rescued during a NALL raid on Sheffield University s animal holding centre the previous year, was reunited with her former owners in April, providing more evidence of pet stealing for vivisection.
There was a degree of ill-feeling between the NALL and the ALF with some NALL organisers disliking the decentralised ALF structure and the large amount of autonomy given to local ALF groups. They were opposed to the idea of six or eight individuals creeping about and intent on doing their own thing (NALL letter to BUAV May 1981). Some ALF members on the other hand, very much wanted people to do their own thing and thought that the NALL s approach was discouraging activists from organising and carrying out their own activities.
There was a further increase in anti-vivisection raids in 1982 and in many ways the year was a landmark for animal liberation action.
ALF activists decided to take a leaf out of the NALL book and to carry out
large scale raids in the daytime. The first of these occurred in February when activists smashed their way into Safepharm labs near Derby and were photographed by the press and filmed by T.V. rescuing rabbits. Several activists, identified by the police from press photos, recieved suspended sentences for their part in the raid.
The Safepharm action turned out to be a curtain-raiser for what was to follow8 just a week later. In a large scale day-light raid, codenamed Operation Valentine (the date was 14 February), dozens of activists stormed the Life Science Research labs at Stock, Essex, while a demo went on outside. A variety of animals were rescued, 76,000 damage was caused and 60 people arrested. Eight activists were later sent to prison for their part in the raid.
Operation Valentine attracted a great deal of publicity, caused considerable loss to Life Science (40 of their employees were laid off) and won many new recruits for direct action but it was to be the last large scale ALF daylight raid. In retrospect there seemed to be no advantage in carrying out such an action in daylight, the extra publicity being outweighed by the greater risk of arrest, and it was evident that, when serious damage occurred, it was much more difficult for activists to pretend that they were just part of the peaceful demonstration - indeed, in the Valentine case, several of the peaceful demonstrators ended up charged with conspiracy.
So it was back to Creeping about in the night but such creeping rescued 12 beagles from Boots Laboratories near Nottingham and closed down Leicester University Psychology Department s animal laboratory after a rescue and damage raid later in the year.
The Boots raid was followed by a leafletting campaign against the company
organised by the BUAV and other antivivisection groups. Boots made a serious mistake when they put a stop to this by means of a court injunction, for their chemist shops have been a target ever since, with dozens of them being damaged.
The national demonstration against Porton Down in April, organised by the BUAV, ended with 2,000 demonstrators invading land belonging to the MOD laboratory and crossing several fences before being finally repulsed by the police.
For a while after this many activists attempted to turn national demonstrations into direct action events ( 2,000 damage was done to the fence and alarm system at the Huntingdon Research Centre during a demo in August) but the police soon caught on to the tactic and it eventually died out. It was very sad at the time to see dozens of demonstrators hurling themselves to almost certain arrest at the massed ranks of the police surrounding laboratories when that night, or the night after, on an ALF raid they could have rescued animals or caused considerable damage to property. But more on this later.
ALF members carried out a somewhat unusual action in June when eight guinea pigs being sent for vivisection were rescued from a Bournemouth to London train.
This type of action has been repeated several times since.
Direct action against vivisection in Australia began in November with a group called Animal Freedom Fighters rescuing three dogs from a pound which was due to send them to Sydney University labs. After a few raids the AFF died out, their place being taken today by a group called Action for Animals.
1982 was also the year in which the ALF Supporters Group was formed a long awaited opportunity for the non-active to help the activists.
The following year, 1983, can be remembered for the large amount of damage done in raids on laboratories both in England and abroad. 125,000 to the Hazelton lab at Munster West Germany (one of at least five German raids carried out that year, mainly by the Autonome TierschutlerAutonomous Animal Defenders) and 100,000 to a cancer research lab being built at South Mimms in Hertfordshire took only third and fourth place in that year s damage league. The 1 million destruction of a Parke Davis lab in
Cambridge in September still remains the UK record, beaten only by 1.25 million damage done to a Utrecht lab by the Dutch ALF.
Of the 40 odd raids against vivisection that year the rescue of 15 dogs, all
obviously former pets, from Cambridge University s Laundry Farm holding centre was probably the most well publicised, the only sad aspect being the jailing, over a year later of an activist for driving the getaway van.
Early in the year the Animal Rights Militia sent letter bombs to various animal abusers, including several vivisectors. None of them exploded but the action was severely criticised by the rest of the movement.
An even more active 1984 saw a paint attack on the home of David Mellor (the junior Home Office minister responsible for animal experiments) and 50,000 damage and 40 rats rescued in a raid on the Institute of Psychology in Camberwell. The first, and so far only, raid in Switzerland took place when five mice were rescued from a Zurich laboratory in Febuary. West German activists raided a lab in Ahrensburg to take away files and 550 guinea-pigs.
