While the case of 4 ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers found guilty on “con­spir­a­cy to black­mail” charges in rela­tion to con­tract test­ing com­pa­ny Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS) that tests on ani­mals may seem unre­lat­ed to the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment the case has direct rel­e­vance to all rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists. The activists were con­vict­ed for their part in the now famous SHAC (Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty) cam­paign that’s stat­ed aim is to close down the com­pa­ny.

Fol­low­ing their con­vic­tions the media lam­bast­ed the activists for numer­ous unlaw­ful and intim­i­dat­ing actions tak­en against Hunt­ing­don and asso­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies. Many of these actions will be dis­taste­ful to some and there are many dif­fer­ing views on ani­mal research in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment how­ev­er this case has wider impli­ca­tions for activists across the board.

After a recent nation­al media arti­cle claim­ing a lone extrem­ist might be plan­ning an attack aimed at pop­u­la­tion reduc­tion was pub­lished, which NETCU appear to have had a hand in, some feel that NETCU (Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit) could be turn­ing their spot­light on the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment. Addi­tion­al­ly the polic­ing tac­tics expe­ri­enced at Cli­mate Camp indi­cate that ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers aren’t the sole focus of NETCU. If the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment is the new tar­get of NETCU this judge­ment should be tak­en seri­ous­ly by all envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

This case seems to imply that the “organ­is­ers” of rad­i­cal cam­paigns are ful­ly respon­si­ble for every­one that tar­gets the com­pa­ny that they are cam­paign­ing against. Indeed it is the case some cam­paign­ers act­ing against HLS and asso­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies used direct action and it’s true that the defen­dants did not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­demn this type of action either. How­ev­er what is being said is there is no evi­dence that the defen­dants were involved in or even incit­ed the actions list­ed in the media and which it seems they have been held liable for in court.

So what is to be under­stood by this case is that a rad­i­cal cam­paign, such as SHAC, Earth First or Cli­mate Camp is ful­ly respon­si­ble for the actions of all its sup­port­ers. It seems that a cam­paign is expect­ed to ‘con­trol’ activists and speak out against every ille­gal action they make or be faced with respon­si­bil­i­ty for the oth­er activist’s actions.

This will be a prob­lem for net­works and groups like Earth First and Cli­mate Camp the police need only arrest the group organ­is­ing the EF! gath­er­ing, the peo­ple who pro­mote Cli­mate Camp etc. and then hold them respon­si­ble for the actions of any­one cam­paign­ing on the same issue or using the cam­paign name, any­one tak­ing action against GMOs or who attacked the pow­er sta­tion dur­ing Cli­mate Camp.

The police no longer need to find and arrest the per­son who com­mit­ted the rel­e­vant action but can sim­ply imply that the cam­paign is respon­si­ble espe­cial­ly if the cam­paign sup­ports direct action or car­ries reports on such actions on their web­site.

On Mon­day 19th Jan­u­ary there has been a call out for a Nation­al Anti-Vivi­sec­tion Day of Action/Freedom to Protest Day of Action in sup­port of the SHAC activists that are being sen­tenced on that day. Because of the direct rel­e­vance of this case to envi­ron­men­tal­ists I ask that regard­less of your indi­vid­ual view­point on the SHAC cam­paign or ani­mal test­ing you do some­thing to sup­port the free­dom to cam­paign. This could be as sim­ple as ded­i­cat­ing an already planned envi­ron­men­tal action to the cam­paign­ers or hold­ing a small protest.

FREEDOM TO PROTEST NOW!

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State repres­sion of Anti-Cor­po­rate Dis­sent: Ani­mal right activists con­vict­ed of ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’

On Decem­ber 23rd, 4 out of 5 activists on tri­al at Win­ches­ter Crown Court were found guilty of ‘Con­spir­a­cy to Black­mail’ at Win­ches­ter Crown Court after a 3 and a half month long show tri­al. The world’s media, prompt­ed by police press offi­cers, were quick to con­demn activists by point­ing to harass­ment against the employ­ees of Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS) and their cus­tomers, share­hold­ers and investors. Actions against HLS, not linked to those con­vict­ed, such as hoax bombs, let­ters alleg­ing pae­dophil­ia, and threats were point­ed to as evi­dence of the defen­dants’ extrem­ism. Police spokes­men and the Nation­al Extrem­ist Coor­di­na­tion Unit (NETCU), the branch of the police set up to deal with the AR move­ment and oth­er expres­sions of the pub­lic’s dis­sent, hailed the con­vic­tions as a vic­to­ry. (For more infor­ma­tion on NETCU see here and here.

What was not exam­ined in the media was the wor­ry­ing devel­op­ment of the repres­sive use of the law which lead to the con­vic­tion of the four defen­dants.

