The animal rights protest group [tag]Speak[/tag] is still protesting although it is becoming increasingly obvious that the organisation is not much beyond one man’s bitter fury.
Speak leader Mel [tag]Broughton[/tag], who writes emotive and heavily biased accounts of the organisation’s various actions for its website, has been banned from entering Oxford after he was arrested in June for obstructing a highway. A request to lift restrictions on his movements within [tag]Oxford[/tag] was denied by Oxford Magistrates Court at a hearing.
The result has been Speak protesting in London, in Reading, in Melton Mowbray – using whatever tenuous link they can to Oxford University to justify it. Even though the courts have allowed the organisation to protest within Oxford, there is little appetite for it without Broughton’s gifted but frequently bitter and inaccurate oratory.
Speak has apparently held a week of protests for a monkey they have chosen to call George, who they claim was held by Oxford University and was blinded by one of the scientists at the university. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that George even exists outside Speak and Broughton’s imagination, and the details of his treatment appear to have come from the same anonymous source that has in the past provided Speak with many of its wild assertions, usually found to be wrong.
I have followed enough Speak protests so I decided only to see what happened at the one protest scheduled to take place in Oxford itself – the same street where Speak’s angry and disruptive protests last year caused the creation of the Pro-Test movement.
The plan was to meet at the church on Cornmarket St – the pedestrianised road in the centre of town – at midday on Saturday. Unfortunately, and tellingly, it was difficult for any gathering because the main spot had been taken up by some Afro-Carribbean dance troupe.
There were plenty of police though. And, I noted, two plain clothes people on talking terms with the police who are most likely from the private security firm that Oxford University has hired to keep an eye on the protestors, and who Speak complain bitterly about.
Eventually I found the Speak people because they didn’t move on the busy street. Speak claims there was 20 people, following its usual formula of doubling the real number and adding a few for good measure. I only recognised one of them from a previous protest, and the others were largely teenage girls.
They passed out leaflets for about 10 minutes and then vanished. Clearly the police was as surprised as I was because they then set off around Oxford trying to find out if there was a larger group of protestors somewhere. There wasn’t; they’d simply gone.
What was ironic was that the Speak stall, manned by two women at the end of the street, was the smallest of five such stalls. There was the usual bloke who admirably stands there every Saturday in order to educate people about the true nature of Islam. And then a Stop the War stall, plus a new Lebanon/Palestine stall and a Jehovah’s Witness one.
It turns out that the main Speak contingent had decided to set up instead in Summertown, a mile or so north of the city and out of the exclusion zone. The excuse was a company called ISIS Innovations based there that since it markets Oxford University research discoveries, is fair game to Speak.
I also see that Speak is planning another big demo on 21 October, meeting at the Ice Rink near to where I live, five minutes walk out of town. I wonder where they are planning to go from there.
Speak are certainly stubborn although you have to wonder what they hope to achieve. The chance to change minds and influence the building of the animal housing lab in Oxford was lost months ago. I wonder how long Mel Broughton’s refusal to accept he’s been beaten can keep the rest of the organisation together.
What was good though was that Oxford residents in town on Saturday weren’t bothered by the same chanting and aggression that has blighted Cornmarket and Broad Street for so long whenever the animal rights people have rode into town.
Kerry McQuaide
October 8, 2006 at 6:13 pmHi Kieren
I am sorry to say that once again you have got it wrong. The numbers weren’t inflated and I thought the demonstration was successful and well attended. There were considerably more than 20 protesters in total with 40+ from London alone.
I would also like to stress that the campaign is not all about Mel Broughton as you seem to imply. SPEAK would continue whether or not he was around and certainly will not collapse if the lab is built.
You fail to mention that aside from the protests in London and elsewhere there is also a weekly demonstration held outside the lab every Thursday in accordance with the injunction.
Please ensure you publish accurate information in the future.
With kind regards
Kerry
Kieren
October 9, 2006 at 1:24 amYou are no doubt disingenously referring to the number of people that were in Summertown. I was quite clearly referring to the people on Carfax and my estimate is correct because I was stood there.
Whether Speak can survive without Mel Broughton is, admittedly, a matter of opinion. My opinion is that it Speak has continued so long because of the strong personality of this one man. And I base that on an objective view of the Speak protests, a large number of which I have attended.
Yes, I have not given details of the protests in London or the small protests each week on South Parks Road but not out of some kind of misrepresentative spirit as you seem to suggest but because I have other better things to do than follow Speak around. I keep an eye on things and if there is anything interesting, I follow it up.
