The spokesperson for the UK-Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Robin Webb, a former member of the RSPCA’s ruling council, explains the ALF as being “the hard cutting edge of the war against abuse and exploitation of the weak and innocent, irrespective of gender, race or species. Education, outreach, lobbying politicians, sanctuary work and similar paths of action are all important in their own ways. But, history has shown, with the struggles against slavery and for the emancipation of women as two examples, that saying “Please” for change is rarely sufficient”.

The threat of violence from the ALF was a major factor that forced Cambridge University to drop plans for a controversial new neuroscience laboratory in January this year. While waiting for planning permission the costs to build, run and defend the lab escalated from £24m to £32m. The facility would have performed research upon monkeys brains in order to help find cures for humans with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and other neurological diseases. These are exactly the kind of facilities that animal rights campaigners such as the ALF wish to shut down.

The ALF have claimed responsibility for many acts of vandalism and sabotage at Universities and companies such as Huntingdon Life Sciences. Activists often target contractors and insurers, trying to ensure further facilities never get built. They have set free a great number of animals including thousands of mink that were to be killed and skinned in the fur industry during the late 90’s and destroyed hundreds of thousands of pounds of laboratory equipment and factory farming facilities. Before condemning these actions, it is worth looking at the reasons why the ALF believe that destruction of property and threats of violence are entirely justified.

Statistics reported by the Animal Procedures Committee, a department of the Home Office, show the extent of animal testing in the UK. In the year 2000 alone, 226,871 rodents, 18959 rabbits, 4030 dogs, 2524 non-human primates, 11808 birds, 7295 fish, 3204 other animals were all tested upon and then killed. The report says, on average 581,884 animals were used in toxicology procedures every year from 1995-2000. Of these animals, on average 3,000 primates are every year bred in captivity and used in experiments. The report also states that “the majority of project licences granted in the last 5 years have been in the moderate severity banding”. The report does not go into detail on what this moderate rating equates to, but it is clear that it is a subjective and comparative evaluation of the suffering endured by the primates.

This ‘moderate’ rating has been explored by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV). Their shocking undercover exposé of monkey brain research at Cambridge University in 2002 shows it to be a misleading term. The BUAV reports that monkeys had the tops of their skulls sawn off to be brain-damaged by either sucking out parts of the brain or injecting it with toxins in attempts to recreate symptoms of human brain disease. These operations took up to 8½ hours and there was no 24 hour care even for very recently brain-damaged monkeys. Many monkeys were put through several such brain operations. These brain-damaged monkeys were deliberately deprived of water for 22 hours a day, 5 days a week for months on end and forced to undergo repetitive tests in unfamiliar surroundings which they clearly found distressing. The monkeys spent the whole of their lives in cramped, barren cages. Both the BUAV and APC reports both focus mainly upon physical suffering, since these are easier, although still difficult to measure. What is unclear is the psychological trauma these monkeys had to endure.

In the face of this exploitation of animals activists such as those claiming to be part of the ALF feel they must act to alleviate this suffering. Robin Webb explains how this is done: “The ALF has had, and retains, an unchanging triad of policies. One, to rescue individual animals from suffering or potential suffering then place them in good, permanent homes or, where appropriate, release them into their natural environment.
Two, to damage or destroy property and equipment associated with animal abuse …
The third policy is to take every reasonable precaution not to harm or endanger life, either human or non-human”.

The ALF is a non-hierarchical organisation that wishes to end the exploitation of all animals including human beings. However it is misleading to talk about the ALF as an organisation, since there is no hierarchy or centralised leadership. There is no membership, only when an individual or group of individuals are enforcing the three policies of the ALF are they the ALF. It is not useful to look for leaders or a tangible organisation, since it is best expressed as an incorporeal philosophy based upon the emancipation of animals, including humans. They consider themselves to be the voice of the voiceless animals all around the world.

ALF philosophy draws attention to the problem of speciesism, an assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals. They believe speciesism to be as bad as racism and slavery especially when one considers that 650million animals are killed each year for food in the UK every year, the majority of which are factory farmed in terrible conditions.

It is clear that animals are being exploited for the interests of humans, since they would of course not consent to being tested upon or eaten. Where the main disagreement lies is with the cynical cost-benefit analysis that is used to justify the exploitation of animals. This argument can be formulated in the following way: Are the potential benefits to humans worth the great cost to the lives of many hundreds of thousands of animals every year?

Let us hypothetically assume the mindset of an ALF activist for a moment in the light of this philosophy. If we consider that every animal in the world has the right not to be eaten, the right not to be tested upon and exploited in any way, because they are sensitive and aware creatures, then we can then perhaps begin to understand why ALF activists are so passionate and violent in their quest for the emancipation of animals.