Cor­po­rate Watch has fol­lowed the progress of the tri­al at Win­ches­ter since the begin­ning. The rea­son we were con­cerned about the tri­al is that we see it as part of a larg­er attack on the ani­mal rights move­ment moti­vat­ed by the state’s desire to pro­tect pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions against dis­sent. Since the ani­mal rights move­ment began to effec­tive­ly chal­lenge the prof­its of those involved in vivi­sec­tion and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try the state has repeat­ed­ly respond­ed with new repres­sive mea­sures. In May this year Sean Kirt­ley, an activist involved with Stop Sequani Ani­mal Tor­ture (SSAT), was sen­tenced to four and a half years in prison for updat­ing a web­site with news about a legal, non­vi­o­lent cam­paign to close down Sequani lab­o­ra­to­ries in Led­bury. Kirt­ley was con­vict­ed of ‘Con­spir­a­cy to inter­fere with the con­trac­tu­al rela­tions of an ani­mal research facil­i­ty under sec­tion 145 of the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act’ (SOCPA 145) . His only crime was to protest law­ful­ly against the lab and to update a web­site.

NETCU, how­ev­er, was not sat­is­fied with see­ing ani­mal rights activists banged up for four and a half years and chose to charge cam­paign­ers asso­ci­at­ed with Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty (SHAC) with ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’, an offence car­ry­ing up to 14 years in prison. In May 2007, police arrest­ed 32 peo­ple in raids dubbed ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’. Since then, 15 peo­ple have been charged with ‘con­spir­a­cy’ and are being tried in two sep­a­rate tri­als, of which this was the first.

The charges relate to over four years of con­cert­ed cam­paign­ing against HLS, the largest con­tract test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry in Europe. The defen­dants includ­ed peo­ple who had been involved in SHAC from the out­set. How­ev­er, two of the defen­dants, Ger­rah Sel­by and Dan Wad­ham, had been in their ear­ly teens at the begin­ning of the peri­od con­cerned and had only been involved for a short time. Wad­ham was only 17 when his part of the alleged con­spir­a­cy alleged­ly occurred.

SHAC, an inter­na­tion­al cam­paign group call­ing for the clo­sure of HLS, has been paint­ed by the police and the press as a ‘crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion’ dup­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic con­cerned with ani­mal abuse into donat­ing their mon­ey to fur­ther ‘a cam­paign of black­mail’. SHAC’s activ­i­ties, how­ev­er, have been over­whelm­ing­ly law­ful: the cam­paign pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion about ani­mal abuse inside HLS labs, reports cam­paign­ing activ­i­ties and issues action alerts call­ing on sup­port­ers to write polite let­ters to com­pa­nies work­ing with HLS and ask them to desist. If those com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to do busi­ness with HLS, protests would usu­al­ly fol­low. All mate­r­i­al on the SHAC web­site is checked by a bar­ris­ter and police are giv­en pri­or notice of their demon­stra­tions.

Cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers and share­hold­ers in HLS have also been the sub­ject of some direct action. Slo­gans have been daubed at com­pa­ny premis­es and employ­ees homes; cars have been painstrip­pered; hoax bombs have been sent and employ­ees have been accused of being pae­dophiles. How­ev­er, these actions are not direct­ly linked to the SHAC cam­paign and have only ten­u­ous links to the defen­dants, whose faces were spashed across many tabloid front pages after their con­vic­tions at Win­ches­ter.

Dur­ing the sum­mer, three defen­dants, com­mit­ted cam­paign­ers against HLS, plead guilty to charges of ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’. Dur­ing the tri­al, evi­dence recov­ered from the cam­paign PCs and activists’ per­son­al com­put­ers was pre­sent­ed. Police had found many doc­u­ments believed to have been per­ma­nent­ly delet­ed or shred­ded by their authors. This includ­ed a spread­sheet detail­ing names and address­es of peo­ple work­ing for com­pa­nies linked to HLS, details of direct actions car­ried out against them and a doc­u­ment con­tain­ing a pri­vate chat between activists appar­ent­ly talk­ing about direct action. This evi­dence may sug­gest that some activists had decid­ed to take direct action against com­pa­nies linked to HLS, but the evi­dence link­ing the defen­dants found guilty on 23rd Decem­ber to these doc­u­ments was cir­cum­stan­tial and, in some cas­es, non-exis­tent. Even if some activists linked to SHAC did decide to take direct action, this does not make every­body asso­ci­at­ed with the cam­paign guilty by asso­ci­a­tion. The pros­e­cu­tion case was that that the entire SHAC cam­paign was aimed at clos­ing down HLS, which is true, and that SHAC cam­paign­ers attempt­ed to per­suade com­pa­nies not to work with HLS, which is also true. The pros­e­cu­tion argu­ment, how­ev­er, went on to imply that, when com­pa­nies did not agree to cease trad­ing with HLS, they were the sub­ject of direct action. Often direct action did occur but this was not under the ban­ner of SHAC. More­over, SHAC did not pub­lish any infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies that was not already in the pub­lic domain. But because some activists, some­times under the ban­ner of the Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ALF), did take direct action, the pros­e­cu­tion argued that the SHAC cam­paign was facil­i­tat­ing direct action and giv­ing it its tac­it appo­val. The police went one step fur­ther and said SHAC and the ALF were one and the same thing!

