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Grr! Graphics for Animal LiberationHow to Do Animal Rights -
And Win the War on Animals
Contents
About
Chapter 1
Introduction to Doing Animal Rights
1. The Broad Setting
2. Mass Extinction
3. The Animal Holocaust
Chapter 2
Know Your Animal Ethics & Animal Rights
1. Animal Ethics
BackgroundEthicsImportance of Animal EthicsGlossaryNow a Biff From HistoryHow to Proceed?Ethical TheoriesEthical Theories ComparedChoosing an Ethical TheoryDo Philosophical Ideas Work?2. Animal Rights
What are Animal Rights?Background to Animal RightsMajor Dates for RightsAnimal Rights TheoryFundamental Animal Ethical PositionsVariations on Animal RightsAre Rights a Cure-all?Universal Declaration on AnimalsArguments For & Against Animal Rights3. Comparing Animal Philosophies
Animal Ethics vs Animal RightsAnimal Rights vs Animal WelfareAnimal Rights vs ConservationDeep EcologyConclusion
Chapter 3
Campaigning Methods for Animal Rights
1. Introduction
2. Campaigning
Where to Begin?Keeping GoingTen Essential Campaigning TipsMore Tips3. Civil Disobedience
What Is Civil DisobedienceCivil Disobedience & Animal RightsArguments For & Against Civil Disobedience4. Direct Action
What is Direct Action?Examples of Animal Rights Direct ActionIndividual vs Mass Direct ActionSea Shepherd Conservation SocietyStop Huntingdon Animal CrueltyThe Battle of BrightlingseaInset: Background to BrightlingseaComparing Direct ActionsDirect Action vs Civil DisobedienceEfficacy of Direct Action5. Action Planning
What is an Action Plan?Why an Action Plan?Who Should Produce the Action Plan?Before You BeginDistinguish Operations From AdministrationsCreating Your Action PlanYou Should Be SmartYou Should Also SWOTMake It HappenReview ItA Simple Action Plan Template6. Lobbying
Who Can Lobby?What & Whom to LobbyStart LobbyingHow to LobbyLobbying Techniques7. Picketing
What is Picketing?AR Picketing is Like Industrial PicketingHow to Picket8. Starting a Group
What to Do?Name & LogoFinding MembersA Constitution?The Group CommitteeGroup Success Or FailureNewslettersFundraising9. Publicity
10. LeafletingDesignPrintingDistributionPosters & PlacardsOther Media11.News MediaMedia TipsA Feature Article?The Letters PageNews ReleaseThe RadioRadio Tips12. InternetThe WebEmailCreate Your Own Web SiteDesigning Your Web SiteCapturing ViewersDiscussion Boards
Chapter 4
Activities for Animal Rights
1. Undercover Investigator
2. Video Activist
3. Animal Friendly Traveller
4. Preacher
5. Animal Rescuer
6. Investigative Reporter
7. Media Watcher
8. Philosopher
9. Flyer
10. Personal Activist
11. Animal Lawyer
12. Politician
13. Prisoner Supporter
14. Public & School Speaker
15. Aerial Snooper
16. Scientific Investigator
17. Solo Information Worker
18. Street Theatre Actor
19. Teacher
20. Voluntary Worker Abroad
Chapter 5
The Law & Animal Rights
1. Terrorism
BackgroundTerrorism DefinedAnimal Extremism & TerrorismDoes AR Extremism Work in Practice?2. Violence or Nonviolence?
Can We Justify Violence?Kinds of ViolenceViews For & Against ViolenceIs Violence Efficacious?Conclusion3. The Law - US & Britain
United StatesFBI vs ExtremistsBritainExtremist TacticsEstablishment Fights Back4. Police Arrest
In the Street & At Your DoorAt the Police StationYour TacticsKnow Your RightsRemaining SilentYour LawyerSuing the Police
Chapter 6
Assorted Animal Rights Activists
1. Steven Best
2. John Lawrence
3. Andrew Linzey
4. Richard Martin
5. The McLibel Two
6. Ingrid Newkirk
7. Jill Phipps
8. Henry Salt
9. Henry Spira
10. Peter Singer
11. Tom Regan
12. Richard D Ryder
Chapter 7
Animal Numbers Raised & Killed
1. Summary
2. Chickens
3. Pigs
4. Beef Cattle
5. Fish
6. Meat Consumption
7. Fur-bearers
8. Experimental Animals
Chapter 8. Extras!
