Yesterday I wrote about animal activists in the United States targeting facilities owned by Huntingdon Life Sciences, a laboratory company that specializes in Phase I safety and toxicity studies of new drugs. In this country the actions against HLS have taken the form of abusive phone calls and picketing. In Great Britain, where the campaign against HLS began, it has degenerated into the worst sort of terrorism that is prompting the nominally pro-animal rights Labor government to seek expanded police powers to stop it.
On Monday, August 28, 2000, fire bombs exploded under the cars of five employees of an HLS research facilities in Cambridgeshire. In at least one case the fire spread and damaged a nearby home where people were sleeping. This was the culmination of a year long campaign of harassment, including death threats, against HLS employees in the UK.
In the wake of the latest bombings, Home Secretary Jack Straw told the BBC that,
We are looking at whether there are changes in legislation that we can take which are being sought by the police to see whether we can strengthen action against these animal rights extremists. The action they have been taking against employees and directors of life science companies has been absolutely preposterous. It is terrible what has happened to some of those employees. These are law abiding people doing a job on behalf of the rest of is. It is worth bearing in mind that many of us ourselves would not be able to lead healthy lives were it not for the pharmaceutical companies being able to test their drugs on animals.
The London Daily Mail did an excellent, if horrifying profile of animal rights activists Greg Avery and Heather James who are the main organizers of the anti-HLS campaign. Avery and James glean the names and addresses of researchers and then publish that information to other animal rights activists. Those who have their names and addresses published can expect a wave of death threats and the risk of physical violence as the five car bombings demonstrated.
The Times UK highlighted the sort of calls researchers receive when it published examples from calls made to HLS by activists. The entire list is worth repeating:
If I saw you in the street, I would stab you in the face
You f—— bitch, you f—— animal torturer, you animal abuser, you f—– bitch.
I hope you get cancer. I hope you get f—— murdered on the way home from work today
To drive the threat of physical violence home, after the recent car bombings somebody sent a circular to HLS staff members homes that read:
Just in case you do not listen to the radio/TV, 14 ‘devices’ were found in Oxford yesterday. The police have ruled out the IRA and believe it to be the Animal Liberation – wonder who they were for and wonder also whether 14 is the total number. Personally I am against violence, especially since innocent people/creatures/are sometimes hurt. Unfortunately other people do not share my view. PS: A question for you — people say your ‘company’ is going down — the question is will you go ‘up’ before it does.
One of the major reasons animal rights terrorism is drawing renewed interest from authorities in the UK is reports that extremist racist groups are beginning to join animal rights organizations and protests. Some neo-Nazi groups in Europe apparently subscribe to Adolf Hitler’s odd dietary views and of course are all for animal rights attacks on things like kosher slaughter of animals. The activists, of course, can’t imagine for the life of them how violent fascists would be attracted to their movement, which just shows how far removed from reality they are. Engage in violence and soon enough you’ll attract those who advocate violent solutions.
The real upshot of this is that although it is nice of the Labor government to finally notice the severity of the problem it has on its hands, in many respects it is directly responsible for the current state of affairs. Straw can say that pharmaceutical companies save our lives all he wants, but when it counted — during the last election cycle — the Labor Party explicitly legitimized the views of radical animal rights activists and promised it would move swiftly to look at banning all animal testing in the UK.
Either Labor was outright lying or simply ignorant (or based on their other actions in power, both), but it never followed through on its promises and now, after spending all this time appeasing radical extremists, it is shocked when they take matters into their own hands.
Along with changes in the law, the Labor Party owes an apology to the research community for encouraging this nonsense in the first place.
Sources:
Neo-nazis join animal rights groups. Daniel Foggo, The Daily Telegraph (UK), September 3, 2000.
UK to protect biotech researchers, labs against protestors. Reuters, September 1, 2000.
Animal rights extremists targeted. The BBC, August 30, 2000.
‘You torturer, I hope you get cancer’. The Times UK, September 5, 2000.
Zealots of the animal rights pack revealed. Gordon Rayner, Daily Mail (London), September 2, 2000.
Firebomb terror of animal research scientist. Valerie Elliott, The Times (UK), September 5, 2000.