In May the American ALF raided a research lab at the University of Pennsylvania, causing considerable damage and taking away videos made by the vivisectors themselves. From these films Unnecessary Fuss was made, which revealed the full horror of head injury experiments on monkeys and the callous attitude of the vivisectors. This evidence was later instrumental in causing the laboratory to close down.
The first action in Eire occurred in June when a group called Green Mole
rescued several animals from the Eastern Health Board labs in Dublin.Further actions in Eire were claimed by the ALF.
July 1984 saw the first of the controversial contamination actions when ALF activists spiked animal-tested Sunsilk shampoo with small quantities of bleach.
Considerable care was taken that no harm would come to the public but the shampoo manufacturers, Elida Gibbs, lost a great deal of money because of the removal of their products from the shelves. This was followed by the famous Mars bars hoax in November. Again very controversial, but resulting in confectionery companies no longer being prepared to fund animal research.
The Mars bars incident prompted the announcement from the Home Office that a special police squad had been formed at Scotland Yard to hunt down animal rights fanatics . They failed to catch the Mars bars maniacs but the more coordinated State response to animal liberation groups has had its successes.
Similar organisations to the NALL had been set up in several parts of England and in 1984 they became particularly active. A raid by the South East Animal Liberation League on the Royal College of Surgeons lab near Orpington led to the eventual conviction of the RCS on a charge of cruelty to a monkey, with documents from the raid being used as evidence the conviction was later overturned by the Appeal Court.
SEALL were also responsible for three co-ordinated raids on Wickham Labs and associated premises in Hampshire in late October. Nineteen activists were charged with conspiracy in connection with this action and seven of them were sent to prison in December 1985.
Conspiracy charges, against 41 people, also followed a raid by the Eastern
Animal Liberation League on the Unilever labs near Bedford in which documents were taken and 50,000 damage caused. Millions of pounds spent by Unilever on perimeter security two years earlier failed to keep out the activists who cut through the fence with a powerdriven tile cutter.
The liberation leagues were now departing somewhat from original policy and causing considerably more damage but the price was more serious charges against those arrested. The result was that 1984 saw the collapse of the Northern Eastern and South Eastern leagues, and a change of tactics by the Central and Southern leagues.
A group called the Green Brigades detonated a bomb which severely damaged the premises of a lab animal dealer at Lewarde in Northern France. The dealer suffered only slight injuries but the group were suspected of planting a bomb which severely injured a policeman when it exploded outside the home of another French animal dealer the following year. Like the French commandoes the Green Brigades are purely an anti-vivisection group and are not vegetarians.
It was the year that trouble erupted between the ALF and the BUAV. The BUAV committee had been taken-over by radicals a couple of years earlier and had declared support for direct action, allowing the ALF press office to operate from part of their premises. However in the spring of 1984 members of the BUAV Executive Committee and senior staff took exception to the plans of some ALF members to support more sympathetic people for election to the BUAV committee.
A group of BUAV Executive members convened an emergency meeting and, using their objections to certain articles in the ALF Supporters Group newsletter as an excuse, ordered the immediate expulsion of the ALF press officer. The basis of the dispute was really direct action versus political campaigning and it still simmers to this day. The ALF press office is now happy to be away from the BUAV which has continued to be torn apart by internal strife.
The SEALL had pioneered the use of video to film raids, and thereby gain extra publicity, and the idea was soon taken up by the ALF, whose Merseyside group videoed many of their well planned raids in 1985. The Central Animal Liberation League also used video to illustrate their July 1985 raid on an Oxford University lab animal holding centre in which over 30 dogs were rescued.
In early 1985 ALF activists carried out co-ordinated attacks on the homes of eight individuals connected with the Wellcome vivisection labs at Beckenham. The action caused much controversy and was blown out of all proportion by the media because petrol bombs were thrown at the garages of two of the targets.
At the begining of April a group calling themselves Operation Greystoke
rescued 17 baboons from a laboratory at Gif-sur-Yvette in France. Some of the activists involved later spoke out in the French media against the ALF, whom they accused of being terrorists. Like the commandos before them the Greystoke activists were opposed to property damage and actions against the meat industry.
Later in the month a record number of animals were saved when about 1,000 animals were rescued in a raid on the University of California by the American ALF.
The Essex ALF had developed a good method of bypassing certain alarm systems by drilling and cutting through the doors and walls of buildings and this was used to good effect in yet another raid on Tuck and Sons when 10,000 damage was caused. Many useful documents were taken, including Tuck s headed notepaper which was used to write letters to his suppliers and customers, causing him untold trouble. The group used the same method to break into the Brocades laboratories near Braintree in November when damage was done and 150 animals rescued.
