Class warriors accused of infiltrating animal lobby
The Times
4 February 1995
Emma Wilkins
Animal-rights demonstrations at ports and airports are being infiltrated by violent militants intent on criminal activity, a senior police officer said yesterday.
Mick Brewer, acting Deputy Chief Constable of Warwickshire Police, said that peaceful protests at Coventry airport against the export of veal calves had been sabotaged by activists who had their own aims.
After the death of Jill Phipps, 31, who fell beneath the wheels of a delivery lorry at the airport on Wednesday, 40 hooded activists attacked the home of Christopher Barrett-Jolley, managing director of Phoenix Aviation, who is responsible for flying veal calves to the Continent.
"I think it is clear that we are seeing an influx of criminally minded people who are operating off the back of a peaceful demonstration," Mr Brewer said. "After the tragic accident, our officers began to notice new faces in the crowd at the airport. Their technique is often to hide behind the peaceful demonstrators and egg them on."
Mr Brewer has discussed the policing of demonstrations with his opposite number at Devon and Cornwall Police. Violence has broken out at Plymouth docks. "I think we are being targeted by the same type of individuals," Mr Brewer said.
"It is a case of them taking what is a current issue and using it to go about their criminal business. We see them at hunts, at poll-tax riots, at Criminal Justice Bill demonstrations. They are setting out to have a go at the Establishment.
"The situation now makes policing very difficult. We were dealing with peaceful protest but the situation has developed into hostile crowds - that's the way these people work," he said.
While activists were once content to liberate beagles from medical laboratories, recent years have seen incendiary devices in fur departments of shops and bomb attacks on scientists.
Since its foundation in 1972, the Animal Liberation Front has claimed responsibility for a number of violent attacks on supermarkets and individuals. An ALF booklet, first circulated five years ago, contains advice on how to make a complex timed incendiary device. The Animal Rights National Index, which was formed by police in 1986 under the control of Special Branch, recorded 3,073 crimes between 1990 and 1992 ranging from hunt sabotage to attacks on butchers' shops. Figures for the first eight months of 1994, record 585 incidents, mainly of criminal damage, which caused รบ5.4million damage. There were 29 incendiary attacks over the same period.
Detectives believe the ALF is now closely linked with other groups, including Class War, which was involved in the Trafalgar Square poll-tax riots in 1990.
Undercover police officers have infiltrated some units of activists. In 1991 an alleged plot to contaminate Lucozade was foiled when police acted before the bottles reached supermarket shelves. SmithKline Beecham, the manufacturer, said it had been a target because its drugs division involves experimentation on animals.
Boots the Chemist has been attacked several times. Security was stepped up in all branches after an arson attack on a Boots warehouse in Rochdale. In December 1993, three Boots branches were firebombed in Cornwall.
Department stores have also been attacked, with the most recent incidents being a series of fire bombings on the Isle of Wight. University research establishments have also been targets of animal-rights activists, with attacks at Oxford, Surrey, and Edinburgh universities.
Last December, Keith Mann, 28, a leading ALF member, was sentenced to 14 years' imprisonment. He admitted possessing explosive substances, attempted arson, criminal damage and incitement.
