THE PEACEABLE KINGDOM, DISRUPTED
The sabotage of a public talk at the annual Vegan Festival at London’s Kensington Town Hall -- and why it’s not just my issue

By Lee Hall - Sept. 2009


Travel back in time to the close of the 2008 London Vegan Festival. A throng of festival-goers moves out into the cool September evening and arrives at a nearby pub. Animated conversation fills the space. But after a few minutes, the mood turns tense. Someone has entered the pub in a fox stole. Conversation stops; anger takes over. The bartender frantically dials the manager, and the entire pub is closed for the night. What a bad taste in the mouth, after such a wonderful, delicious day.

Days pass, the memory fades. I report on some good things that took place that festival day. Nearly two thousand people came, joined groups, tasted foods, played music, laughed, learned, enjoyed. The vegan movement has so much talent, so much promise.

Fast-forward to the equally enriching and successful 2009 London Vegan Festival, which topped two thousand visitors and featured one of the best arrays of healthful, tempting food ever seen at the event, complemented by some intriguing presentations and workshop sessions. I was glad to be a part of it, and to offer a talk on the image of the Peaceable Kingdom and its use in animal advocacy.

But at least a dozen people had talked to each other over Facebook and planned to sabotage it. The point -- although these same people rail against police powers that shut down speech -- was to disable me from speaking.

Had the disruptive group wanted equal time and open discussion, they could have simply asked for a panel. I’m accessible, attending the festival and listed as a presenter annually, standing at a well-marked table in the main hall from the time the doors open. If not forced but rather asked, I would have been enthusiastic about such a discussion. There are also plenty of Internet channels available. If you disagree with someone’s written work, write a serious response. It can then be debated.

As for the disrupted talk that served only to squander time, someone wrote a description (on a US-run site) declaring that although I did not respond with anger, I was “full of fear.” Seems they were trying to project my situation as an example, a warning to others, when using their group-bullying to disrespect my talk, the people who wanted to hear it, festival founder Robin Lane, and the entire event.

And for what? To twist my criticism of coercive actions (not in this talk, but rather in Capers in the Churchyard, a book published by Friends of Animals’ Nectar Bat Press three years ago) into glorifying a long record of arrests, as one disrupter did, and saying that has led many people to turn vegan? As though the more police make arrests, the more vegan the world becomes? This makes no sense. Activist Donald Leung, a pioneer of the highly successful annual Vegan Pledge, posits: “Imagine a neutral person receives two pieces of news: one reporting a case of an animal-rights activist going to court, another regarding having a good time at a vegan event. Which would they be drawn to most? Which would they be most wary of?”

Another person expected me to have communicated with certain people before writing about them. Only one name was mentioned: Why I did not correspond with Joan Court? Wasn’t it rude or unfair of me not to do so? So let’s look at what I said about Joan Court.

My book reported that Court “won wide support in the nonviolent resistance against Cambridge University’s plans to build Europe’s largest primate laboratory, and earned the public approval of Oxford Green Party councillor Matt Sellwood.” Tsk. Tsk. And I didn’t ask Court’s permission to relay such a detail to the book’s readership. Indeed I went so far as to say this:

People who wonder if it’s possible to model determined activism -- without resorting to methods “equally unacceptable” to the ways of thinking that they’d like to change -- can take heart from people like Joan Court, a retired nurse who undertook a three-day hunger strike. Court, who once worked with Gandhi, sat at the primate laboratory construction site at Oxford University and slept in a nearby van at night. Interviewed by a newspaper reporter, Court simply explained, “Life is sacred and we should preserve it.” Court concluded the strike by eating a dish of vegan stew, thereby publicly connecting the brief strike with the idea of living day-to-day with moral purpose.


Court, evidently displeased to be admired, penned quite a nasty dismissal of my work for a militant blog. In other words, Court was critical of me -- not the reverse. I haven’t said a single disrespectful word about Court; nor do I intend to do so now.

During the minutes people were having a conniption about my supposed maltreatment of Joan Court, attendees were asking to carry on with the scheduled topic. One person told me of becoming a vegan after my previous year’s talk (having gained an understanding of the animal-use problem as one of domination). This person came into the room eager to get back to a question we tabled last year: vegans and cats. That topic was indeed part of this year's talk -- or would have been. But I decided, and the festival facilitators agreed, that the disrupters had made it impossible to carry on, and we cancelled the rest of the session.

I wonder how many other potential vegans were in the room this year. But on the festival founder’s Facebook page, Charlie, who agreed with the disrupters, said, “It’s not about going vegan at one of your talks.”

Perhaps some people are not aware of what vegan festivals hope to achieve.

“Without changing people forcefully the world will not entirely change!” Charlie exclaimed.

Sorry, Charlie. Pacifism -- not passivity, but dynamic pacifism -- will bring animal liberation as a natural consequence; force will bring about even more force, making animal liberation impossible. That is the view of the London Vegan Festival facilitators, and that’s why I came to do the talk there. By refusing to let me do this, the disruptive attendees stole from me and the people who wanted to hear and contribute to the presentation.