Much of the evi­dence in the three-month tri­al was in rela­tion to law­ful demon­stra­tions against com­pa­nies linked to HLS. This was par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in the instances of defen­dants who could not be linked to the uncov­ered com­put­er evi­dence. In sev­er­al cas­es, the only evi­dence was what they had said at demon­stra­tions. Com­ments made by defen­dants dur­ing protests in earshot of the police were por­trayed as link­ing them to the ‘con­spir­a­cy’. Com­ments, such as “we know where you live”, were tak­en as proof that defen­dants were par­ty to the con­spir­a­cy. In any oth­er con­text, such spur-of-the-moment com­ments would have, at most, lead to minor charges in the Mag­is­trate’s Court. Equal­ly impor­tant was the fact that some of those con­vict­ed were linked per­son­al­ly to the defen­dants who plead­ed guilty. Heather Nichol­son and Ger­rah Sel­by had both shared hous­es with them. This was obvi­ous­ly a fac­tor in find­ing them guilty by asso­ci­a­tion.

So what does this mean for free speech and anti-cor­po­rate dis­sent in the UK? By the same log­ic, an anti-war cam­paign that pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion on the where­abouts of a mil­i­tary base or arms fac­to­ry and calls for its clo­sure could be put in the frame for the same crime if that base was then the sub­ject of an arson attack. All it would take would be for the police to imply that the peo­ple run­ning the pub­lic cam­paign are linked to those involved in direct action. Con­se­quent­ly, cam­paign­ers might feel com­pelled to pub­licly dis­tance them­selves from acts of direct action lest they find that, unbe­known to them, those respon­si­ble for the covert actions are involved in pub­lic action too and the whole move­ment is charged with ‘con­spir­a­cy’. In fact, the use of such charges is a clas­sic police tac­tic aimed at spread­ing para­noia and con­vict­ing as many activists as pos­si­ble for acts car­ried out by only a few. The aim is also to min­imise pub­lic sup­port for ille­gal actions by har­rass­ing and crim­i­nal­is­ing those who speak up in sol­i­dar­i­ty.

NETCU have already inti­mat­ed, for exam­ple in the recent Mark Townsend arti­cle on ‘eco-ter­ror­ists’, that envi­ron­men­tal or anti-gm pro­test­ers might be their next tar­get.

The con­vict­ed activists are now long peri­ods in jail, they will be sen­tenced on Jan­u­ary 19th. Heather Nichol­son, who was remand­ed after her arrest in May 2007, has already spent over 19 months in jail, longer than some con­vict­ed of seri­ous assaults or sex crimes would spend in prison. In May this year, Sean Kirt­ley, who was impris­oned for his role in anoth­er ani­mal rights cam­paign, was sen­tenced to four and a half years in prison on the same day that men who beat a man until he was blind received two years. Since ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’, the police have been pat­ting them­selves on the back for putting the ani­mal rights move­ment into ‘dis­ar­ray’. A NETCU source told the Observ­er in Novem­ber 2008 that the ani­mal rights move­men­t’s ‘ring­lead­ers’ had ‘either been pros­e­cut­ed or were await­ing pros­e­cu­tion.’ One may sus­pect that com­ments like these are more to do with main­tain­ing NETCU’s fund­ing than real­i­ty (see this Cor­po­rate Watch com­men­tary for more details).

In fact the attack on ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers does not seem to have lim­it­ed their capac­i­ty to take action. Reg­u­lar demon­stra­tions are still tak­ing place against com­pa­nies linked to HLS, with one planned for 29th Decem­ber.The ALF, which does not seem to be in need of ‘lead­ers’, has recent­ly freed 70 turkeys from a UK farm. If any­thing, the glob­al ani­mal rights move­ment seems to be grow­ing steadi­ly.

The deci­sion to try these cam­paign­ers for ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’ was evi­dent­ly a polit­i­cal one. Huge amounts of police resources have been poured into this pros­e­cu­tion, and oth­ers like it, at the behest of the Labour gov­ern­ment. This is due to the effec­tive­ness of the ani­mal rights move­ment in con­fronting and chal­leng­ing the pow­er of cor­po­ra­tions involved in ani­mal abuse. The demon­i­sa­tion of ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers in the media, facil­i­tat­ed by NETCU press releas­es, only makes it eas­i­er for the state to repress them with­out pub­lic out­cry. The con­vic­tion of the defen­dants at Win­ches­ter is yet anoth­er nail in the cof­fin of the pub­lic’s right to voice their anger and dis­sent against cor­po­rate crime.

For more info see Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty — www.shac.net

NETCU Watch — http://netcu.wordpress.com/

SCHnews — www.schnews.org.uk