I’ve been looking further into the animal rights protests taking place in Oxford over the new animal holding centre the university is building in the heart of the city, and have learnt some interesting, and some disturbing things.
More than anything it looks as though trouble is brewing. Thames Valley Police has applied for and received new funding for Operation Rumble – the programme it set up in 2004 following a spate of attacks on building constructors working on the new buildings.
Operation Rumble will now be run by a special unit dedicated to dealing with animal rights protestor threat. According to the police, the operation “investigates crime, provides visible policing to ensure any protests are safe and lawful and offers reassurance and guidance to victims or potential victims”.
The reality is that the violent Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, has set its sights on Oxford and the police are hoping to shut them down.
Earlier this month, the ALF trashed the outside of offices owned by Oxford Architects, just outside the ring road, on the shaky premise that it is doing work for Oxford University and the university is building the holding centre.
According to an anonymous post on the Direction Action website, which covers actions by the loose arms of the ALF across the world, the vandals spray-painted messages on the architect’s garage doors and walls, and attacked a Mercedes there, slashing its tyres, pouring paint on it and glueing the locks.
But the police are right to be concerned if the post is to be taken seriously – which it most likely is. It reads: “This is just the beginning of our campaign of devastation against ANYONE linked in ANY way to Oxford University. Every individual and business that works for the University as a whole is now a major target of the ALF.”
What they are effectively saying is that they are here to create as much disturbance as possible and they will attack whatever they can get their hands on. This is no idle threat either. On 4 July last year, the same group set fire to one of the university’s boat houses. The whole building was gutted. It caused £200,000 of damage.
According to another post on the ALF website on 23 September, incendiary devices were planted in an unoccupied house in Oxford owned by Christchurch College that they had broken into. It warned the university that: “You cannot build the South Parks Lab without incurring massive losses”.
But the more recent post, on 22 January, was alot more explict and threatening and even provided some insight in the mentality of people who regard setting fire to and smashing up completely disconnected businesses as legitimate to their protest.
[Incidentally, there is an interesting article that appeared on The Guardian in November 2001 that sought to explain animal rights activists’ mentalities. It is a little over the top but an interesting read nonetheless.]
The most recent ALF post read: “With a construction crane now in place, they are closer every day to building the new lab for the sick, knife wielding perverts to spend their time torturing innocent animals.
“This ALF team is calling out to the movement to unite and fight against the University on a maximum impact scale, we must stand up, DO WHATEVER IT TAKES and blow these fucking monsters off the face of the planet. Information, tools and resources are out there for everyone to take part in smashing the University of Oxford, all you need do is find them!
“All that stands between the animals and victory is our fear, GET OVER IT! Fear is their most valued weapon and the animals cannot afford for us to work within their boundaries. We must target their construction companies and the University’s current and future building projects. We must target professors, teachers, heads, students, investors, partners, supporters and ANYONE that dares to deal in any part of the University in any way.
“There is no time for debate and there is no time for protest, this is make or break time and from now on, ANYTHING GOES. We cannot fail these animals that will end up in those death chambers.
“Be warned Oxford University, this is only the beginning of our campaign. Everyone linked to your institution is right now being tracked down and sooner or later, they will be made to face the consequences of your evil schemes.”
It is, frankly, a rambling and childish diatribe but the clear intention is there. The UK arm of the ALF seems to content itself mostly with trashing construction sites and pouring pain stripper over the cars of directors of companies that it decides to blacklist. But it clearly also has a few people willing to break into places and set fire to them.
Meanwhile, the peaceful protest side to the Oxford campaign, fronted by organisation Speak has promised regular and constant protests in Oxford. The third Saturday of every month, Thursday protests at the site of the holding centre, and “surprise demos”.
Referring back to my previous post on the march earlier this month, it would seem that the police went back on their word to let the march get all the way to the construction site, something that caused tension and sparked the jostling.
This weekend, oddly enough, the protestors did exactly what I’d suggested on my post and split up into smaller groups, confusing the police as to how and where to target their resources.
All of this is going to create trouble though. The people of Oxford are getting sick of being inconvenienced when the protestors are saying or adding nothing new, and both the police and protestors are getting increasingly antipathetic to one another.
With the violent ALF now stating its intention to target the university, it may be only a matter of time before there is a tragedy and someone gets seriously hurt or killed.
The problem with animal rights protestors is that they don’t have a cut-off point. The only aim is to end all animal testing of any kind. It hopes to do this by tackling individual projects as they come up. Sadly it’s not like the road protestors who have forced councils and construction companies to write in the likely cost of dealing with protests if they go through an area of natural beauty – which usually results in them choosing alternative routes.
The animal rights protestors appear to have a singular mindset that is held together by anger and outrage, and fed by a sense of being morally correct outsiders in a corrupt society. The result will not be pretty.