1. Mutilations of Farm Animals
2. The Five Freedoms
3. Painism
4. The Forgotten Fur
5. The Golden Rule
6. Human Overpopulation
7. Climate Change
8. Think Like an Animal
Appendix 1
World Scientists' Warning to Humanity.
Appendix 2
Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare.
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And Win the War on Animals
"In moral terms, the granting of rights to animals leads to the conclusion that direct action in their defence is not only permissible but also a moral duty, although whether this justifies some of the more extreme actions involving violence is an open question." Robert Garner (1)
What is Direct Action?
Direct action is activity that fights for a cause dynamically and directly for immediate change. You can view direct action as a strong form of civil disobedience with a capacity for acting illegally. Activists employing direct action aim to create a situation whereby their opponents have to yield significant concessions to the activists' cause. Direct action campaigners often tend to disown the methods of the less dramatic and slower mainstream who advance social change through education and legislative procedures.
Among the issues in addition to animal rights in which direct action is employed are environmental protection, anti-globalisation, nuclear disarmament and asylum-seeker support. Direct action has been acted out in labour disputes in Europe and North America since the 19th century and particularly in the 20th century by workers challenging government and big employers for social rights and political power. Strikes, boycotts, picketing, sit-ins, trespass and mass occupation of land or buildings, property damage and sabotage are some of the tools of direct action, with a measure of agitation, sometimes even violence by the more hot headed activists. But employers might also use direct action against activists, like lockouts and mass dismissal of workers. You might say that governments have also used direct action in the form of mass fines, mass arrest and mass imprisonment.
Examples of Animal Rights Direct Action
Direct action on animal users by the more excessive or illegally inclined animal rights activists include:
However, direct action need not necessarily be illegal. Good examples are the work of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the Battle of Brightlingsea (more below), the disruption of animal hunts (see Hunt Sabbing in Chapter 3. Civil Disobedience) and assailing company reputations over the exploitation of animals and nature. One such company assault culminated in the famous case of McDonald's fast food chain with the celebrated McLibel Two (Chapter 6: The McLibel Two). The simple fear of being the target of direct action or worse can be enough to make some companies take a more animal-friendly approach to their trading (more below).
Without going into the morality of illegal direct action a criticism can be made about it. Unless an action is methodical and long-term against a particular target, such as with the intention of causing financial ruin and closure of a company, it may bee seen buy many of the public as wanton vandalism. It is debatable whether such actions have value for animal rights, although they might publicise the cause and stimulate discussion.
Individual vs Mass Direct Action
Sustained direct action needs a certain amount of organisation and long-term effort to be effective. However, you do not need to be a big group or a mass of citizenry to employ direct action. One activist with a bit of backing can be effective, as demonstrated by Henry Spira (see Chapter 6: Assorted Animal Activists). Another example is the Rambo affair. The pilot of an airliner at London airport in 2000 would not take off when one of the passengers refused to sit down. The passenger was a member of an activist group protesting the deportation of asylum-seekers from Britain. The pilot only took off when the activist and the object of the action, a deported asylum-seeker, together left the plane. (2) The asylum-seeker was Salim Rambo, a 23-year-old political activist from the Democratic Republic of Congo (Zaire), who said he would be killed if he returned to his country of origin. According to later reports, Rambo was granted asylum in Britain.
Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
Sea Shepherd is a seafaring activist organisation based in the United States, operating three ships and a variety of boats. The society's name comes from its first ship, a trawler bought in Britain and renamed the Sea Shepherd. The society engages in direct action to save marine wildlife, especially whales, dolphins, seals and turtles. Its mission is to execute international maritime laws and agreements meant to protect sea species and the marine environment.
