‘If you don’t fight, you’ve already lost’: Animal rights activist facing six years in jail remains defiant

April 17, 2014 from cor­po­rate watch Today Deb­bie Vin­cent, an ani­mal rights activist from the Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty (SHAC) cam­paign was sen­tenced to six years in prison for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail after a five week long tri­al at Win­ches­ter Crown Court. She was also giv­en an Anti Social Behav­iour Order which means she can be arrest­ed if she protests against or con­tacts Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS) or its busi­ness part­ners for a fur­ther five years after her release from prison. The sen­tence should serve as a wake up call to anti-cap­i­tal­ists of the need to offer sol­i­dar­i­ty to those who have been sin­gled out for repres­sion because of their involve­ment in effec­tive resis­tance to cor­po­rate pow­er. A press release from the Black­mail 3 sup­port cam­paign quotes Deb­bie: “I have been made an exam­ple of because I put myself up as a pub­lic face of Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty and for believ­ing that such places as Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences should be resigned to the his­to­ry books.” “In some ways I’m real­ly not sur­prised I was found guilty, as I don’t believe any­one can get jus­tice when faced with a polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy charge and the huge resources of the state and multi­na­tion­als against me. I will always have hope and will always con­tin­ue to try my best to make the inhab­i­tants of this plan­et more com­pas­sion­ate to all and try to make the world a bet­ter place for all.” What we are see­ing is a coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign against ani­mal rights activists in an effort to silence dis­sent,” said Adri­an Shaw of the Black­mail 3 Sup­port Cam­paign. “This is the third con­spir­a­cy to black­mail tri­al in the UK involv­ing peo­ple accused of cam­paign­ing against Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences.” Cor­po­rate Watch spoke to Deb­bie pri­or to the sen­tenc­ing. She said: “What is scary in this world is oppres­sion and injus­tice, when peo­ple hurt peo­ple, ani­mals and nature. What is beau­ti­ful in this world is resis­tance, when peo­ple say ‘enough is enough’ and act. Oppres­sion and injus­tice are every­where, but so is resis­tance. Because some peo­ple know that if you fight you might lose, but if you don’t fight, you’ve already lost.” The cam­paign SHAC was set up in 1999 with the aim of clos­ing down Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS). HLS is one of the largest con­tract test­ing com­pa­nies in the world. They keep about 70,000 ani­mals on site at their lab in Hunt­ing­don. Accord­ing to SHAC, “HLS will test any­thing for any­body. They car­ry out exper­i­ments which involve poi­son­ing ani­mals with house­hold prod­ucts, pes­ti­cides, drugs, her­bi­cides, food colour­ings and addi­tives, sweet­en­ers and genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms. Every three min­utes an ani­mal dies inside Hunt­ing­don totalling 500 inno­cent lives every sin­gle day.” SHAC’s tac­tics have been ground­break­ing for direct action cam­paigns in their tar­get­ing of the net­work of com­pa­nies with busi­ness rela­tion­ships with HLS: from its cus­tomers to its ser­vice providers and from its sup­pli­ers to its investors. To read an analy­sis of the SHAC mod­el of cam­paignin­ing click here. Over the years SHAC has pub­lished details of the com­pa­nies doing busi­ness with HLS on its web­site and has encour­aged peo­ple to per­suade these com­pa­nies to cease their busi­ness with HLS. The SHAC web­site is clear that it is not encour­ag­ing peo­ple to break the law. SHAC con­tacts the com­pa­nies and tells them that they will remain list­ed on its web­site until they cease doing busi­ness with HLS. Hun­dreds of com­pa­nies have ceased trad­ing with HLS. View a list here. HLS have been infil­trat­ed and their prac­tices exposed sev­er­al times. To read under­cov­er expos­es of ani­mal abuse at HLS click here. The arrests of the ‘Black­mail 3’ In June 2012 Euro­pean arrest war­rants were issued in the UK for two activists in Hol­land, who will be referred to as SH and NS in