But Speak is largely a spent force, at least from my perspective. It has had more than ample opportunity to make it points, and those points have not been accepted either by the authorities or by the people at large. By making those self-same points again and again, with increasing aggression and diminishing respect, Speak sparked a movement against it (Pro-Test), and turned Oxford residents against it, leading to several court hearings that have seen it restricted in its activities.
That’s what has happened. I know you don’t agree but that’s because it’s personally important to you. It isn’t for me. I just report on what happens.
Kieren
Kerry
October 22, 2006 at 7:06 pmYou are correct, I was referring to the number of people in Summertown, I misunderstood your article initially but on re-reading it realise my error. A few of our group remained in Oxford in order to peacefully leaflet while the bulk went to the planned demonstration area.
With regards to whether or not SPEAK can survive without Mel Broughton, I can assure you it will continue with as much passion, he is a spokesperson but he is not ‘SPEAK’ as so many people seem to believe.
You mention that the SPEAK campaign has turned Oxford residents against it but I have received a predominately positive response when doing stalls and only a very small minority have been negative. What I read in the media often contradicts with the response I get from people on the street.
And as for Pro-Test…. where are they?
I realise that this is purely a job for you but do respect your view of the campaign which is why I make an effort to read your reports on it. I am sure that you can understand why I feel the need to make a comment when I believe you haven’t been accurate as, like you say, it is personally important to me.
Tracey
October 23, 2006 at 2:00 pmI just stumbled on this page and felt I needed to comment. I am relatively new to the SPEAK campaign and my first demo was the one you are talking about. There were a lot more people there but we couldn’t gather anywhere because there were so many police preventing us from getting together. It was like a cat and mouse game. I can assure you though that Mel is not important to newcomers like me and his absence on the 21st was not noticed by a lot of other newcomers either. What is important to poeple like us is the animals’ suffering and as long as it goes on we will be there to oppose it.
M James
November 5, 2006 at 11:12 pmWhat is this obsession with Mel Broughton? The important thing here is that we stop the building of this dreadful torture lab for non-human animals in any way we can. By you writing a fairy tale of events, do you really think it’ll make us back off? Well if you do you’re badly mistaken!
I suppose you’re also in favour of the police brutality & constant bullying & harrassment that we constantly indure, just because they can?
Kieren
November 6, 2006 at 9:18 amWhat is this – a sixth-form debating society?
This insistence on personalising everything is cheap and unpersuasive. By no account is what I have written a “fairy tale”, and you know it, so such childish rhetoric weakens any argument you may have.
I have no desire, intention, wish or anything else to make Speak “back off”. I started covering this situation because of the protests going on in my home town. I looked at them, as did many others, and then the subsequent Pro-test marches, and then the subsequent Speak marches and so on. And I reported on what I saw and heard.
The concept that I would be in favour of police brutality though demonstrates just how far Speak has dissociated itself from the rest of the community. I would argue this sense of being a rebel pitched against society provides much of the excitement that keeps Speak as an organisation together.
However, I’m afraid that for the same reason Speak’s credibility is greatly diminished, and my inclination to listen to the same vague, emotive and inaccurate rallying cries is greatly reduced.
Feel free to keep shouting. Just don’t expect anyone to take you seriously if that’s all you do – shout.
Kieren
serialdeviant.org(y) » Are you pro-test?
November 28, 2006 at 11:44 am[…] Speak go unheard […]
Anna C
December 15, 2007 at 11:37 pmThe only people who use ‘childish rhetoric’ are those who seek to justify animal abuse. SPEAK simply tells the truth, and the organisation does so by various means, not just ‘shouting’. It’s very easy to paint a picture of an organisation by attempting to demonise one individual or use generalisations which are sadly so prevalent in the media, but the only common factor amongst all the campaigners is that they are sickened by Oxford University and its atrocious animal abuse. And in my experience, the vast majority of the general public share this view when they learn of the revolting things that are occurring inside its laboratories.
Barry Miles
June 2, 2008 at 3:23 pmKieren
I don’t understand your comments on George being a figment of Mel broughton’s imagination. The blinding of George was described at a lecture within the uni by the perpetrator. It was a shocked attendee who leaked it. There is an injunction to stop the perpetrator being named -pretty funny if it’s imaginary.The university has never denied George or his fate. I personally wrote to Pro-test to ask them, but they refused my invitaion to deny George was blinded. I went to the last SPEAK major demo, where there were many hundred. The Pro-test demo in February had 75, so I think your predictions on SPEAK have been a bit out. The last SPEAK demo had a positive response from the local public.