An article in IndyMedia (’A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues’) caught my eye:

ARE NETCU WASTING THEIR TIME? Report into political policing

I had to read it several times to get what I think is the gist; that the UK’s national police unit (NETCU) that coordinates control of domestic extremism, including animal rights extremism - and other such police activity around the world - has not stopped protests and attacks.

Well NETCU’s job is not to stop protest, as long as it’s legitmate. The provisions of UK’s Serious and Organised Crime Act that apply to animal right extremism are not there to stop legal protest. The law has to be broken for the Act to be used. As an example see what it covers in this video link.

NETCU’s job is to deal with illegal activities. This IndyMedia article euphemistically calls this

Actions by those who opt to work by night ....

So all this led me to ask what are IndyMedia editorial guidelines. They ‘hide’ posts that include:

Discrimination: posts using language, imagery, or other forms of communication promoting racism, fascism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia or any other form of discrimination.

So it seems Indymedia thinks all these -isms are not OK, but it is OK to allow posts that implicity endorse serious intimidation and violence against people involved in biomedical research, as long as posts include, as this one had, statements such as:

Please note that this report is for reading purposes only and was not produced to encourage or incite anyone to break the law

Some of you may remember the two PETA employees who were arrested and charged for killing adoptable animals they obtained under false pretences from animal shelters (see Latest on PeTA killings, PeTA - animal killers, and PeTA = hypocritical bull***t, say Penn & Teller)

Over a year on the trial is now finally underway, and the defendants are each charged with:
• 21 counts of Federal Animal Cruelty (illegally euthanizing animal with chemicals they were not licensed to use)
• 7 counts of Littering (dumping the carcasses of the animals they killed)
• 3 counts of Obtaining Property by False Pretences (lying to animals shelters, saying they would find the animals good homes)

Seemingly in a parallel universe: PETA recently ran an advertising campaign juxtaposing images of factory farming with those of Nazi death camps; and frequently claim that animal experimentation is morally equivalent to the Nazi medical experimentation in concentration camps (see OxGoss - Nazi medical experiments and animal research for the arguments).

Now, equating highly regulated, humane and careful research (aimed at alleviating human pain and suffering) with torturous irrational rubbish of no medical or scientific benefit is pretty bloody offensive...

The animal rights campaign group opposing the Oxford Research Centre, known as SPEAK, spend much of their time hunting down and identifying targets – both individuals and organisations – who have some involvement with the University.  They ask their supporters to write and inform such organisations about Oxford University’s ‘appalling animal research history’. Not surprisingly, the individuals and organisations involved get plenty of threatening, abusive or unpleasant letters sent by activists who do not divulge their identity.

SPEAK are always complaining about the secrecy which they allege surrounds animal research, but boast constantly that no one can hide from them.

Strangely, when it comes to their own membership, they take a rather different view. SPEAK outline on their website how they have gone to great lengths to protect their list of members, even going so far as to place the list outside of the UK so that it does not fall within legal jurisdiction in this country.

More demoralisation for SHAC and great news for us good guys and gals, shares in Life Science Research Inc, Hunting Life Science’s Parent Company have begun to be traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

A previous attempt in 2005 was stymied after threats to the Exchange by Animal Rights Extremists led to the idea being shelved. At the time this seemed to massively inflate the power of the extremists, after all this was a city that had lived through 9/11, but that cave in has now been overturned. It’s now eight years since SHAC announced that HLS would not last more than two years - we are still counting Mr Avery.

The BBC 10 o’clock news on 7th December showed how media coverage of the issue of the use of animals in research has moved on. A report on the Northwick Park drug trial was followed by a report on the conviction of an animal rights bomber

First of all what about the drug trial? The official report focused on what it should; learning from problems and the impact on the volunteer who was affected.  We certainly should learn from this episode, just because things go right most of the time does not mean we cannot learn and change. However animal testing abolitionist groups continue to say that the animal tests failed, this shows a general failure, and all animal testing should be stopped. An example from the BUAV:

Oxford University has won a ruling that the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) press officer, Robin Webb, should be bound by an injunction made by Oxford Crown Court banning certain protests. The injunction provides Oxford University and its students, staff, contractors and suppliers with much needed legal protection from animal rights intimidation, harassment and abuse.