this arti­cle. On 6th July 2012 Deb­bie Vin­cent, who had been tar­get­ed by the police for many years for her involve­ment in the SHAC cam­paign, was arrest­ed and detained on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail. Her home address was searched. On the same day SH and NS were arrest­ed and premis­es in Ams­ter­dam were searched. Deb­bie was charged in July 2012 with con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, an offence under the 1977 Crim­i­nal Law Act. The British police have sought the extra­di­tion of the Dutch activists and the Dutch courts grant­ed it. How­ev­er, until now there is an ongo­ing dis­pute over the extra­di­tion as the lawyers for one of the Dutch defen­dants have demand­ed an under­tak­ing from the British Sec­re­tary of State that he would serve his sen­tence in Hol­land if he was con­vict­ed. The charge placed by the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (CPS) against Deb­bie was con­spir­ing with 16 named peo­ple, includ­ing the two Dutch activists, and unnamed oth­ers “to black­mail rep­re­sen­ta­tives of com­pa­nies and busi­ness­es and oth­er per­sons” “by mak­ing unwar­rant­ed demands, name­ly to cease law­ful trad­ing with HLS, with men­aces and with intent to cause loss to anoth­er.” The 13 oth­er ‘co-con­spir­a­tors’ have already been jailed for con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, at tri­als in 2009 and 2010 for a total of almost 70 years between them. For many of them the only evi­dence pre­sent­ed was involve­ment in law­ful cam­paign­ing against the com­pa­ny and asso­ci­a­tion with those involved in direct action. The use of the charge of black­mail against Deb­bie is anoth­er exam­ple of the twist­ing of the law to repress grass­roots dis­sent against pow­er­ful cor­po­ra­tions. Black­mail? The events relied on in Deb­bie’s case were that in 2008 and 2009 actions were car­ried out in France, Bel­gium, Ger­many and Switzer­land against Novar­tis, EuroNext, Scher­ing Plough, BDO, AstraZeneca, Fortress and Nomu­ra, all com­pa­nies with busi­ness rela­tion­ships with HLS. The actions includ­ed set­ting fire to direc­tors’ cars, com­pa­ny build­ings and, in one case, the hol­i­day hunt­ing lodge of Daniel Vasel­la, Direc­tor of Novar­tis. Graf­fi­ti was daubed on direc­tors’ homes overnight and the ash­es of Vasel­la’s moth­er were stolen from the fam­i­ly tomb. How­ev­er, in the words of Michael Bowes QC, the pros­e­cu­tor in the case: “There is no evi­dence that Ms Vin­cent was present at the scene of any of the attacks, or inci­dents in Europe. There is no evi­dence that she was out­side of the Unit­ed King­dom at the time of any of these attacks”. Instead the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion ‘Ser­vice’ (CPS) claimed that Deb­bie was guilty of involve­ment in a ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’ involv­ing those actions. The CPS claimed that there was evi­dence link­ing SH and NS to some of these actions. How­ev­er they were not the ones in the dock. The pros­e­cu­tion argued that Deb­bie had been in phone con­tact with SH and NS and had attend­ed the 2009 Ani­mal Rights gath­er­ing in Oslo that they also attend­ed. But the case went much fur­ther than that. The CPS argued that the SHAC cam­paign itself, in pub­lish­ing details of com­pa­nies on their web­site and encour­ag­ing peo­ple to protest against them, was guilty of black­mail. The effects of this legal ‘log­ic’ have broad impli­ca­tions for anti-cor­po­rate activists. For exam­ple, dur­ing the move­ment against apartheid in South Africa activists pub­lished details of com­pa­nies like Bar­clays Bank and encour­aged peo­ple to protest against them until they pulled out of South Africa. Was this an act of black­mail? Do cam­paign groups who pub­lish the names and address­es of com­pa­nies involved in frack­ing and encour­age peo­ple to protest against them run the risk of con­vic­tions for black­mail? Is activist secu­ri­ty a crime? The CPS’s case sum­ma­ry says that “Deb­bie Vin­cent has tak­en steps to con­ceal her crim­i­nal­i­ty by the use of encrypt­ed com­put­ers (she has failed to pro­vide the encryp­tion codes despite being known to have been using a total­ly encrypt­ed com­put­er short­ly before it was seized). Encrypt­ed stor­age media was found hid­den behind