There’s a good independent account of Saturday’s demos on Kieren McCarthy’s Sunday blog entry.
Kieren has commented in an intelligent way on this debate for sometime and makes valid, useful points on both sides.
His unbiased account of the demonstrations tallies with that given by the media.
[About Pro-Test] The level of speech was high. People were intelligent, passionate and coherent… [SPEAK] also expressed [themselves] passionately. But, objectively, it has to be said a high proportion of the Speak protestors were verbally aggressive and abusive where Pro-Test marchers simply weren’t.
… The march also highlighted the other differences. Pro-Test’s march was all about information and positive benefits; Speak’s was all about anger and secrets. I recorded at various points during the day and the tone and words of protestors on both sides were immediately apparent. Anger one side; reason the other. I’ll do a podcast at some point soon.
Kieren McCarthy, Oxford’s day of protests - animal rights and human wrongs
26th Feb 2006
I’ll be interested to hear the podcast – that will be incontrovertible evidence of the respective demeanours of the demos and should quash SPEAK’s claims that
As always however the animal rights protestors remained disciplined… The animal rights movement is the voice of reason
SPEAK, 25th Feb 2006
As well as aural evidence, Keiren gathered some images of the day (unsurprising for a photographer!)
… When photographing, you always try to seek out interesting looking people. What struck me about the two marches though was how unpleasant Speak marchers were in comparison to Pro-Test. When you saw someone who was on the Speak march who didn’t look threatening, they stood out. The opposite was true with the other march.
Kieren McCarthy, Oxford’s day of protests - animal rights and human wrongs
26th Feb 2006
Seeing the many, many accounts of the day (see The Daily Telegraph for a particularly good article by Jim White and today’s fantastic Guardian comment from Timothy Garton Ash, but all the Sunday (26th) papers had supportive articles after the demos) by numerous independent, uninvolved people has confirmed something RDS has known for sometime:
If nothing else, Pro-Test will have shone much-needed light on the animal rights protestors. For a group purporting to be interested in helping animals, in the wider duty of care owed by humans to animals, they are an incredibly unsympathetic bunch.
Kieren McCarthy, Oxford’s day of protests - animal rights and human wrongs
26th Feb 2006
<Wrap up...>