Very few anti-vivisection raids had previously taken place in Wales but Welsh activists did it in style when they attacked two Swansea laboratories on the same night in September, causing a total of 18,000 damage.
In September the Animal Rights Militia used explosive devices to destroy two cars belonging to vivisectionists from the BIBRA labs at Carshalton, Surrey. The Militia had resurfaced in December 1984 and have since carried out several actions including the placing of four bombs under vivisectors cars in early January 1986.
These were all defused by bomb disposal experts following warnings by the ARM, but the group have threatened to injure and kill vivisectors in their campaign.
In the 12 years since organised direct action against vivisection began nearly 6,000 animals have been rescued from laboratories and suppliers, and several million pounds worth of damage done in the 400-plus raids which have taken place. Direct action has also played a major part in forcing the closure of several vivisection establishments and has, without doubt, been influential in reducing the official figures for animal experiments in the UK these were previously on the increase all the time, but have gone down by about two million in recent years.
The price for all this has been paid by the two dozen or so activists who have been imprisoned for anti-vivisection actions and by many others who have been fined or faced other penalties. A large number of ALF people have not been brought before the courts through clever detective work but have got into trouble because of their own admisions to the police. This is becoming a serious problem and in 1986 we are seeing for the first time the appalling situation where an activist once caught is prepared to make a witness statement against their ex- colleagues.
The attitude of the national anti-vivisection societies to the activists has been fickle to say the least. The NAVS now speak out less than previously against direct action but Animal Aid are not so supportive as they used to be, seeming to dislike damage to property. The BUAV claim to support the activists, but in reality they have only courted favour with the activists in an attempt to woo them into supporting the doomed parliamentry strategy. North of the border the Scottish Anti Vivisection Society is very sympathetic, to most actions at least, but the far richer Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection is much less so.
The problem with the national societies is that, in general, they will only voice support for direct action when it serves their own purposes, in other words only when it can be used as a boost to the political campaign. Real support would be shown if they were prepared to take actions which made it more likely that more people would get involved in direct action. The national societies dislike in particular the recent change in attitude of the ALF, which is becoming increasingly outspoken in its rejection of political campaigning and its belief that the movement will have to bring the vivisection industry to its knees by economic sabotage rather than lobbying parliament. Anarchist ideas about people changing things themselves, rather than by means of politicians, and the historic failure of political campaigning have both encouraged the rapid growth of this point of view.
Having fallen out with the ALF, several of the national societies in particular the BUAV have preferred to voice support for the Animal Liberation Leagues. But the day of the Leagues, or at least of the style of action they traditionally carry out, may well be over. Their more centralised method of organisation has made them greater prey to police surveillance and their daylight operations expose activists to greater chance of capture, which is now resulting in far more serious charges than ever before. The idea of just exposing places, as opposed to destroying them, and of causing only minimal damage is coming under increasing criticism from some quarters.
So what of the future? Whether or not the Animal Rights Militia will carry out their threat to kill or injure vivisectors remains to be seen. It also remains to be seen if this would harm the movement as some people claim. It is vitally important, however that the ARM do not harm innocent people in their actions as this, like the maiming of the French policeman, could prove potentially disastrous for the direct action movement.
Whatever the actions of the ARM, they are likely to remain relatively small in number and the main thrust of the movement will continue to be the economic sabotage campaign. Whether this is eventually successful will ultimately depend on the number of actions carried out, which in turn will depend on the number of activists involved and, more importantly, the number of activists prepared to get involved in organising actions.
A major problem for the movement is that too many activists are rather like a certain animal themselves the sheep. It has been relatively easy for the Animal Liberation Leagues to involve in their raids large numbers of people who have taken no part in the planning and just follow instructions. But ask those people to organise and carry out their own activities and you get a very different story. At national demonstrations people have been prepared to form a howling mob and make vain attempts to enter laboratories guarded by hundreds of police. But the mob can never be the answer. It is just a way for pseudo-activists, who are too mentally lazy to plan their own actions, to make believe they are doing something.
The direct action movement is starved of funds, mainly because these are all in the hands of the national societies and lack of money without doubt reduces the amount of effective action. But the main problem is not lack of finance, but lack of initiative. Unless there are hundreds if not thousands, of groups all over the country (and in all other countries) organising and carrying out their own activities, we will never put an end to vivisection or any other form of animal persecution.
All of the actions of the last 12 years have been organised and carried out by ordinary people with enough determination and common-sense to see the whole thing through. It is well within the means of virtually everyone in the movement to become involved in direct action. But we have to be resolute if animal torture is ever to be ended.