the kick­board of kitchen units at her address”. In high­light­ing this, the pros­e­cu­tors were imply­ing to the jury that Deb­bie had some­thing to hide. The impli­ca­tion that the tak­ing of law­ful steps to pro­tect pri­va­cy in the con­text of a con­cert­ed police cam­paign to mon­i­tor, crim­i­nalise, arrest and imprison activists seems laugh­able. How­ev­er, it is a well rehearsed argu­ment in ani­mal rights cas­es. The set-up The pros­e­cu­tion had evi­dence that Deb­bie had con­tact­ed the direc­tors of Novar­tis after the direct action against the com­pa­ny had tak­en place. How­ev­er, they had no evi­dence link­ing Deb­bie to the direct action itself apart from the cir­cum­stan­tial links to NS and SH. In order to try and strength­en their case, the police worked with Novar­tis to try to entrap Deb­bie and anoth­er SHAC activist (who was also arrest­ed but had his charges dropped, he will be referred to in this arti­cle as ‘X’) into admit­ting links to the rob­bing of the Vasel­la grave. SHAC had emailed Novar­tis, request­ing that they cease deal­ing with HLS. Andrew Jack­son, Glob­al Head of Cor­po­rate Secu­ri­ty at Novar­tis, replied and request­ed a meet­ing with the cam­paign. Jack­son said that this meet­ing would be to dis­cuss the issues raised in the email from the cam­paign. Deb­bie and the oth­er activist arranged to meet rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Novar­tis at the Le Meri­di­en Hotel in Pic­cadil­ly on 10th March 2010. Unknown to them, the com­pa­ny had arranged with the police to bug the meet­ing, and one of the peo­ple they were due to meet was an under­cov­er offi­cer, using the alias ‘James Adams’, who was mas­querad­ing as a Spe­cial Con­tracts Man­ag­er for Novar­tis. The activists were swept for bugs at the begin­ning of the meet­ing and each time they went to the toi­let. They were told that the meet­ings were strict­ly con­fi­den­tial. After the meet­ing Adams got in touch with SHAC again and said that “cer­tain things are out­side the para­me­ters of the dia­logue” and asked Deb­bie and ‘X’ to set up anoth­er meet­ing, encour­ag­ing them to com­mu­ni­cate with him via PGP email encryp­tion. ‘Adams’ was eager to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with Deb­bie and ‘X’ rather than through the cam­paign. The clear inten­tion was to coax the activists into offer­ing to secure the return of the Vasel­la remains. Through­out the dis­cus­sions in the meet­ings with Novar­tis, Deb­bie was clear that SHAC had no idea who took the remains and had no con­trol over them. ‘Adams’, the under­cov­er offi­cer, took the lead dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tions with Deb­bie. Accord­ing to Deb­bie, he asked “lead­ing ques­tions about whether we were the right peo­ple” to talk to. Deb­bie’s notes of the con­ver­sa­tion record her as say­ing: “We’re tak­ing a risk the way the legal sys­tem is in this coun­try to meet with you… [X] and I are painful­ly aware that going to these meet­ing with Novar­tis puts us in the spot­light, puts us at risk…” A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Novar­tis then says: “This is a con­fi­den­tial process…” In a lat­er email to the com­pa­ny, Deb­bie said that she had spo­ken to some of the activists con­duct­ing demon­stra­tions against Novar­tis and con­firmed that they had agreed to stop protest­ing should Novar­tis end its con­tract with HLS. Soon after the sec­ond meet­ing with Novar­tis Deb­bie met ‘James Adams’ on the under­ground, as if by chance. In fact he had fol­lowed her onto the train. He tried to broach the issue of the Vasel­la remains again but Deb­bie refused to dis­cuss the issue. Tar­get­ing of activists by polit­i­cal police units The arrest and pros­e­cu­tion of Deb­bie, and cas­es against ani­mal rights activists more gen­er­al­ly, are over­seen by spe­cialised polit­i­cal police units designed to pro­tect cor­po­ra­tions from pub­lic anger. In 1999 the Nation­al Pub­lic Order Intel­li­gence Unit (NPOIU) was set up fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of a Her Majesty’s Inspec­torate of Con­stab­u­lar­ies report, which claimed that some protest groups “have adopt­ed a strate­gic, long-term approach to their protests, employ­ing new and inno­v­a­tive tac­tics to frus­trate author­i­ties and achieve their