The judge ruled that Mr Webb is a propagandist and not a journalist and that he made a ‘conscious contribution to the fear sought to be exercised by the ALF and associated groupings upon the University of Oxford’. The Guardian website reported that the judge ruled that the ALF press office is a vital part of the ALF’s strategy and that one of the key weapons of this movement is fear.

The court was shown video evidence from a Dispatches documentary from 1998 in which Webb explained how to make incendiary devices. It was high time that the ALF’s tactical claim, that it does not exist as a group and therefore cannot be bound by the injunction, was dismissed. The judge said that the ALF was a ‘coherent organisation which could therefore be represented in legal action’.

This ruling is very encouraging and should prevent similar extremist organisations from using such legal tricks in trying to create a climate of fear and intimidation. Organisations like the ALF are not outside the law and their supporters are responsible for their actions to the courts.

At a joint BUAV/Muslim Council of Britain event on extremism at this year Labour Party Conference in Manchester it was interesting to see certain elements of the animal rights movement vying for the limelight.

Both of these organisations - although they have supporters from very different backgrounds - have to deal with similar problems including how to tackle extremism amongst their members. Extremists in general share common views: they have an ideological world view, they strongly believe in conspiracy theories and they reject the democratic process of politics. And of course every extremist group is media aware and loves publicity stunts.

At the beginning of this particular meeting an animal rights activist - clad symbolically in a black cloak - disrupted proceedings by shouting ‘why should we stop direct action when we are so successful with it.’ Hmm … honest enough you may think but later I heard him defending privately the ‘shooting of Lord Sainsbury or Colin Blakemore’. This kind of direct action seems to imply a very particular brand of insight - BUAV is an organisation on their side!  BUAV and other animal rights organisations are desperate to repair the damage done to their image by detrimental acts by such extremist activists.

An old report and a recent diary alert by animal rights group SPEAK show that numbers at their demo on 22 April this year are subject to an annual inflation rate of at least 50%. The very few press reports immediately after the event suggested that about 1,000 turned up; not 1,200 as SPEAK reported then, or 1,500 as they now have it. Maybe they just can’t add up.

Approximately 1200 animal rights campaigners massed in Oxford city centre as a part of the ongoing and successful campaign against Oxford University’s planned animal torture lab and to mark World Day for Laboratory Animals. April report.

And despite all this, the campaign has continued and grown. In April this year 1,500 protesters marched through the streets of Oxford to oppose the lab and support the campaign. September report.

How long before they say their April 2006 demo attracted 2,000 protesters?

The sentencing of Joseph Harris for three years after pleading guilty to three charges of animal rights related criminal damage is to be welcomed. Harris is now the first person to be convicted under the Serious and Organised Crime Act, brought in by the Government last July to tackle harassment and threats from animal rights extremists - as described on the BBC News website.

What are more than a little perplexing are Harris’s justifications for his actions. Harris was apparently a doctor of molecular biology who had been working on a treatment for pancreatic cancer at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham. His lawyers stated that his girlfriend had threatened to dump him because his research was leading him to the point where he was going to have to test his findings on animals, and that he found himself facing a moral dilemma because of his beliefs.

If one takes these surreal explanations as justification, then it’s clearly open season for anyone who doesn’t like their work or fears their lover’s moods to trash property and threaten people. If Harris didn’t like what he was doing, then there were plenty of jobs elsewhere.

Harris’s warped moral stance needs some serious attention; luckily he now has a lot of time on his hands to contemplate it.

Three of the 6 SHAC USA activists were sentenced (all six were convicted some months ago) of using their web site to incite threats and harassment against Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in the US, as reported in Science magazine. It’s great to see that intimidatory, violent and often illegal behavior will not be tolerated either in the USA or the UK. Many animal rights extremists have seen the USA as some bolt hole or safe haven for their activities, believing that the US authorities would pay them little heed. The judgments handed out by the federal jury in Trenton New Jersey this week should be a wake up call that there are no free lunches, vegan or not, boys and girls.

It’s been a year since the Halls announced that they would close Darley Oaks, and the past 12 months have witnessed many changes for the better as discussed in an article by Stephen Pincock, ‘Research winning war with extremists, says group’, The Scientist, 23rd August 2006.