The Northern Animal Liberation League the theory behind its actions
The Northern Animal Liberation League was the first regional co-ordinating body for direct action in the country, organising mass actions against hunts in a way that had never before been envisaged. In 1980 they organised their first (and in retrospect probably their most successful) raid against the now notorious Babraham Agricultural Research Centre. Over 200 activists staged an occupation and gained entry to the farm units where pigs with holes in their heads, and cows with holes in their sides, were found and photographed. Arrogantly independent their structure and tactics ensured for a time that the cities of Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool became the best organised centres for animal rights in the coun-
try.
NALL thinking and policy was to inspire the formation of many new non-
aligned animal rights groups and spawned the Western, Eastern, Central, Southern and, most importantly, the South East Animal Liberation League.
The NALL policy was to involve as many people as possible in campaigns to expose the animal abuse to the The fact that their main aim was to expose vivisection to the public allowed them to portray themselves as public guardians.
Since the law prevented the RSPCA or even your elected M.P. from inspecting laboratories then it could only be through groups such as NALL that the public would have access to the facts of what really went on behind the locked doors of Britain s labs.
Factory farming was of particular interest to the NALL as it allowed them to develop the theme that they were acting in the public interest. In December 1982 they raided a turkey broiler unit in Yorkshire along with photos they also took evidence of additives mixed into the turkey feed. Within days they had produced photo sets of the cruel conditions in the broiler units and an analysis of the carcinogenic additives in the feed. In the last few days of Christmas shopping, the NALL presented up-to-the-minute evidence both of the cruelty to animals and the danger to public health resulting from factory farming of the traditional Christmas dinner.
The NALL often attempted to take an impartial view of the facts claiming that they were seeking the truth, and the more their campaign uncovered the more concerned they became. The NALL saw their role as presenting the evidence to the public, it would then be for the public to judge. The NALL always felt they had a duty to the public and presented a high profile in stark contrast to the animal abusers who conspired behind a cloak of secrecy.
A particular example of this policy was when a vivisector passed a NALL stall in Altrincham some years ago. He was challenged to a debate before the public in the busy shopping centre. He was asked to explain his work at UMIST and justify what was being done to the animals in photos on the NALL s leaflets and posters.
He said there was no point in talking to people there as they would not understand his work and he refused to allow the public to make an appointment to see him at his work. At this point the NALLers appointed a judge and prosecutor, the gathering crowd were asked to act as jury and the amazed vivisector was on trial in his own town centre. Eventually the NALL had to shepherd him away, as the increasingly angry professor enraged the crowd with his arrogant assertion that he did not have to explain himself to them.
Central to the NALL philosophy was the need to obtain and present to the
public evidence of animal abuse. The raid itself was a means to an end, not an end in itself. Once evidence had been obtained it was necessary to launch an effective street campaign with it. For this reason the NALL insisted that there was a role for everybody. This meant that petitions, jumble sales, sponsored walks, debates, stalls and public meetings were an integral part of NALL policy, after all there was little point in obtaining evidence but failing to present it to the
The NALL created for the first time an animal rights group which, although geared towards direct action by its nature, required more active supporters than militant activists. The NALL required support from the public both in donations on stalls and in terms of new members, this direct appeal to the public for support rather than those already involved in animal welfare or animal rights groups helped to shape NALL thinking and strategy. It .was important to take direct action only within the bounds of public support and necessary that each act of direct action should produce results which would justify it to the The NALL were concerned that they should not be seen as fanatics, but reasonable people whose actions were well planned, perfectly logical, and if anything remarkably restrained.
Central to the NALL concept of a raid was their rule that there was to be no more than minimum damage necessary to obtain entry, that no animal should be released or taken, and that no equipment be destroyed. This often caused confusion and at one time earned the NALL the nickname of the File Liberation League . However, the NALL must be seen in its true context, a group recruiting from the public directly into its ranks, a group that believed that its actions were geared towards mobilising opposition to vivisection and a group that did not judge itself by its militancy, but by its ability to involve as many members of the public as possible in its attempts to expose vivisection.
The rules which were imposed on NALL raids did not restrict action against vivisection, rather it made the raids possible. The majority of those attending a NALL raid, far from feeling restricted by the rules, felt secure that they were only trespassing. The lack of damage, burglary and theft charges ensured two things if no one was arrested on the day the action would not be serious enough a crime to warrant a CID team to track down those responsible, and if people were arrested on the day it was likely that the small amount of damage caused could not be attributed to a joint venture and therefore at worst Public Order charges would follow. Public Order law is generally dealt with in a magistrate s court and if there is no threat of violence it is considered a minor offence.