objec­tives”. The NPOIU has been respon­si­ble for plant­i­ng under­cov­er offi­cers in protest move­ments. Deb­bie regards the use of under­cov­er offi­cers against her as a “sting oper­a­tion”. She said she believed that Adams was “clear­ly part of Nation­al Domes­tic Extrem­ism and Dis­or­der Intel­li­gence Unit”, for­mer­ly the Nation­al Domes­tic Extrem­ism Unit, “who are just a re-brand­ing of the Spe­cial Demon­stra­tion Squad and Nation­al Pub­lic Order Intel­li­gence Unit” and that “there is now a 25 year his­to­ry of unac­count­able prac­tice by a secre­tive and unac­count­able police unit”. Spe­cialised polit­i­cal police units aim to crim­i­nalise and imprison activists and neu­tralise polit­i­cal move­ments that pose a chal­lenge to cor­po­rate pow­er or oth­er aspects of the cur­rent sys­tem. ‘Decap­i­tat­ing’ the ‘lead­ers’ The strat­e­gy of the police units involved in over­see­ing Deb­bie’s case is explored in the Jan­u­ary 2013 edi­tion of the Euro­pean Jour­nal of Crim­i­nol­o­gy. It includes an arti­cle by John Dono­van and Richard Tim­o­thy Coupe. Dono­van is employed by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police ‘Ser­vice’. The arti­cle encap­su­lates the police and CPS’s approach to the SHAC cam­paign as one of “lead­er­ship decap­i­ta­tion”: “Police agen­cies com­bat­ing ter­ror­ist or organ­ised crime groups prin­ci­pal­ly employ intel­li­gence-led activ­i­ties (Innes et al., 2005) and covert inves­tiga­tive tech­niques for iden­ti­fy­ing group par­tic­i­pants and link­ing them to crim­i­nal activ­i­ties. These involve human sur­veil­lance, infor­mants and under-cov­er offi­cers, as well as covert, elec­tron­ic tech­niques, includ­ing wire-tap­ping, to mon­i­tor incrim­i­nat­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and under­stand mem­ber roles and ties in crim­i­nal net­works, such as the Neapoli­tan Camor­ra (Cam­pana, 2011; Cam­pana and Varese, 2012). As well as the arrest of mem­bers of ter­ror­ist groups who com­mit or plan crimes, lead­ers and upper ech­e­lons have been specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed in order to ‘decap­i­tate’ and weak­en or ter­mi­nate groups (Cronin, 2009; David, 2002; Jor­dan, 2009; Price, 2012), an approach still empha­sised in counter-insur­gency doc­trine (Hauen­stein, 2011). This was the approach adopt­ed by UK police in seek­ing to dis­rupt and ter­mi­nate SHAC’s cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion.” The CPS’s case sum­ma­ry claimed that Deb­bie was the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of SHAC in the UK. Alis­tair Nis­bet, the Senior Crown Pros­e­cu­tor in the case, said: “Fol­low­ing the con­vic­tion of SHAC’s main lead­ers in 2008, Deb­bie Vincent’s role with­in the organ­i­sa­tion grew. She became the pub­lic face of SHAC”. Of course, the police’s notions of lead­ers with­in the SHAC cam­paign betray a fun­da­men­tal lack of under­stand­ing of hor­i­zon­tal organ­is­ing by protest move­ments. Nev­er­the­less, this tac­tic of paint­ing indi­vid­u­als as lead­ers and tar­get­ing them is the strat­e­gy behind the police efforts to rail­road Deb­bie and oth­er activists to prison; an organ­ised attempt by the police to neu­tralise a polit­i­cal protest move­ment through the twist­ing of the law to imprison those who the author­i­ties label as ‘lead­ers’. Media green­scare So why aren’t more peo­ple ral­ly­ing to sup­port Deb­bie and oth­er SHAC cam­paign­ers? One rea­son is the police’s attempts to dis­cred­it the move­ment in the media and thus to lim­it pub­lic sol­i­dar­i­ty for those under their cosh. In the past, main­stream media scare-sto­ries about ani­mal rights and envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers have been found to have been fab­ri­cat­ed by polit­i­cal police units — see here. Dur­ing Deb­bie’s case the media cov­er­age was deeply offen­sive, defam­a­to­ry and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, focus­ing on the fact that Deb­bie had under­gone gen­der reas­sign­ment. The Mir­ror’s head­line was “The boy who grew up to become a woman of ter­ror” while the Dai­ly Mail ran with “Sex-change sol­dier who became an ani­mal rights ter­ror com­man­der” and made the unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claim that Deb­bie had “been attack­ing ani­mal