Lee Hall babbles on about how the Archdeacon of Walsall knelt on bended knee beside Gladys Hammond’s desecrated grave, but she fails to mention that the Rev. Jenny Lister vicar of Yoxall, who falsely accused an innocent protester, also bends her knee at what appears to be the wrong grave. Lee Hall claims that "locals pelted the parade with eggs and bacon," but I recall this as an isolated incident involving one man -- a local drunkard who more than likely would have pelted Elizabeth II with anything at hand had she unwittingly interrupted his drinking session.
If we followed Lee Hall's extreme pacifist philosophy, we would stand by and allow all manner of cruelty to be inflicted on animals. Her book is a nasty piece of fiction and propaganda, and she should be embarrassed for writing such drivel. Morris Dee's description of the “novel” as a “beautifully written book” and Steve Sapontzis’ description of it as being “informative” and “eloquent” shows that their level of intelligence is zero and along with Lee Hall they should be ashamed for promoting animal abuse.
Hall’s time would be better spent asking campaigners questions such as: Why do you find it necessary to go to the lengths you do? Why do governments insist on allowing the flawed and fraudulent science of vivisection to continue when they are aware of how many humans taking drugs tested on animals are killed every year? How do governments morally justify the violence (she is so concerned about) meted out to sentient creatures, purely for profit? And why does England sponsor an industry which keeps us a sickly nation, and which disease has the use of drugs tested on animals totally eradicated?
If Lee Hall’s account of the alleged grave-theft of Gladys Hammond is representative of her overall depiction of militant direct action, then the entire book is fraudulent propaganda and rubbish that the animal rights movement should dismiss as such. I have to conclude with the view of Steve Best and Jason Miller that she is a victim of the Stockholm Syndrome, given that she expresses far more hostility to militant animal rights activists than she does to the industries and individuals who breed, confine, torture, and slaughter animals for profit.
Janet Tomlinson
3. Lynn Sawyer
CAPERS OF DISINFORMATION AND LIES OF OMISSION
Lee Hall’s book, “Capers in the Churchyard,” came to my attention only when other US activists Steve Best and Jason Miller challenged it in their essays “Pacifism or Animals: Which Do You Love More?” and “Averting the China Syndrome: Response to Our Critics and the Devotees of Fundamentalist Pacifism.” Best and Miller should be thanked for bringing Hall’s book to the attention of people like me who until now have remained blissfully ignorant of this attack on particular on British activists by an American and the ongoing aggrandisement of her ideas in the United States. Much of her argument is based upon state propaganda of incidents which are supposed to have happened in the UK. She misleads not only by what she says, but also by omission.
Intrigued by what Best and Miller called a “bad” and “dangerous” (in its potential to mislead people about the character and nature of the militant direct action movement) book, I sent off for a copy and I have to say after reading it twice I personally found it irritating beyond belief. It is poorly researched, arrogant, simplistic, patronising, smug, and quite frankly the worst book I have ever read by another animal rights activist. This may sound harsh but Lee has to be challenged regarding her attacks on other activists.
According to Hall, people such as Michelle Rokke, who exposed HLS atrocities in an undercover investigation, and the ALF activists who rescued Britches (a baby macaque monkey who had his eyelids sewn together) are nothing more than a liability and “violent” because they upset the poor vivisectors. Hall seems to sneer at those who work 18 hour days in sanctuaries as nothing more than welfarists. Activists who are punched, kicked, imprisoned, and assaulted are not only architects of their own oppression but the oppression of everyone else!
It is important to question Hall because many activists in the USA appear to venerate her book, which is apparently is based on a pile of corporate lies. I was going to respond line-by-tedious-line, but life is far too short. Instead I will just do my best to counter what I know to be wrong with her conclusions and stress the fact that if we do not write our own history, people like Lee Hall will do it for us. Thank goodness for Keith Mann, whose book From “Dusk ‘til Dawn” (not to be confused with the George Clooney vampire flick) chronicles the history of the animal liberation movement.
