Battle over animal cruelty raises threat of violence
The Sunday Times
4 June 1981
John Coates
The number of raids on animal research laboratories and harassment of their staff by militants in the anti-vivisection movement will increase unless the government fulfils an election promise to reform existing law on experiments.
The warning comes from Lord Houghton, one of the supporters of a Bill now going through the House of Lords which aims to extend a law controlling experiments on live animals which was was first passed in 1876.
"If there is no sign of government action to implement the Bill promptly," Lord Houghton commented, "there will soon be a vacuum which will be filled by more and more vandalism. Laboratories will be faced with more security problems."
Many supporters of the Laboratory Animals Protection Bill believe that medical science has outgrown the law, and magistrates are increasingly unwilling to convict offending protesters.
Houghton's warning comes at the end of a year of highly-organised campaigning by militants in groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and the Northern Animal Liberation League.
His comments follow the dramatic annual general meeting last week of one of the oldest established campaign bodies - the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, BUAV.
Nine new "radicals" were elected to the executive committe, ending nearly 12 months of internal bickering.
The change in BUAV leadership means that there is now virtually no official support from anti-vivisectionist bodies for the Lords Bill. The legislation, proposed by Lord Halsbury, who represents research bodies, is regarded as a hard-won but fragile compromise between the scientists and moderates among the anti-vivisectionists, represented by Lord Houghton.
The radicals want a ban on all animal experiments and regard the Bill as a sell-out.
Athough committed to modernising the law, the official government line is to wait until the Council of Europe has deliberated on vivisection. "I think the council is taking too long about it," said Lord Halsbury. "I do not now believe any legislation will be achieved in this session of Parliament."
Four years ago there was a burglary at the offices of the Research Defence Society, the body headed by Halsbury which promotes experimental research and is backing his Bill.
It is not known who was responsible, but it was followed by break-ins and raids on laboratories, farms and kennels up and down the country during 1977 and 1978.
In 1980 operations became better organised:
May: 50 activists demonstrated outside the laboratories of the University of Manchester's Institute of Science and Technology.
June: The Northern Animal Liberation League invaded the Institute of Animal Physiology at Babraham, Cambridgeshire. Seventeen demonstrators were arrested after photographs of animals were taken but charges were dropped by the police.
July: 500 white mice were freed from a laboratory animal breeding centre at Battlesbridge, Rayleigh, Essex.
August: slogans were daubed on the walls of a house and paint splattered over the car belonging to a research scientist, Dr Michael Craggs, who experiments with baboons at the Institute of Psychiatry in Camberwell, London.
September: Three demonstrators arrested after clashes with police outside Holy Trinity Church, Dartford, Kent, where a service commemorating 100 years of the Wellcome Foundation, a drugs company, was being held.
October: 90 members of the Northern Animal Liberation League raided Sheffield University's Lodge Moor Field Laboratories. Four dogs were rescued.
November: Animal Aid organised demonstrations in every major town and city in Britain to protest at the use of rabbit-blinding tests and to demand a mass consumer boycott of Revlon cosmetics.
A sad loss to the BUAV occurred three months ago. Mrs Betty Earp, 65, a former president, was found dead in her bungalow at Rustington, Sussex. Many people in the BUAV believe she was distressed by the internal dissent in the organisation. She had received abusive phone calls since being ousted as president in November 1979 and the Post Office was eventually asked to intercept the calls.
Although Mrs Earp died of "natural causes", the coroner recorded an open verdict.
When item 2 on the BUAV's agenda - Act of Remembrance - was reached last Tuesday, not one of the 400 present mentioned her 20 years' service on the executive committee.