It was the NALL s belief that they were after the evidence that would itself
eventually force change and so they laid themselves open to the minimum level of criminality to obtain what they wanted. It was,in short, common-sense.
The reason the NALL was so relevant in the early 80s was because its ideas
matched the situation at that time. The rising number of active hunt saboteurs and the development of street campaigning initiated by Animal Aid established the concept of active groups against all forms of animal abuse These new groups were looking for something useful to do, they were unlikely to launch straight into overtly criminal actions so the NALL theories were readily adopted, though seldom understood. The NALL provided useful experience for the first-time activist and produced some spectacular results. People involved in NALL activity certainly thought their efforts were rewarded by the results obtained.
The public knowledge of animal abuse was also at the stage where a NALL type of campaign was likely to be succesful, the public were uninformed about animal abuse, therefore presenting information directly to the public received a lot of support.
Thirdly the police were at a loss as to what to do with NALL supporters. They invariably turned up too late to spot anyone doing anything, were confused as to what, if any, law had been broken and either arrested no one, or arrested people who could be convicted of no more than Public Order offences. It was also relevant that at that time any charges to follow would be decided at the level of the local police station, whereas now decisions about charges are often refered directly to the Home Office. The Home Office will also have issued guidelines as to how to deal with animal rights supporters which are designed to ensure more convictions, this was not the case when the NALL were at their most active.
The NALL policy was very suitable because it was attractive to those who were concerned about animal abuse but did not want to risk imprisonment, it gained widespread public support when it presented its evidence to the public, and finally at that time the police did not consider the NALL serious enough to need stopping.
In 1984 the Northern, Eastern and South Eastern Animal Liberation Leagues launched a wave of attacks against leading vivisection laboratories. These raids obtained large amounts of evidence but resulted in the judicial destruction of the leagues. By 1984 things had changed and the traditional NALL raid could no longer exist, labs were better protected, the police faster to respond, and the charges more serious. On top of all that the targets were the Big Ones .
The ICI and Unilever raids suffered from an uncharacteristic level of criminal damage, this was partly because the minimum damage required to gain entry was considerable. The seriousness of the raids had increased but many of the participants still believed that they would only face Public Order charges if they were caught, despite the fact that they were intent on causing criminal damage. No-one was prepared for the serious charges which followed these raids.
The problem was that both the ICI and Unilever raids were planned on the
basis of a theory of action which was simply no longer appropriate. The South East Animal Liberation League responded by organising raids on the Royal College of Surgeons, Bios and Wickham labs in a far more professional way, using highly organised teams. The SEALL developed the tactic of the raid but unfortunately no-one has yet developed the broad-based campaign strategy which. was at the heart of NALL s initial success.
NALL on trial twelve months of decline
1984 was a watershed for the animal liberation leagues in that year their policies produced a flurry of raids against major vivisection laboratories and brought quality video recordings of the conditions inside onto the national television news, bringing the plight of laboratory animals into the front room of millions of British homes. However the actions also resulted in an unprecedented number of arrests, by the end of the year over 80 league supporters were facing trial.
In April the NALL kicked off with a 400 strong nationally co-ordinated raid against the Alderly Edge research premises of ICI, where some years earlier the ALF had rescued a number of the beagles destined for experiments designed to prove that smoking was unrelated to cancer. Alderly Edge is home territory for the NALL and the raid was the pinnacle of NALL achievement, something they had worked towards since their inception some five years before. However by the spring of 1984 the NALL was a different group from that which had last launched a full scale raid against a laboratory back in 1980 when they broke into Sheffield University s Lodge Moor Laboratory. The NALL had broadened its base. It had become a larger, more organised co-ordinating group, but it had failed to maintain an active core of experienced members. A series of internal divisions, often resulting in the expulsion of active supporters, the move towards occupations of laboratory grounds rather than break-ins, the abandonment of regular hunt sabotage and a general loss of momentum meant that the NALL activists were either the remnants of an earlier more dynamic group or newly involved, young and inexperienced.
This lack of experience plus a failure to comprehend the sheer scale of the raid left many NALLers ill prepared for the day s events, shocked by the police reaction, and stunned by the reality of 12 months on bail awaiting a trial that lasted three months and which could have resulted in severe custodial sentences.
The NALL prided itself on looking after its members, but on April 24th 1984 it was almost exclusively NALL members who were arrested, while groups from outside the North West arrived, broke in and left the premises with few problems.