As with many online articles, comments may be submitted and I was bored by the same old drivel being spouted by the same old people: Andre Menache (Animal Aid, humiliated on the Oxford Gossip chat forum); Chris Pedler (British Anti-Vivisection Association); Pat Rattigan (British Anti-Vivisection Association as well as an HIV, Sept 11, and Moon Landings sceptic according to his website).  As usual all made false claims about the scientific validity of animal research and other unsupported statements:

When I first saw the story in The Sun ‘Rabbit flu was revenge’ I thought it must be a sick joke. For a start, I’d heard of bird flu but not rabbit flu. But I checked and found the sad news on BBC Online that a young farmer had indeed died from so-called rabbit flu (caused by a bacterium called Pasteurella multocida) earlier this month. The sick twist to this story is that, according to today’s Sun report, animal rights extremists have been tormenting the young man’s distressed parents with phone calls telling them his death was ‘the rabbit’s revenge’ (they claimed he’d been culling rabbits). How low can they go?

The disease, also known as pasteurellosis, is apparently common in cats and dogs, but it is quite uncommon for it to pass to humans (about 400 cases a year recorded in the UK). According to the Health Protection Agency it is treatable with antibiotics and fatalities are extremely rare. In this case it developed into a fatal septicaemia. I assume the young farmer, John Freeman, did not get the antibiotics that would have saved him, or was treated too late. Ironic really, considering that all antibiotics, from streptomycin and penicillin onwards, have been developed and tested using animals.

Brendan O’Neill has written an incisive and mostly thoughtful article about animal rights extremism in spiked-online. He points out, rightly, that the bunch of thugs and morons who carry out direct action in the name of animal rights are far from genuine terrorists.

There is much in this article that we would agree with. The fear of animal rights extremism has induced a paralysis in the scientific community that goes well beyond the reality of the threat. There is simply no way that a handful of extremists can target all the hundreds of institutions and thousands of people involved in animal research in the UK at once. If we all spoke out together, we could drown out the tacit support the extremists get from the antivivisectionists, through their distorted and misleading accounts of animal research. This would accelerate the marginalisation of both antivivisectionist activists and extremists.

Today it is exactly six months since the ALF published the chilling message that ‘Anyone linked in any way to Oxford University …is now a major target of the ALF.’

Many people including Oxford lecturers and students were angered by these threats and the media unambiguously condemned them.

An Oxford University spokeswoman said, ‘It is of great concern that a small minority is willing to use intimidation, harassment and threats of violence as part of their indiscriminate campaign of intimidation and criminal activity.’ So what has actually happened in the last six months in Oxford?

In February a group of animal activists entered the grounds of St Anne’s College with placards refusing to leave, until several porters blocked other entrance routes and escorted the protestors off the premises. Animal rights group SPEAK told their supporters in May to be ‘creative and unpredictable’ in their protests. In March a telecom mast of ‘Oxford supporter Vodafone’ was subjected minor damage. But luckily not a single student or lecturer got intimidated. It is worth noting that Robin Webb on Channel 4 News publicly back-tracked on threats against students.

Oxford University has been successful so far in condemning animal rights extremism: on 26 May the university was granted an extension to its existing injunction against animal rights activists. An exclusion zone around the site of the biomedical research centre is to be enlarged. The High Court also widened an order to protect staff, students and contractors from harassment by some protesters.

But it’s not just the university taking a pro-active stance. Many students, scientists and members of the general public have been engaging in fighting back against animal rights extremism. The media coverage strongly condemns any form of violent animal rights extremism. We should not forget that the last two Pro-Test marches were extremely successful: both attracted hundreds in support of the research facility, opposed only by a small number of anti-lab demonstrators. The general mood seems to be ever more in favour of carefully regulated animal research. 

The campaign group SPEAK, which opposes the new research centre at Oxford University, has said it will disclose where the builders working on the site are being housed, as reported in the Times.

We wonder what possible purpose this could have apart from encouraging harassment and intimidation of the workers by animal rights extremists.

SPEAK are increasingly looking like a bunch of stalkers. They have lost the arguments about the medical benefits of animal research, and are becoming increasingly unpopular in Oxford City centre. Perhaps there is little else left for them.