I wish the article would have talked more about the alleged danger this environmental group posed to warrant a 6 year plant like this. Did these environmentalists make threats, act on threats, how severe were the threats/actions? It just seems so overblown.
DanBC|10 years ago
Here's a different group from the 1980s.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19841227&id=...
They tried to dig up a corpse in order to send the head to a member of the royal family. That may have been posturing, but it's obviously going to draw law enforcement attention.
Here's another group that did dig up a corpse in order to blackmail a family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Save_the_Newchurch_Guinea_Pigs
There was a bunch of firebombing activity in the 1980s. The animal rights activists said the intent was to create a small fire that would be discovered by smoke detectors, triggering the sprinkler systems, causing water damage. This happened in department stores selling fur coats.
Animal Liberation Front pretty much started in UK, and some people claim it's caused many millions of pounds of economic damage. There are unacceptable levels of harassment and intimidation in some recent animal rights campaigns (and this is partly driven in changes to law which make protesting less legal).
So, police have these spiky things which they probably should be investigating. But it's hard to tell when someone has a "Rats Have Rights" mug whether they're a peaceful protestor using strictly legal means, or if they're going to become radicalised and start doing actions under the name of ALF. And police clearly didn't understand the mostly youthy animal rights movement in UK.
Anti hunt campaigns had uneasy alliances of anarchists, class war activists, and animal rights campaigners. Class War caused extra attention because their newsletter had "page 3 beauties" - photos of police officers who'd been hospitalised after violence, and they'd made many statements about being prepared to use violence against people. (Hunt saboteurs had strict rules about not using violence against people. There was some debate about whether it was okay to use violence to defend yourself if you were attacked by hunt followers.)
There were a bunch of legal, peaceful, campaigning groups that tackled things like vegetarianism and veganism; vivisection; primate rights; farm animal welfare. There were a bunch of groups that appeared to be peaceful but which were used as feeder groups to more extreme groups. (EG the National Front and British National Party set up an animal rights group, campaigning on ritual slaughter, to drive people to their fascistic groups.) And then there were the obvious activist groups who would raid laboratories. Some of those groups tried to use legal loopholes - they would enter a lab, not cause any damage or take any animals but take all the paperwork they could find, then scan and copy as much of the paperwork and then return the papers. Theft requires the intent to permanently deprive the owner. That tactic didn't work, they were caught and prosecuted, and so activists went back to liberating animals and causing as much damage as they could.)
If you're looking for an at the time account you could try to find back issues of "ArkAngel", which had debate and information about activist action.
speeder|10 years ago
Later they got backlash for stealing dogs, and not the rats and other un-cute animals, so they invaded again, and released all the other animals.
Then people started to notice that the stolen dogs were being released on the streets too, with the activists realizing they could not care for the dogs.
The laboratory if I remember correctly was working with antibiotics and some other medicine, meaning that people spread in nature diseased animals, or animals that needed medicine to survive anyway.
Ollinson|10 years ago