NALL strategy and detailed planning had ensured the undetected arrival of hundreds of raiders and the relative safety of those who had entered and left the grounds quickly and efficiently. It was the local groups playing a minor role in the days events that found themeselves in trouble. Most of those arrested came from NALL satellite groups such as Stockport Animal Aid, Merseyside Hunt Saboteurs, Preston Animal Rights Group, and the Oldham and Tameside Animal Liberation Leagues.
Inside Macclesfield police station many had a harrowing introduction to British justice. Sixteen year-old lads were stripped, subjected to intimate body searches and then slapped around by police officers before being questioned. The police offered people a choice between making a statement incriminating themselves or having one invented for them. Less than half the defendants refused to make a statement and the majority confessed all. The police were also given the names of eight people who had not been arrested on the day, two of these were arrested, charged and subsequently convicted.
When the defendants were finally released from police custody they were charged with Criminal Damage and Unlawful Assembly with intent to burgle ICI.
This charge of Unlawful Assembly was very popular at the time with the Home Office who believed the charge was capable of turning participation in a disturbance into a major criminal offence punishable by a custodial sentence. It was being used extensively against members of the National Union of Mineworkers during the year-long pit strike. The charge is part of common law and had never been enacted by parliament, it has its roots in the Middle Ages but became more defined in the 18th century. The Home Office were attempting to use the law to make it a serious criminal offence to be involved in a mass protest where the law is breached.
The government were using this archaic law in situations for which it could
never have been intended. They were at the time frightened of the possibility of growth in large scale direct action, but had not had time to draft and enact new criminal legislation. Hundreds of striking miners were charged with Unlawful Assembly and the Home Secretary issued statements warning of life sentences .
The miners were successfully defended against this sinister legal manouvering, and repeatedly the police were humiliated as the judge would have to direct the jury to acquit. Unfortunately the charges against the NALL stuck and only one person out of 18 defendants was acquitted.
The case against the defendants was that they had almost all been arrested
inside the grounds of ICI, criminal damage and burglary had been committed and although they had not been seen to commit any unlawful act, about half of them made statements which admitted participating in a planned raid on the site.
The acquittal of those who had not made a statement relied entirely on convincing the jury that their intentions on the day were distinct and different from those who had raided the laboratory and committed the criminal damage and burglary.
This defence also applied to those who had at first signed statements admitting taking part in the raid, it would require something more than a miracle for these to be acquitted.
The NALL decided to encourage all its defendants to plead not guilty. This
decision was taken largely because those who had made statements were the young inexperienced NALLers whose involvement in the action was very limited and it was felt unfair that they should be left to carry the can. The NALL also felt that since the confessions had been extracted by fear, the police behaviour should not go unchallenged.
However moral it was of the NALL to decide that they should stand or fall
together, the decision reduced the likelihood of acquittals for those defendants with a realistic chance had the trial been approached with more pragmatism. All the defendants adopted the same defence that they had been inside the grounds of ICI for the purpose of an occupation, there was nothing to distinquish between those who had made statements and those who had not. Everyone who had made a statement admitted in it that they had committed criminal offences. When the jury decided to convict those defendants that had initially made statements admitting their involvement, they must then have in conferred the contents of those statements onto the remaining defendants.
On the charge of Unlawful Assembly the prosectution had to prove that an
assembly of three or more people took place, that they had an unlawful intention and that on this occasion that intention was to burgle ICI. The events of the day almost certainly constituted an Unlawful Assembly, but the prosecution cannot rely on establishing that a crime was committed, they must prove the intent of the individual defendant. In this case the majority of that evidence came from the signed statements of the accused. Those people who had not made statements explained that their intention on the day was to occupy the grounds as a protest.
The prosecution failed to bring evidence that these individuals had committed any act that could constitute the offence, nor any evidence that they had foreknowledge of any offences. The prosecution were relying on the fact that offences had been committed to prove that those in the grounds were there for the purpose of committing those offences.
The judge refused to throw out the case against the defendants who had never admitted criminal intent. This was a wrong decision in law but one which a panel of judges later ruled did not warrant an appeal against conviction! Eventually the case came to rest on whether the jury could rely on the statements signed by defendants or whether, as the defence argued they were a combination of people saying what the police wanted to hear and police fabrication signed by the defendants after threats of physical assault. The defence failed to offer a really credible alternative to the police version of events and only partly managed to discredit the Macclesfield C.I.D. The jury may well have come to the conclusion that despite the possibility that the police had written the statements they were still the most accurate description of the days events. Even if the police were lying, the defendants could still be guilty.
In the end the jury retired for three full days, after 22 hours of deliberations
they returned guilty verdicts against all but one defendant. The one acquittal appears to have been a sympathy verdict, the lad involved having driven a van as a favour to his new girlfriend. Although he had little defence in law, the jury appear to have decided that he had innocently got himself mixed up in the whole affair.
