THE ANIMAL PROTECTION RACKET
Lloyd Evans joins the vegans and veggies
picketing the 'Nazis' in charge of a scientific research lab
I'M standing in the middle of Auschwitz try- ing to stifle a contemptuous yawn. Ahead of me I can see rows of sinister sheds protected by high steel fences and bales of vicious- looking razor wire. Within these anonymous units, so I'm told, unspeakable horrors are being perpetrated. But I couldn't care less. My only concern is for my poor aching arms. I'm holding a huge cumbersome 'H' three planks of chipboard nailed together and my fellow protesters spell out the rest of our message 'Animal Auschwitz'. There are hundreds of other demonstrators milling around, fervently chanting 'Close it down! Close it down!' Mounted police prevent us from attacking the compound. Half-heartedly I join in our lugubrious refrain but I keep glancing enviously at the girl holding the T. It looks light as a feather. Why didn't I get the 'I'? I mope inwardly. Trust me to get the 'H'. Then again, at least I didn't get the 'W'. That looks a real handful.
I'm outside a scientific research lab in Huntingdonshire, having penetrated an animal-rights group on the south coast. It wasn't hard. I turned up to a couple of meetings disguised as a useless layabout and in no time at all I was part of the gang. We mustered at dawn near Brighton Pavilion and drove for five hours to reach the demo by midday. During the journey I read their monthly newsletter. Amid the appeals for dona- tions and reports of guinea-pig farms being picketed, there were the familiar ghoulish images of animals in distress: doomed beagles in steel cages, a cat fes- tooned with electrodes like some hellish Christmas decoration, gibbons with their skulls lopped off and their shiny, slime- green brains exposed like soft-boiled eggs.
As we drove north I chatted to the oth- ers. Diet is an overwhelming preoccupation among the animal brotherhood. It provides an excuse for self-fascination, and it drives conversational exchanges. It's a focus for people with empty lives — like having a chronic illness, and you don't even have to die. The chap next to me offered me his organic pick 'n' mix and asked me if I was veggie or vegan. I told him I hadn't eaten anything with a face for a decade. 'Yeah, I'm about three-quarters vegan,' he said, `and a quarter veggie. So I haven't quite gone the whole hog.' I wish I'd made that up but he actually said it.
Though I'm predisposed to mock them, I harbour a sneaking admiration for the ani- mal guerrillas. I appreciate their heroic impatience, their demand for instant change — direct action rather than vapid discourse — and the fact that they get results. My only qualm concerns the ani- mals themselves. I can't bear animals. The damn things keep biting me — not just bedbugs and mosquitoes; I'm regularly sav- aged by frisky household mongrels, usually acting on the words, 'He's very friendly'. And there was a wild monkey I once met which thought it would be interesting to take a chunk out of my neck.
As we approach the site we pass rows of police vans parked discreetly up country lanes. 'This is it. I can feel the adrenalin running,' says the navigator, who is dressed, as we all are, in dark green and black. He wears a military cap. I wonder aloud what the plan is if we break into the compound. `Up to you. Security's quite pathetic, really, so just do whatever.' I ask if he intends to release any animals. 'Not me, personally. no.' Just as well, I think to myself. After all, I'm not sure how a gibbon would fare roam- ing the Fens with the top of its skull miss- ing. On the other hand, the species is highlY adaptable. It might blend into the local conununity quite readily and, who knows, perhaps get a job at KFC where the staff baseball caps are designed to camou- flage minor irregularities like a mislaid cranium.
We pile off the battlebus and are immediately searched by friendly, well trained policemen. They pat down our greasy jeans looking for 'sharps' (knives) and bolt-cutters. They ask for our details and we give them fictional names and pseudo-addresses. (Particularly pseudo in my case as I tell them rat Rupert Montefiore of Holland Park Avenue.) We're ushered along a cordoned-off road and we regroup outside the heavilY fortified compound. The protest is gath- ering strength. People are testing their megaphones, others hand out leaflets. Cheerful young girls sell vegan cupcakes and organic gingerbread-persons. We stand around, my fellow nut-cutleteers and I, discussing tactics, complaining about the police, remembering previoufats demos and generally chewing the Sorry, the cud. I'm handed a fact sheet which shows a middle-aged man in a lab-coat smiling for the camera. The caption informs me that this is 'the evil Brian Cass', chief of the research lab. rle looks quite normal, if a little smug. `1`),°te the demented look on his face,' the leaflet suggests. At the bottom, his hands have , been magnified and labelled. 'See how' white his knuckles are as he clutches holi desk.' Unfortunately the photocopy, is poor quality so I can't really make it °,110.; but I'm happy to accept the 'fact sheet its word. The author is clearly impartial. •c By now haphazard chanting is under Wale Individuals approach the gates and htl abuse towards the unseen workforce. 'Cow- ards! Scum! Get a proper job!' There seem to be two types of protester: the militant young crusties and the angry old dowagers. I d expected the crusties (I'm disguised as one) but the Jilly Cooper crusaders were a surprise. Like most elderly and well-to-do women they'd taken infinite pains with their appearance before stepping outof doors. Hair neatly pinned, tartan skirts ironed, paisley scarves flowing, faces touched with pink and blue, you'd have guessed they were on their way to a whist drive or 'An Evening with Libby Purves'. I watched several of them as they stepped gingerly up to the gates and, in their insults modulated voices, yelled nsults through the bars. In accents better suited to 'I declare this fête open', I heard 'You're all going to hell, you sadists!' and 'You're a bunch of f—ing murderers!' And I have to say, I was shocked. Several hundred have arrived by now. Orators and poets bellow speeches through megaphones, reminding us in graphic detail how cruelly laboratory animals suffer. They insult the police in carping, self-righteous terms. This is greeted with applause. There is more sporadic abuse through the bars. I can't help noticing an element of self-reve- lation in what the protesters shout. 