Speak closes Oxford High Street

Well, it was the biggest animal rights march for some time. Large parts of central Oxford were brought to a standstill for large parts of Saturday afternoon as protestors under the Speak banner took a different route down Oxford High Street to celebrate World Lab Animal Day.

In actual fact, World Animal Lab Day is today, Monday 22 April, but then you could be certain that you’d have fewer protestors on a Monday and you’d cause far less disturbance.

[Incidentally, you can find all my favourite photos from the day together here. There are also all available for purchase. Taken with a Canon EOS 20D, each is of professional quality and the original is capable of being reproduced A3 size at magazine quality. If you wish to know more please email me: anything@thiswebaddress.co.uk.]

It was an interesting day though. Speak had worked alongside various other animal rights groups to bus people in from across the country and the police were clearly expecting a large number of people because they agreed to let the march proceed down the High St, and then part way back up again before walking parallel to the lab at the centre of the argument and ending up close to St Giles.

This caused enormous disturbance. And required an enormous amount of manpower – Oxford was flooded with police on foot, on bikes and motorbikes and eight mounted police, up from the usual four. I lost track of the number of police photographers and videographers.

The reason for all this trouble is because of an impending High Court decision on 22 May. Oxford University has asked for an extension to its injunction which would effectively prevent the protestors from even entering the city. The Judge postponed his decision until he had a chance to check out the site itself on 2 May.

And so Speak was on its absolute best behaviour and the police were there to capture any transgressions (not, as Speak would have you believe, because the police are evil upholders of The Man, but because they don’t want to have to keep losing their weekend monitoring marches).

Mel Broughton was, as ever, rallying the troops. There were other speakers but they were pretty inffective. Mr Broughton has a rallying gift and spoke extensively at three separate locations, although the content remained as worrying as ever: lots of ranting about the media, thoughts of conspiracies, the fact that they will win, and careful implications of threats and activism and so on.

For someone who purports to disregard the media, Mr Broughton is also strangely obsessed with it, constantly referring to what journalists had asked him. The tendency of a lot of people these days to blame a generalised media conspiracy for all the problems with their own campaigns is getting very tedious. It strikes an instinctive chord with people though.

However as an independent reporter that has been to every protest this year, I have to disagree with Mr Broughton’s assertion that there were 1,000 people on the march. He said the media would say 400 to 500. He also said that the march was larger than the Pro-Test march (actually, what he said was: “A journalist said to me yesterday: ‘Well, Mel, the biggest protest Oxford has seen recently was headed by Laurie Pycroft…’ “). But it wasn’t. I saw both marches in the same streets from the same position, and Pro-Test’s march was bigger. Not by much though.

I estimated that this march was around 600 people. And the Pro-Test march I estimated at 1,000, although the official figure I hear is 800.

That aside, the protestors were a very well-behaved and organised bunch. Broughton kept reminding them the importance of behaving well, and aside from one outburst from a woman who just couldn’t help herself from blurting “tell ’em to fuck off Mel!” before being calmed down, they were calm.

They also marched down the main part of the High Street in absolute silence, with just a drummer hitting a beat. It was a smart move and it said “we can be controlled and responsible”. And they were.

There were a couple of idiots with placards designed to annoy the protestors on the corner of Turl Street and the High Street but they were ignored from what I saw. And there was no argy-bargy at all with the police, even at expected flashpoints where the roads led to the lab.

It’s odd what an effect people behaving responsibly has on you. As such, I listened intently to the speeches (having already heard countless Speak speeches already) to see if they what their perspective, see if I was going to be swayed by force of argument.

I wasn’t though. They had a vet who has recounted his vivisectionist training experience but he had a strong Australian accent and wasn’t a very good speaker and it went on too long. From what I understood, he found the experience on experimenting on animals very unpleasant and refused to do it and then left. That’s fine, quite a few of my scientist mates have had to do animal experimentation of some kind, and some have also disliked it. Some intensely. It’s not exactly a coherent argument against all animal testing though.

What was better was the leaflets passed around. Far away from the usual half-truths and bent analysis, one of the leaflets I got listed 33 facts that as far as I can make out appear to be true and well-researched. I will check them out when I have a minute.

Apart from that it was mostly talk of Vioxx and so on, and lots of emotive language. But again a frustrating lack of balanced argument. A good percentage of people there, it strikes me, don’t really want balanced argument because they being in this protest movement. It’s fun.

A large number, especially the young blokes, are also fantasising about the renegade life. It’s a bit childish. Walking around with hoodies and hankerchiefs covering their faces. Except the handkerchiefs came off at various points because it was hot. It’s all very well these people living their little fantasies, but should they be allowed to cause traffic mayhem living them out?

The rest of the crowd comprised the usual vegans in a lather, young, idealistic women, and nice old ladies who just don’t like animal experimentation, and I don’t blame them. The thing is though: no one like animal experimentation. It’s just that most people recognise it’s a necessary evil. And people just don’t believe the tales of evil scientists enjoying torturing animals.

What I think was an own goal that demonstrates the protestors’ mentality very clearly was the building of a monkey lab effigy. It was a beautifully constructed model, I have to say. And no doubt Speak felt that carrying it around was a strong message – showing the unpalatable truth. But this was their totem and, I believe, demonstrates their attachment to the symbols of the past.

There also remains an unpleasant hardcore element in the movement that clearly felt they had had to restrain themselves. Especially since I was a representative of the evil media. I picked up a fair few stares aimed at intimidating me. And there’s always a bit of tough-man posturing going on which only worries the police and make the whole thing worse.

The police were very well behaved too. They basically stayed out of your way but they were courteous whenever I spoke to one officer or another. There was only one time when a young policeman asked me for photo ID in a slightly aggressive manner. I laughed and showed him my NUJ card. I think he was just getting carried away with the event.

But all in all, Speak represented themselves extremely well. There was a lot of them, they caused a load of snarl-ups but they were well-behaved and responsible and they deserve credit for that. The marchers that is, not the police.

That said, I really do think it’s time to do something to prevent these marches from taking place all the time. Nothing new is going on; no new arguments or revelations. The lab is legal and it’s being built. The fact is that Speak can only hope to “win its campaign” by intimidation. And so no matter what goes on peacefully, there will remain an unpleasant and illegal thread through it because people just aren’t persuaded that the lab is as evil as they do.

Mel Broughton exclaimed in anger that the workers building the lab weren’t wearing balaclavas because they were fearful. It was because they were ashamed. That’s where the problem lies. The truth is that the builders are just building a building. It’s just like any other building to them. The reason they are wearing balaclavas, as Mr Broughton knows only too well, is because some of those people in the crowd on Saturday would love nothing more than having the justification to take out their intrinsically violent natures on someone.