The autumn offensive of Lynx, the anti-fur campaign, is already spreading like a rash across Britain’s billboards. Six hundred posters depict a recumbent fur-clad model (“rich bitch”) beside a dead fox (“poor bitch”).
But who, one wonders, wears fur nowadays? “I have to be honest, hardly anyone,” said Mark Glover, Lynx’s 35-year-old director. “A large proportion of people wearing fur coats here are foreigners.” This is largely the result of Lynx’s efforts – some would say intimidation. “I would never use the word intimidation,” Glover demurred. “We are attempting to shame fur-coat-wearers into not wearing fur.” He added his familiar repudiation of the Animal Liberation Front.
If Lynx has emasculated the fur trade in Britain, as it claims, why continue? “We have a long way to go,” he replied. “Until Selfridges and Harrods stop selling furs we can’t say we have won.” It will continue to lobby in Europe and develop an educational programme. It is about to open an office in Los Angeles, one of the largest fur-wearing areas in the world, Glover says.
Although the anti-trapping campaign is aimed primarily at the United States, the movement has suffered its biggest reverses as a result of concern about the effects of an indiscriminate ban on the aboriginal people of northern Canada.
Here I must declare an interest. On three visits to the Canadian north since 1985, staying with Indian and Inuit communities, I have been appalled by the social repercussions of campaigns by well-meaning urban groups, whose cosmology and ephemeral values are incomprehensibly alien to the enduring hunting cultures.
Last year, accompanying a judge’s court through Inuit settlements along the Arctic coast, one could see the stark results of anti-sealing campaigns which had unintentionally enmeshed native people an epidemic of alcohol-related crimes, stabbings, domestic violence and rape. Yet not long ago Eskimos were universally admired as industrious, cheerful folk who had forged a spiritual contract with animals.
It was Greenpeace’s inability to square its ideals with the consequences of a non-selective fur ban which led it to drop its anti-trapping campaign four years ago. Glover, who as Greenpeace’s wildlife campaigner had helped to secure a seal-hunting ban and was orchestrating the anti-trap movement, left to set up Lynx.
Last year a Lynx-backed initiative, requiring warning labels to be sewn into garments made from rare species, was also defeated for ostensibly the same reasons, after strong pressure from the Canadian government. Lynx’s response is to assert that because the fur industry hides behind the cause of aboriginal people, the latter must be considered agents of the fur lobby.
This myopia is curious. Lynx would have a clear run if it could accommodate the aboriginal issue. Greenpeace considered the question of native exemptions, but Glover ruled it out as “impractical”. He remains unbending. He denounces fake fur, forbids the sale of discarded furs to Oxfam and insists that even Russians’ fur hats are “a fashion item”.
He cleaves to the line that the consequences of Lynx’s campaigning are the responsibility of the Canadian government, in the evident belief that Ottawa is totally committed to native welfare. “This is used as an excuse for not doing anything,” he said impatiently. “We are an easy scapegoat.”
On that subject, mankind, as represented by Britain, reached a significant milestone last weekend when, under the bemused gaze of Trafalgar Square’s lions, a fur amnesty called by the Lynx campaign yielded hundreds, perhaps thousands, of furs.
“Bring out your dead” was the order, and they did. Tiger rugs, granny minks, monkey capes and new blue fox furs went on the pile, to be burned later.
Among the literature handed out in sick bags marked “If the fur trade makes you sick, use this” were small stickers reading “Yuck Your disgusting fur coat.” It was a symbolic shedding of man’s oldest habit, and graphic confirmation that anyone caught wearing one risks being branded a social leper.
Here was satisfaction at a moral victory by an urban population at last appalled by the scale of animal exploitation for fashion, tinged by feelings of unease about the new ideological commissars who have skilfully manipulated public sentiment with a sophisticated and often horrific advertising campaign.
Lynx’s uncompromising adverts have pointed the bone at a soft target – the fur wearer. Will the same censorious techniques be deployed against other transgressors of Glover’s moral code (he is a vegan who eschews leather)? He replied that this was not possible, somewhat unconvincingly citing the failure of other pressure groups to imitate Lynx’s style of cinema advertising. “It doesn’t apply to vivisection or eating meat or whatever,” he said.
Earlier, however, he said: “Once you stop seeing glamorous people on TV wearing fur, you can think about other things like vivisection and leather or animals in zoos.” He had reminded me that Lynx is a leading animal rights organisation.
We are left with the Orwellian spectacle of celebrities lining up behind a huge poster campaign which vents fury against an invisible enemy.
Meanwhile, at its shop in Covent Garden and through its mail order business, Lynx is selling a natty line of designer clothes, with matching prices. “We sell many more garments than the fur trade,” Glover said with satisfaction.