Among other international treaties that Sea Shepherd invokes in the course of their work is the United Nations World Charter for Nature (1982). The Charter mandates individuals to enforce international conservation laws. In particular, under section 21 (c) and (e):
States and, to the extent they are able, other public authorities, international organizations, individuals, groups and corporations shall:
(c) Implement the applicable international legal provisions for the conservation of nature and the protection of the environment.
(e) Safeguard and conserve nature in areas beyond national jurisdiction.
And section 24:
Each person has a duty to act in accordance with the provisions of the present Charter, acting individually, in association with others or through participation in the political process, each person shall strive to ensure that the objectives and requirements of the present Charter are met.
A particular aim of Sea Shepherd, and the one for which it is best known, is halting illegal whaling. Sea Shepherd's angle is not to protest against whaling as such but to fight illegal whaling operations. Flying a black Jolly Roger they chase and obstruct whalers from illegally harpooning whales, they ram their adversaries' ships on the high seas and sink them in harbour. The organisation's small fleet of ships has battled with whalers from Spain, Iceland, Norway, Japan and other nations. The sea-going activists bring back film of illegal killing of whales to show on television around the world to increase public knowledge of marine issues and the carnage people do on sea animals.
Policing the seas and oceans of the world has its risks. While documenting illegal whaling off Siberia in Soviet territorial waters in 1981 they were pursued by an aggressive Soviet warship. And in 1994 they were fired on by a Norwegian Navy destroyer that lopped depth charges under their hull and rammed them.
Paul Watson, a Canadian and co-founder of Greenpeace, set up sea Shepherd in 1977. Watson left Greenpeace to be more direct and confrontational in his actions. His radical property-destruction method of ramming and sinking illegal whalers shows that, always taking maximum care, you can sometimes use violent action without endangering human life. Watson is always mindful of the welfare of his and the whaling ships' crews. Sea Shepherd claim they have never caused or taken an injury.
Watson and his colleagues have inflamed their opponents and been incarcerated and sued for crimes on the high seas. But all attempts to lock them up permanently have failed. Sea Shepherd justify their actions by claiming that they always act legally within the law. They say that the ships they sink are breaking international law by hunting endangered whales and as such are pirates. Sea Shepherd's critics claim the organisation harasses legal harvesting of the sea's resources and call Sea Shepherd crews pirates and eco-terrorists. Indeed, two of Sea Shepherd's ships have been struck off shipping registers, which means they can be boarded and captured as pirate outlaws.
On the up side, Sea Shepherd has saved the lives of many whales and publicised the plight of whales around the globe. Sea Shepherd says they are the "most aggressive and most successful whale-saving organization in the world" and in 2000 Time Magazine named Watson an Environmental Hero of the 20th Century.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) is an ongoing campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences, a company north of London with an important branch in New Jersey, that carries out tests on animals. Huntingdon is said to be Europe's largest animal testing laboratory and uses cats, dogs and primates, with the majority animals being rodents. Substances like pesticides, drugs and domestic and industrial chemicals are tested on the animals to assess their safety for human use. SHAC was set up in 1999 by seasoned British animal rights activists Greg Avery and Heather James after activists at the Huntingdon laboratory (secretly working for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) shot video of animals being abused. SHAC and its activities against Huntingdon have since spread to Europe and the United States.
SHAC say they do not support violence of any kind. However, SHAC's methods are intimidation, harassment and property damage. Targets are Huntingdon itself plus the company's shareholders and business associates, including suppliers, insurers and bankers. SHAC also strikes out at Huntingdon's employees and their families. Thus SHAC targets a wide network of primary targets (Huntingdon), secondary targets (Huntingdon's business associates) and tertiary targets (families and investors). SHAC wants to show all of them that any kind of direct or indirect involvement in animal abuse is a bad investment. (For more about SHAC tactics see Chapter 5: The Law - United States and Britain, under Britain.)
Because of the fear of attack by SHAC supporters the results so far are that:
The Battle of Brightlingsea
The above two examples of direct action were organised and planned. But this example is one of spontaneous action by ordinary residents of a small town, Brightlingsea.
