Fur shops, labs, homes on Animal Libbers' hit list
The Sunday Times
5 September 1982
Denis Lehane
The militant animal welfare group that freed mink from farms in Essex and Scotland plans to strike next at fur shops and warehouses. In a letter to The Sunday Times early last week, the Animal Liberation Front said it plans to smash fur traders' premises to cause maximum damage and disruption to their businesses. The organisation said it will not damage furs, because more animals would be killed to replace them.
The Front sent photographs taken on infra-red film during its raid on a mink farm at Canewdon, Essex, two weeks ago when it released more than 200 mink. There was also a photograph of a beagle which had had an operation to its neck to produce a permanent opening. The Front said it had taken the photograph from a Nottingham drugs testing laboratory in June.
Yesterday, in a further unsigned letter, the Front detailed other targets for its offensive. It threatens to damage animal research laboratories, factories that supply vivisection equipment and the premises of organisations that supply animals. The homes and cars of vivisectors are to be daubed with slogans.
The Animal Liberation Front was founded in 1976 by Ronnie Lee, a small, shy, bespectacled man in his early 30s, who was jailed for three years in 1974 for attacks on vivisection laboratories and animal breeding farms.
On his release he launched the Front with a 12-month campaign that began in March 1976 and resulted in an estimated รบ275,000 worth of damage to breeding farms, abbatoirs, otter hunts and a circus. In 1977 he was caught with stolen white mice and jailed again.
Lee is no longer active in the Front but is still campaigning for animal rights. When he was first arrested he was studying to be a solicitor. His conviction ended his career and has made it hard for him to find work. He is now unemployed, but says he has no regrets.
"What I did was far more important than becoming a solicitor. I didn't regard myself as a criminal and still don't. Everything I did was designed to save lives and to stop cruelty, and animals were saved and people were forced to think about the way they treat animals."
The Front's campaign of illegal acts began earlier in the year:
In March, it freed 14 guinea-pigs from a Sussex firm breeding them for sale to companies for drug-testing.
In April, its members broke into Leeds University and took six dogs and a cat.
In May, fur shops in east London and Essex were daubed with ALF slogans and their locks filled with glue.
In June, 16 masked members of the Front broke into Boots pharmaceutical division at Thurgaton, near Nottingham, and freed 12 beagles used for testing a new heart drug. Seven of the dogs had had neck operations to the carotid artery and vein, but Boots denies cruelty and says they were treated "like pets".
In June and July, the Front raided factory farms throughout the West Country, freeing battery hens, which were given to sympathisers running free-range farms.
The Front is the only animal-rights group committed to a policy of law-breaking. It aims to halt all exploitation of animals. It is now concentrating on the fur trade, but it is equally opposed to factory farming and the use of animals for experiments.
The Front is believed to have more than 2,000 members. A hard core of 300 to 400 engage in illegal acts. Members are organised in cells, and few individuals know the identities of more than a handful of others.
Recruits are enlisted from more respectable animal-rights groups.
Front members come from all social classes and age groups. All are prepared to go to jail.
The Front says only attacks will force those who use animals to treat them humanely. Ronnie Lee said: "You can get thousands of people to sign petitions, but nothing happens."
Some scientists agree with this assessment. Dr Harold Hewitt, a retired cancer researcher, said: "I experimented on animals for 30 years and I know that there is much more consciousness about the way animals are treated today because of these people than there used to be."