Following the verdicts the judge remanded the defendants on bail for a further month to await social enquiry reports. The granting of bail and his instruction to the defence barristers that he expected them to offer financial compensation to ICI was a clear indication that the judge was intent on lenient sentencing. One month later two of the alleged ringleaders were sentenced to nine months in prison with six months suspended, this meant that with time off for good behaviour they would serve 8 weeks. The rest received financial penalties and long hours of community service which, as it turned out, most of them enjoyed. In the light of the Wickham and Unilever sentencing this showed the judge to be remarkably unbiased.
In the trial the police alleged two ringleaders one-a Mr Callender was arrested on a roof of ICI where no damage had been done, the other a Mr Smith had been arrested two weeks after the raid because one of the people arrested on the day said that someone with the same christian name had been the organiser, and because a senior security guard at ICI claimed to recognise him as wearing a balaclava mask on the day. The security guard claimed he kept files on animal rights campaigners and that Mr Smith s balaclava had slipped . Mr Callender was remanded without bail for a week in Macclesfield police station where he was regularly interrogated and threatened. Finally he was told by D.I. Mellor that he had a simple choice either make a statement which named Mr Smith as the organiser or be framed himself. To his credit Callender accepted the inevitable consquence of that threat, two months in prison.
Mr Smith had been in police custody several times due to opposition to animal abuse, he had previously been assaulted in police cells and prided himself on his degree of noncooperation with the police he had never made a statement while in police custody. He knew before his arrest that others had been assaulted in the Macclesfield police station and had prepared himself for a beating. In an amazing testimony to the court he described how when he first met D.I. Mellor he told him, You can beat me half to death, hang me by my toenails and poke my eyes out, I am not going to make a statement.
Mellor needed to link the statement (alleging that someone with the same first name as Smith was the organiser more directly to Smith himself. In Mellors account of the interview he alleges that Smith accepts that if someone has said he is the ringleader then it must be true. This statement inserted into the account of the interview allowed a complicated legal manoeuvre by prosecution councel to bring into court the statement against Smith that would otherwise have been considered evidence of an accomplice and ruled inadmissible as evidence. In Mr Callender s statement Mellor inserted a phrase which admits a little bit of damage, but argues that people were only after evidence.
These two instances of verbal evidence meant that both of the alleged ringleaders had to call into question the character of the police it was necessary for the defence to call Mellor a liar.
In a court of law if you call a police officer a liar then the court allows evidence of the defendant s character to be brought up to allow the jury to decide who is most likely to be telling the truth. Mellor s insertion of these two lines into his interviews with Callender and Smith meant that the prosecution would have the advantage of putting the character of these two men on trial. It meant that their previous encounters with the law, whether they had been convicted or acquitted, could be brought into court to discredit them, and that is exactly what happened.
The volume of evidence against them concerned their past involvement in anti-bloodsports groups and the fact that they knew each other a fact which was confirmed by the fact that Callender had received a Christmas card from Smith some years before. Their previous minor brushes with the law were also used to depict them as recurrent law breakers.
Smith was chosen as a ringleader by the police because he was a leading figure in the public debate about ICI s vivisection laboratories. He knew more about ICI than many shareholders, having spent months researching their history. He was often seen around Manchester handing out leaflets about the atrocities of animal experimentation. This was the reason that the police chose to frame him, it was also used as circumstantial evidence against him. Callender was just unfortunate, he had no involvement in the ICI campaign at all, he was framed because he had been an active animal rights campaigner for a long time and was an easy target.
The NALL trial took place almost exactly 12 months after the raid. During that time the ICI campaign was abandoned, other animal rights and liberation groups were asked to lay off ICI until after the trial and the NALL went into terminal decline. NALL policy was to consolidate after a raid, the group would concentrate on fund raising. This policy of winding down would have been appropriate if the raid had been successful and no serious arrests had been made. In this case the policy was inappropriate and clearly encouraged laziness and apathy in the face of a serious political trial.
The arrests, treatment and charges against the NALL defendants was a shock to animal rights campaigners throughout the North West. At a time when groups and individuals were becoming frightened and isolated the NALL rather than attempt to rally the animal rights movement around a defence campaign, discouraged its members and supporters from getting involved in any campaigns during that 12 months. The NALL never seriously took up the challenge of organising a defence campaign and its membership dwindled. After 12 months of concentrating on fund raising the defence fund had just 200, one of the reasons was that the NALL
committee was shaken by the aftermath of the raid, and they feared that should they continue to organise then the police would come back and finish them off.
