I’d be interested to know what has prompted the toning down of SPEAK’s latest suggestion that their members phone up to complain about an Oxford University department Christmas party.
Recently, SPEAK have incited two of these phone-ins. The first was aggressive and self-aggrandising:
SPEAK has insisted from the outset of this campaign that we plan to highlight exactly the sort of people that work inside the animal labs at Oxford. We believe that those companies dealing with such people have a right to know exactly who they are doing business with in order for them to make an informed decision. Animal abuse at the university exists because of the lies told by those that work in those departments torturing animals and animal abuse will continue as long as such people are allowed to peddle their lies. SPEAK will never allow those lies to go unchallenged despite the best attempts by Oxford University to muzzle us in the Courts.
We also said: nothing Oxford University does will escape our attention and we meant it!
This mini-campaign was a failure: according to the Oxford Mail the party went ahead as planned and although four protestors were allowed to continue until 9pm, they left by 7:30pm. That’s commitment for you!
The landlord should be commended for his refusal to be cowed;
The landlord of the pub, who asked not to be named, said he had received around a dozen threatening or obscene phonecalls during the day.
He did not give details about the nature of them but said they were not pleasant.
He said: “I had to take the phone off the hook - it was intimidation. The animal rights protestors were at the top of the alley, challenging me to come outside.
Oxford Mail, 8th December 2005
Despite the utter failure of this tactic, SPEAK had another call to arms (well, call to phones) about a second Christmas Party. This one was notably less aggressive, and with much stronger weasel words;
Please do keep any calls polite, the intention of any communication should be to inform those working at this establishment exactly who they will be serving on the 16th December, nothing more.
They almost sound genuine – perhaps someone has realised that inciting malicious communications masquerading as ‘polite phone calls’ may now be a serious criminal offence?