I have no wish to criticize Lee Hall as a person, as I do not know her. But I am sure that she cares a great deal about the movement. First, let me say that there are some aspects of her book I partially agree with (for example I think that we should be professional on demonstrations and more approachable and that persuading people to be vegan is vital). In addition I completely agree with her abolitionist approach: we have no right to use animals at all and should leave wild animals be and stop domestic animal breeding to the point of extinction. But then this is the essence of animal rights believed by all animal rights activists, hardly a new idea. Even in a vegan utopia I think we should give assistance to wild animals who need it -- a beached whale, for example, a bird with a broken wing, or a merciful end to a deer with a broken and gangrenous leg. From what I understand, Hall would disapprove of these acts. I think as we are (whether we like it or not) part of the natural world we have to interact with our fellow travelers. After all, whales, turtles, and dolphins have saved the lives of mariners.
However, enough people are praising Hall’s book, and they are right to do so concerning maybe 10 of the 140 odd pages. But they probably have no idea of the omissions made in its creation, which I am in a good position to address. Thus, my task here is to challenge Lee on those omissions and her edicts on how activists should behave on pain of expulsion from the movement. Steve and Jason have done an excellent job on countering Hall’s pacifist dogmas, but I wish to add some additional points.
1. Violence. Hall is opposed to violence that is very clear and this is the issue her US critics are most concerned with. But what is “violence” or “force”? Hall does not enlighten us much, but she does include shouting, breaking the law, and upsetting those who wear fur or destroy forests. This is her opinion and she is entitled to it but it appears to come from an ivory tower far away from the reality of the streets and the fields. She seems to assume that the police/courts are always fair, that those who eat meat just need a few recipes to persuade them to become vegan, and that it is only animal rights militants who are ever violent. It would appear that she lives in a different realm than other activists because we always seem to encounter some mad f*cker called Jethro who is 6ft 6 (tall and wide) carrying a Chainsaw and a shotgun, whose favourite uncle is Chief Constable and head of the masons, along with all his mates ...who all know where we live. Yes, Lee, you persuade Jethro that his unappealing habit with badgers and sheep is wrong by giving him a recipe on vegan fruitcake; we will continue to rely on the fact that the only reason he hasn’t murdered us in our beds is because he thinks that we will invoke calamity and woe on him and his inbred clan if he tries it.
I have just started reading Mark Thomas’s book “Belching out the devil, global adventures with Coca-Cola.” For nothing more than profit, people, Thomas shows, are prepared to murder and torture trade unionists. This is what we are up against. If a gang of thugs can go around in Columbia torturing and killing without being brought to justice (and all over the globe), the only thing that will stop them is extreme violence -- NOT a vegan recipe! Would I cry if one of these vermin (who also infest Burma, Zimbabwe, China, etc. etc.) got shot dead by a would-be victim, errr…. NO!. With human rights we have much to achieve--slavery actual (as in a human being “owned” by another) and virtual (as in working in appalling conditions or facing starvation) still exist, women are stoned to death, and gay people are hanged. Torture is endemic. Where legal remedy and all else fails, violence against the perpetrators of human rights abusers is a very good option, and I think Hall might have a tough job convincing those who have saved their lives and those of their family through no other recourse than by killing a potential murderer/murderers that it isn’t.
Then we come to nonhuman victims where there is no universal declaration of rights or universally accepted recognition of suffering. If humans are treated like pieces of sh*t, other animals in their billions are even more at risk. Ordinary folk who are not animal rights activists do use violence to protect other species and if, for example, a group of drunken louts are torturing a dog in the park, what might stop them are several things: getting arrested (which potentially involves violence), talking to them to make them stop, or hitting them as hard as it takes -- and it would not take an animal rights person to do this. What would not work is trying to persuade them to be vegan or talking to them without them feeling that they would face serious consequences if they did not stop and hand over the dog. I would want such people to fear me when I approached them, as much for self preservation as anything else. They are quite frankly scum who will only understand violence. Yes they may change. I did. I stopped hunting, became vegan, and joined the animal rights movement because it made sense, because I knew in my heart what I was doing was wrong, and because of the robust challenge to hunting made by hunt saboteurs. These sabs by the way, and those who have done ALF actions, were not horrible to me. When they saw that I was serious about changing, they were kind and supportive; they were not interested in retribution but just in stopping people like me abusing animals. And they succeeded in my case.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