Following the convictions an ad-hoc ICI action group was established which20 was as funded by local animal rights groups. It produced a broadsheet on behalf of the NALL within two days of the verdicts and contacted supporters both locally and nationally. The action group mailed out to supporters in the North West asking them to attend a NALL general meeting to be held two weeks before the sentencing. At that packed meeting the NALL committee refused to discuss an ICI campaign, the defence fund or even the trial, and merely endorsed the call for a packed court house on the day of sentencing. Undetered by this wasted opportunity the action group continued to produce leaflets and to organise door to door distribution throughout Macclesfield, Knutsford and Alderly Edge, 10,000 leaflets
were distributed and there can be no doubt that the majority of ICI s Alderly Park workforce would have received a leaflet through their own front door. The action group began to expand its campaign and produced leaflets for distribution at ICI plants outside the North West. Extensive fly-posting was also begun and there were plans to stage public meetings.
At this time the ruling clique on the BUAV committee who claimed that they support the activists , were under pressure following their damaging action against the ALF press office. This internal BUAV power struggle was dressed up as a debate between BUAV committee members who claimed to support the liberation leagues and those who claimed to support the Animal Liberation Front. Despite the fact that few-if-any of these people understood the groups they claimed to support, they went out of their way to convince their adopted liberation group how much they needed the BUAV. The political campaigners knew that the liberation groups had great influence in the movement and they were desperate to drag them into the BUAV s internal squabbles. One side in this dispute promised that should they win they would give 50,000 to fund a joint campaign with the NALL against ICI this side won control of the BUAV.
The BUAV s support for the leagues was based on two assumptions, that vocal support for the leagues would gain votes at AGM s and that the existence of strong leagues would gain valuable publicity for the BUAV s Mobilisation campaign.
Their support was not fundamental and as time was to show they had cynically manipulated a rift between the leagues and the ALF to allow themselves the privilege of supporting the moderate activists, i.e. those who do not criticise the parliamentary campaign.
With the new BUAV committee and its promises of support the NALL felt confident enough to attempt to assert its authority over the ICI campaign which had been going on around it and which up till then it had tried to ignore. On top of this the BUAV indicated that as some prominent members of the ICI Action Group were outspoken critics of political campaigning, the NALL would have to ensure these people were not involved in the campaign. The NALL responded by banning action group members from its general meetings, instructing its own members from going out leafleting, and even abandoning its own fortnightly meetings. The action group had never challenged the NALL s authority and after these attacks it collapsed.
The NALL had shown to the BUAV that it was a responsible organisation, but it had shown to what was left of its dwindling membership that it was now doing more harm thar good and when the BUAV failed to fulfil its repeated promise of launching an ICI campaign the NALL finally collapsed. In the last 18 months of its life it had failed to offer anything more than moral support to the defendants and could not even manace to provide a hardship fund for those who had to pay fines and compensation to the court. It had abandoned its own ICI campaign and prevented the formation of another. All this from a group that had the resources, support and experience to launch a major campaign. In the end it was only the
leniency of the judge which prevented the young defendants lives being shattered by long custodial sentences.
The radical BUAV committee that so supported the animal liberation leagues seemed unconcerned if not unaware that the most established league, with five years unique experience of organization and direct action, was about to disappear.
They never bothered sending representatives up North after their power was consolidated at the 1985 AGM, and they never spent a penny on the promised ICI campaign.
The South East Animal Liberation League the fall and fight back
Since its inception in 1980 the NALL had shunned individual support from members of animal rights groups in the South of England. They insisted that they were a regional group and the best way people could support them was by the establishment of their own leagues. From the very early days of the NALL there was an Eastern Animal Liberation League and in 1982 a Western Animal Liberation League emerged, but it was not until the summer of 1983 that the South East Animal Liberation League came into being.
The Essex Animal Liberation group had previously used NALL tactics to stage occupations of laboratories and factory farms, but it was a minor demonstration at Barrodales chicken factory farm-that led to the formation of the SEALL.
The SEALL s first major action was against Wellcome laboratories at Dartford in September 83. This massive research complex was invaded and the rooftop occupied while other activists broke in to offices taking files and photographic evidence. It was the most successful league raid since Babraham, but in retrospect it exposed stark contradictions in the Leagues already dated theory.
Wellcome claimed that they lost over a quarter of a million pounds due to
disruption caused by the raid. However none of the research papers ever surfaced to be used against the laboratory in a campaign. Seventy people were arrested at Wellcome, some of them actually inside the laboratory buildings, most due to their involvement in the rooftop protest. It was nothing short of a miracle that rather than prepare serious criminal charges the police merely applied for the defendants to be bound over to keep the peace. There is no clear reason why the police should behave in this way. It may have been that the Home Office was still assessing t