Brightlingsea, on Britain's North Sea coast, is hardly on the map, population less than 50,000. But in the early 1990's the anger of animal rights campaigners was growing at the apathy of politicians to ban live animal export (see The Background, below). Campaigners were demonstrating at the points where animals were being exported, such as Coventry airport and the sea ports at Dover, King’s Lynn, Plymouth and other towns. Patience was running out. Brightlingsea became a flashpoint.
Livestock raisers get better payment for stock sold alive. For the animals this means transportation over long distances. The US live animal export market (excluding fish) is worth about $700 million annually. But Australia is the biggest live animal exporter (about A$1.8 billion annually), transporting about 6,000,000 sheep, 850,000 cattle, 100,000 goats per year, mostly for slaughter in other countries. Voyages for Australian livestock take as long as three months at sea in specially adapted freighters (below). Animals are stacked in tiers, each ship loaded with tens of thousands of animals, to markets in Mexico, the Middle East, south-east Asia and Japan.  About three million live animals are transported across Europe every year on journeys that can take days. Britain exports over half a million live lambs, sheep and pigs a year. Attempts through the legal system to ban the export of live animals failed after a court ruled that ports cannot refuse to take live animals. In the 1990's sea and air ports in Britain become centres for animal activists fighting on behalf of the exported animals. |
At Brightlingsea the transport trucks, loaded three tiers high with sheep, had to pass through the town's narrow streets to reach the port. Some local residents turned out spontaneously to stand in front of the trucks to impede them. The confrontation started in January 1995 and no one foresaw that it would develop into a battle lasting nine months. The residents of a town turning out for animals is an almost singular development in animal rights. Among the people were ordinary workers, housewives, school children and grannies, who had never been on a demonstration before.More transport trucks rolled through the town and more residents turned out to block them. Residents took to the streets innocently believing that the police would turn the animal transports back. However, the transporters were prepared and over a hundred police in riot gear arrived to escort the trucks through the town. Protesters daily confronted the transport convoys from now on and the police always turned out in force to clear a way to the port. By February the animals were being transported to the port every day. The issue drew in protesters from much further afield. On some days up to 2,000 people were lining the streets to heckle and shake their fists at the transport drivers.
Protesters and police tried to avoid confrontation with each other but tension was always in the air as the police pushed the convoys forward to the port no matter what the obstruction. One night some protesters managed to drive a 60-seater bus to the gates of the port where they removed the wheels and handcuffed themselves to it.
Eventually the police let the protesters walk with the trucks to the gates of the port. Protesters ahead of the trucks walked slowly to make the exporters miss the high tide the ferry at the wharf had to catch to sail out to sea. The 'Sea Sabs', a few saboteurs in a dinghy, tried blocking the route of the ferry, but two police motor launches saw them off.
Some people voiced fears for safety as protesters press up against the transports in the narrow Brightlingsea streets. Protesters threw themselves down in front of the trucks and held a sit-down in the road. The police forced back any protesters who tried to get in the way and warned them of arrest. People become casualties in the pushing and were tended by Red Cross medics on hand at the scene. The police arrested many people, even passers-by, and bundled them into vans to the police station at the nearest large town, where activists chanted and waved banners outside the building.
During the Brightlingsea protests activists were carrying out actions at other air and sea ports around Britain. Transports were taking calves to Coventry Airport for the European veal industry and local animal rights campaigner Jill Phipps (1964 - 1995) was crushed to death under a truck she tried to hinder (see Chapter 6: Jill Phipps). The next day the Brightlingsea protesters held a candle-light vigil for her.
The final convoy left Brightlingsea towards the end of October. In nine months 250,000 animals were exported through the town and 52 sheep died at the port. The Red Cross treated more than 100 protester casualties. The police made nearly 600 arrests and received a thousand complaints against them. The Brightlingsea protesters did not succeed in stopping a single one of the 150 or so convoys. But the cost of exporting the animals in the face of active protest was too expensive and ceased. The protesters had won. Veal calf exports from Coventry Airport, where Jill Phipps died, also soon closed down when the firm flying out the calves went bankrupt.