test­ing labs for over ten years”. Deb­bie has already made a suc­cess­ful claim to the Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sion and forced the Mail to amend an arti­cle which erro­neous­ly linked her to the Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front and linked SHAC to a pre­vi­ous black­mail case against the Save the New­church Guinea Pigs cam­paign. This defama­tion in the press is undoubt­ed­ly stirred up by police press releas­es, aimed at gen­er­at­ing a neg­a­tive image of ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers in the media in order to lim­it pub­lic sup­port for the move­ment. It is of utmost impor­tance that anti-cor­po­rate cam­paign­ers are not tak­en in by this spin, which is designed to pro­tect cor­po­rate prof­its, and to stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with those expe­ri­enc­ing repres­sion. Pro­tect­ing cor­po­ra­tions from dis­sent Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies that are fac­ing pub­lic anger over their activ­i­ties have seized on Deb­bie’s con­vic­tion to fur­ther restrict protest out­side their premis­es. After the ver­dict in the tri­al, Novar­tis applied for a strength­ened injunc­tion under the Pro­tec­tion from Harass­ment Act (PHA) of 1997 against ani­mal rights pro­test­ers. It was grant­ed on 14 April 2014. The harsh terms of the injunc­tion were request­ed, by noto­ri­ous cor­po­rate lawyer Tim­o­thy Law­son Crut­ten­den, on the grounds that there could be a “back­lash that occurs after the sen­tence”. The PHA Act was draft­ed and made its way through par­lia­ment as a pro­vi­sion designed to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple from harass­ment. Before the law was passed, the media had been evok­ing emo­tion­al accounts of the effect of stalk­ing and the need to pro­tect vul­ner­a­ble indi­vid­u­als. The Act was nev­er por­trayed as a law designed to pro­tect cor­po­ra­tions and restrict protest. Yet, that’s exact­ly what its being used for. The new con­di­tions put in place by Novar­tis are an inter­im mea­sure and will be exam­ined at anoth­er court hear­ing. The inter­im injunc­tion has been made against ‘per­sons unknown’ but poten­tial­ly affects any­one demon­strat­ing against Novar­tis. It restricts demon­stra­tions to six peo­ple or few­er, in des­ig­nat­ed protest zones, with no ampli­fied sounds, and for­bids face-cov­er­ings or blood-splat­tered cos­tumes. Any­one deemed to have breached the con­di­tions can be arrest­ed and may face up to five years in prison. How­ev­er, last year a test case at the Old Bai­ley of two SHAC activists put into ques­tion the prac­ti­cal­i­ty of pros­e­cut­ing activists arrest­ed under PHA injunc­tions. See this Cor­po­rate Watch arti­cle for details of the case. Sol­i­dar­i­ty need­ed Deb­bie’s con­vic­tion is part of an ongo­ing cam­paign of repres­sion against the UK ani­mal rights move­ment. A fur­ther sev­en SHAC activists have been charged with ‘con­spir­a­cy to inter­fere with the con­trac­tu­al rela­tions so as to harm an ani­mal research organ­i­sa­tion’ under Sec­tion 145 of the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act (2005). The charges relate to demon­stra­tions against com­pa­nies with busi­ness rela­tion­ships with HLS. They are due to appear in court lat­er this year. For more infor­ma­tion on the ongo­ing repres­sion of UK ani­mal rights activists see the web­site: www.stopukrepression.org When we asked Deb­bie if she would need any par­tic­u­lar sup­port from peo­ple if she got a cus­to­di­al sen­tence, she replied: “Prac­ti­cal­ly, I’m not sure what my needs will be in prison, it will depend to a degree to where I go. I’m pret­ty sure I’ll be able to cope, but being iso­lat­ed from nature and friends will be the worst part. I will try to make the best of the bad sit­u­a­tion, it’s all a bit daunt­ing and new. The whole charge and court case are still amaz­ing­ly sur­re­al.” “Keep on cam­paign­ing against all oppres­sion and cap­i­tal­ist dom­i­na­tion. Don’t be afraid to speak out and nev­er apol­o­gise for try­ing to make a dif­fer­ence and car­ing.” To see a list of impris­oned ani­mal rights activists world­wide click here. Update: We have just heard that Deb­bie has been tak­en to Bronze­field Prison. Her pris­on­er num­ber should be avail­able soon.