A NEW APPROACH TO ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISM
by Andres Cameselle aka 'Solo'
reviewed by Steve Booth
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Early one sunny morning, at low tide, a lad was walking along the sea shore.
Every so often he bent down, picked up a starfish, and threw it back in
the sea. A man saw him and laughed patronisingly.
"What are you doing that
for? There are thousands of starfish dying on this beach. It won't make
any difference".
Picking up yet another starfish from the sand, and hurling it back into
the sea, the boy replied:
"It will make a difference - to that one".
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In his short pamphlet, 'Solo' argues against most present animal rights
expressions of protest and direct action, as being in the long run counter
productive. The big task is to change peoples' attitudes towards animals.
This is a grand and largely abstract project, affecting the whole of society.
It is too wide in its implications for our present forms of organisation.
The tactics and methods currently employed by the animal rights movement
address secondary aims and not primary goals. 'Solo' argues that the individual
animals rescued from laboratories are too small a thing to make any real
difference. Always, his argument comes back to numbers, as with that adult's
objection to the boy and the starfish.
Liberating animals from labs doesn't help because the labs simply buy in
more animals [page 15]. Similarly, protests against individual workers just
mean that when they quit new workers are hired. [page 10] Closing down places
like Hellgrove or Shamrock just means the labs and breeders move abroad
where there are even less regulations and no protesters. Economic warfare
is hopeless [p 5]. Targeting bankers and suppliers is "foolish" [p 11].
A small victory is no victory at all.
'Solo' rather believes in a campaign to change the public's perception of
animals through stalls and education. Thus, campaigns against a single lab
or breeder are a bad thing because they divert energy and attention away
from the main issue - they treat the symptoms and not the cause. Demonstrations,
liberations and ALF actions mean that the animal rights movement is all
tarnished with the same brush as extremists and irrational, violent lunatics.
Image is all. Solo does not believe that fascists infiltrating the animal
rights movement are a problem, because there are too few of them. Anarchists,
on the other hand, ought to be rejected. We are nearly everywhere and bad
for public image, especially the ubiquitous "A" in the circle logo.
With characteristic London-centred arrogance, Solo criticises protests at
labs "in the middle of nowhere"; nobody sees the demos, they just become
repetitive, ritualistic and often degenerate into anti police actions (!)
and give the movement a bad image. In his war of the Big Battalions, numbers
tell. Fifteen hunt sabs spend all day saving one or two foxes when they
should be out doing stalls. Stalls have more effect, he says. Animal liberation
is primarily a matter of changing public opinion.
If any of this has a point, it is that more should be done to educate the
public. Yet there already are excellent animal welfare groups like CIWF
and others who do this. Where 'Solo' is completely wrong, in my opinion,
is in his criticism of so much of the present form of the animal rights
movement. As with the 'Starfish' argument, real people are getting out there
and making a difference. Solo has a very negative view of our many successes,
it is all too little, and nothing less than total liberation will do.
This is a kind of absolutist all-or-nothing vegan vision, in some ways not
very far from the position expressed in the more extreme SARP newsletters,
the illegalist ones, but shorn of Barry Horne's emphasis on intense ALF
activities, with the passionate commitment and activity transferred across
to education, publicity and proselytisation. 'Spikies' at heart are posturing
excitement seekers, a kind of trendiness; whereas 'Fluffies' doing stalls
and writing letters are not so dramatic but achieve much more in the long
run. It reads rather like the animal rights movement equivalent of the story
of the campaign for 'Votes For Women' which might have been written by
Millicent Fawcett instead of Mrs Pankhurst.
In my opinion, most of Solo's arguments are false. He derides smaller goals
because he believes they water down his larger objective. Rather, in truth,
the only way we will ever get to a larger goal is through a long sequence
of smaller victories. If we take the "all or nothing" position, then we
will get nothing. Blinded by his belief that animals are more important
than people, I think Solo is wrong not to care about the many wonderful
animal rights activists as people in their own right. [page 17]. Solo is
wrong to claim that economic warfare is futile, [page 5] or that protesting
against individual vivisectors or suppliers is a waste of time. Another
false idea he has is that looking after animals in sanctuaries is a diversion
from the main task.
Much of what he says is disconnected from the reality of animal liberation
as it is in Britain, and its many achievements. In some respects, what he
says comes across as alienated sour grapes; he feels aggrieved that his
type of Deep Ecology veganistic world view isn't as far forward as (say)
the SHAC campaign. This ignores the fact that the very real progress of
SHAC has been won at a high cost; painful lessons, hard work, learning from
past mistakes, and sheer bloody-minded commitment over decades. Education
and publicity have also been tried, and have their value, we should not
underrate them. But we also need real improvements in the here and now.
Solo has no concept of the educative value of a cat farm or monkey breeder
centre closure.
Solo is completely wrong in asking the animal liberation movement to give
up its present approach. It is asking people not to use the best tools in
the tool box, the strongest weapons in their armoury; something which we
know is working. They aren't going to do it. I feel certain that Solo's
ideas will find few takers.
– Email: Stephen Booth
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