'You're all freaks!' yells a gaunt skinhead in white overalls spattered with crimson paint to resemble blood. 'You're going down the Pan!' shouts a plump young chap who looks as if he has digestive problems. A pudgy, spinsterish, 45-year-old woman shrieks, Animals need love. And warmth. Someone to care for them. Someone to hold them!' There is a call for a minute's silence. I glance round and notice that many of the activists look physically ill. The pensioners Walk on sticks or crutches. Several are in wheelchairs. When the minute's silence is over, one woman is unable to control her weeping. A local TV crew arrives and we hold up our`Animal Auschwitz' slogan. People are b!°wng whistles and kazoos. A drum thumps out a rhythm and we chant our doge: ttge: 'Close it down! Close it down!' The :Inn glitters overhead. Clouds drift across the fields and breezes stroke the young green wheat. What a contrast we must seem the cameras: a chorus line of bloodless rals, an A to Z of vitamin deficiencies, a • 11?ru-tsaagleomf.piNlgli wonder who've lost their way to msonder the animal-rights rement is shunned by the general public. sn,„.„,n't know if the endless shrieking v_s"tuCs the creatures in the lab, but it does ,,c,rY little for my nerves. I suggest to the rest `'.\1eAuschwitz that we have a quick break. On g° in separate directions. I squat down a grass verge holding my wooden 'H'. To sits `S'. On my left are 'I' and 'T. wAnich more or less sums up my mood. saddl hour later, while tucking into roast mis„ e of beansprout, I learn that I've dozen the highlight of the day's action. A "en protesters penetrated the ring-fence and ran amok inside the compound, jump- ing on to roofs and being chased about by security staff. We see them across the wheat- fields being frogmarched away. More shout- ing breaks out. 'Nazis!' people yell at the police. 'You're worse than the SS.'
Well, not quite. I can't help thinking that if the Huntingdonshire police were the SS they'd have herded us into cages by now and they'd be injecting chlorine into our eyeballs while skipping about to the jaun- tier sections of Tristan and Isolde played on a wind-up gramophone.
The animal activists love to aggrandise their cause. They draw constant parallels between animal research and the Nazi regime. It makes sense to argue, as they do, that German civilians who failed to protest against the death camps were partly responsible for the Jewish Holocaust. The difference is that Britain is a democracy and not a fascist dictatorship. The activists' logic, though, is wonderfully seductive. If you can convince yourself you're fighting the Third Reich, all the bonds of conven- tional morality slip thrillingly loose. With `Justice' as your battle-cry, you can do what you damn well like. Block country lanes. Send death threats to vivisectors. Heave flagstones through butchers' windows. Van- dalise fur shops in Knightsbridge. Smash up a bookie's in Hampshire (to protest against a horse race in Liverpool, by the way, in case the logical connection had escaped you). You can attack fast-food shops and torch people's cars. And if you get arrested, you're not a criminal. You're a freedom fighter, you're Nelson Mandela.
The criminal fringe holds back the ani- mal-welfare movement just as Militant held back Labour in the 1980s. They are in dire need of discipline and leadership. The case for reducing animal suffering is unassail- able. The imagery at their command is as shocking and emotive as any pressure group could wish for. There is no reason why they shouldn't become a mass movement in this nation of kitten-cuddlers, spaniel-fondlers, tortoise-polishers and pony-worshippers. But this is also a moderate, well-mannered country and, unless they use methods that appeal to people who respect the law, they will never win public favour. Extremism will move only molehills. Moderation can move mountains.
Homeward bound in the Veggie Wagon, I dozed while my Buddhist friends dis- cussed further dietary austerities: fruitari- anism, coconutarianism, the raw-food diet, the water-only option. And when I made it through the front door of my house I col- lapsed into a chair, torpid and drained. My jowls burned from the sun. My puffy stom- ach, chirping with nut-belch and bean- burp, felt like a zeppelin tethered to my pelvis. My mood was about as upbeat as the ears on a 70-a-day basset hound. Though I hate throwing away food, I immediately pedal-binned my vegan fudge and cruelty-free fairy cakes and lay down for an hour, knackered, glum, sun-fried.
I awoke to the sound of my large intestine snoring and wheezing. I couldn't raise the energy to have a bath. But a kebab, on the other hand, seemed like an excellent plan. And the odd thing is, I rarely eat meat. I hurried out and bought an extra large lamb doner and a stick of salami. Yes, and a rum baba too, drooling in its puddle of pro- cessed sugar. And I couldn't resist a bottle of that Hungarian plonk, the one called `Bull's Blood'. At home I tipped these vile, delicious dishes on to a plate. As I opened my jaws, I realised how zestless vegetarian food is, how meek and compliant, how null and void, how Liberal Democrat. My rot- ting canines scythed through the hapless lamb's flesh and its life juices oozed over my parched tongue. It occurred to me, 'My God, this poor thing never stood a chance.' Born. Sold. Butchered. Grilled. Every morsel of its tender flesh tasted of inhu- manity, of man's heartless dominion over the animals, of thousands of years of injus- tice. It tasted of death. It tasted of life. It tasted of nature. And that tasted good.
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