Comparing Direct Actions
The examples of Sea Shepherd, SHAC and the Battle of Brightlingsea demonstrate that effective direct action can be organised (Sea Shepherd and SHAC) or spontaneous (Brightlingsea), with legal standing (Sea Shepherd), mainly law abiding (Brightlingsea), or pressing against the law and over stepping it (SHAC and Brightlingsea). And these three examples of direct action share a common motif : potential financial ruin for the targeted companies. Their message for companies may be that companies could face ruin if they annoy enough people who decide to act against them in a concerted fashion. Citizens, not just companies, brandish power.
Direct Action vs Civil Disobedience
Where is the border between direct action and civil disobedience? Civil disobedience tends to be peaceful and within the law, although not inevitably so. Direct action is disposed to be stormy, could be violent, and some activists of a militant mind might decide to cross the line into illegal activity. Some law enforcement agencies, notably the FBI, choose the view that when your direct action includes property damage you become a terrorist. But some direct action proponents argue that violence relates directly to living beings only; property damage is sabotage, not terrorism, because you cannot scare or terrify property.
So the methods of civil disobedience, direct action and terrorism shade into each other. When direct action is peaceful it tends towards civil disobedience but when it is violent it tends towards terrorism. Critics of direct action, like the FBI, are most vociferous when actions tend towards the terrorism end of the scale. Interestingly, the FBI do not trouble Sea Shepherd, but hound SHAC. Perhaps this is because the people at Sea Shepherd cleverly harness the law to their cause. SHAC can only fall back on moral justification - and additionally goes against vested American economic interests.
For a discussion and criticism about violence see Chapter 5 under Violence or Nonviolence.
Efficacy of Direct Action
Some opponents of direct action claim that it is ineffective or at best just an annoyance, particularly when it is illegal or violent. However, direct action clearly can work and sometimes work well. No business executives worth their salt want their company to be a target. Just the idea of being targeted is sufficient for sensible thinking companies to take steps to forestall a direct action attack.
What sort of direct action would send shivers up and down the spine of company executives? Product contamination is a style of attack occasionally used by animal rights activists - but also by the odd individual who is out to make money from blackmail. In one contamination occurrence shopkeepers throughout New South Wales withdrew tens of thousands of Mars and Snickers chocolate bars after an "extortion threat" against the manufacturer suggested that seven bars were deliberately contaminated with a poison. (3) There was no mention of whether this was related to animal rights, environmentalism or just to a criminal wanting a ransom. In another contamination event retailers across Britain cleared Savlon skin cream from their shops after animal rights activists claimed to have poisoned the product. (4) The Swiss based manufacturer of this product, Novartis, was believed to be a client of the animal testing laboratory Huntingdon Life Sciences.
Contamination perpetrators corrupt a few samples of a retail brand, such as food, drink or lotion, with something harmful like poison or broken glass, then inform the manufacturer or newspapers what they have done. This leaves the manufacturer and the product's retailers with no choice but to withdraw the stock from sale, not knowing the specific batch that was tainted. Some animal activists pick salt as a contaminant as it does the job without making anyone ill. But merely a hoax contamination, given credence by sending actually contaminated samples to the press, is sufficient for a product to be withdrawn.
How can companies neutralise a problem like product contamination? Companies, by anticipating people's sensitivity and by taking preventative measures to reduce the risk of being struck, may manage to neutralise a problem before it is upon them. Companies could draw up a relevant ethical code of practice, publish it as widely as possible and be seen to live up to it. Four animal-friendly and nature-friendly areas are:
This book, How To Do Animal Rights, is not just useful for animal activists - company executives should heed it!
References
(1) Garner, Robert. Animals, Politics And Morality. Polity Press. 1993:239.
(2) Guardian, 26 July 2000.
(3) Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2 July 2005.
(4) Daily Mail, 30 August 2007.
| How to Do Animal Rights - And Win the War on Animals. First published on the Web: April 2008. © Roger (Ben) Panaman, April 2008. All rights reserved. |