Charlie added that “the whole point of the animal liberation movement is to gain liberation for innocent animal life, not to gain public awareness.”

Sorry, Charlie. As nonhuman beings cannot free themselves, we humans must make the case for relinquishing our control over them. There can be no vegan culture (the only real animal liberation) unless and until we raise public consciousness. A successful social movement is accessible and sensible to the communities that need to join. We each have one life to give; the more vegans we can draw, the nearer we come to a social tipping point. So we are not just “waiting for the world to turn vegan”; we are working and organizing mightily to cultivate that world.

And nonhuman beings need much more profound change than dependence on human liberators. I support animal rescue, and live with rescued animals. I know each life is precious. I also know that rescuing animals from a social system in which they are officially commodities is like moving a beach a spoonful of sand at a time.

Put your energy behind a holistic movement for veganism and it will be possible sooner than you think. It had better be; the Earth can't stand our swelling population when we're linked to wasteful agribusiness and a dominator culture. Capers is one of the rare animal-rights books that at least begins a discussion of agriculture, the extinction crisis, and climate disruption as urgent issues for a modern animal-rights focus.

This is a discussion we need to have. Think about it. Not long ago, humanity thought our planet was the central point in the universe. We evolved mentally, and humanity can take the next step in its mental evolution now. The advocate’s role includes welcoming those ready to hear us out. As Donald Leung replied to Charlie, “To sabotage such a process and prevent the precious moment of change is, to say the least, counterproductive.”

John Curtin was in the Town Hall room, and could have said just what Donald Leung later did. I hope John Curtin will speak out consistently in the future. In 2004, John Curtin described the act of digging up the grave of Gladys Hammond, whose son-in-law was running a farm breeding guinea pigs for testing, as "repulsive". That’s basically what I said in 2006, in Capers in the Churchyard. Curtin, speaking to the BBC, did not attempt to prove anyone guilty. Neither did I. Both of us commented fairly on the use of intimidation to effect change. Regardless of who dug up the churchyard, each of us ruled out supporting such an act.

For the record: Yes, I’m praising John Curtin’s comment to the BBC. No, I didn’t ask Curtin’s permission first. I don’t ask everyone’s permission every time I mention them, and people usually don’t ask mine. But I do try my best to be respectful of those about whom I write. And as a vegan, and simply as a conscious being, I too deserve respect.

At the festival I got to speak with two of the people who came to help ruin my talk. One had “seen excerpts” of Capers. The other, a self-identified friend of a person imprisoned in connection with the churchyard desecration discussed in the book, said the book's cover tells enough about what’s in it.


May I offer a bit of advice? Because this happens a lot. It happens in academic circles too, people dismissing the book yet also saying they haven’t read it. So far, to my knowledge, two professors have done that too. If you are going to disagree with something, rule number one is you ought to be able to say you read it. Don’t want to purchase it from Friends of Animals and support our work to defend sea lions and sea birds, coyotes and deer and other animals? Then get a cheap, used copy. Use Facebook to plan a circulation of a shared copy. I’ll donate one to the cause. But at least read a book before you set about dissing it in public. Grapple with its actual points and ideas. Otherwise your argument is meaningless.

That said, I’ll respond here to a few questions that have come up repeatedly since the disruption in London:

You got a lot of your information for Capers in the Churchyard from media sources. How come you used such sources?

A key point of the book is about public perceptions, including media treatment, of various methods of activism. To make this point it was appropriate and necessary to show what the media were saying, how news outlets portrayed campaigns, and how public perceptions were gauged to have changed due to the media accounts.

Do you think liberations or economic sabotage are detrimental to the animal-rights movement?

Rescues from institutions, if the animals can be homed, help the animals directly saved. That said, sometimes they present drawbacks to the movement as a whole (depending on how the rescues are achieved) and can result in a situation in which the animals are replaced -- and those replacements are real individuals too. Unless public attitudes change, replacement of rescued animals will be typical (even if at a different site).

If anyone faces criminal charges, law costs must be paid by the activist or the movement as a whole and the activist could be disabled. Worse still, the government can seize the excuse to control activists. Laws that send increasing numbers of people to prison are terrible for all social movements and helpful to grow security companies worldwide.

There is no shortage of individual animals who could be rescued with permission; our hands would be full enough without taking legal risks to rescue them.

Full conscientious objection to animal use (becoming vegan and helping others to do so) weakens exploitive industries and spares animals from needing rescue. It also reduces our use of space; free animals can keep their freedom rather than being displaced by resource-costly industries (such as growing massive crops to feed cows). Veganism addresses symptoms -- whether climate change, human illness and hunger, or appalling living conditions for animals. But it simultaneously works at the roots of exploitation, for it interrogates domination itself. How could we challenge any use of animals as long as we subjugate them because we fancy the taste of their bodies and bodily fluids?

There are generally no drawbacks to vegan action. Legal penalties for going vegan are rare if they happen at all; and health, environmental and ethical benefits can form a base to press society away from every kind of exploitation -- vivisection and fox stoles included.

This does not mean we advocate simply going into our kitchens or behind our computers and forgetting about the current plight of an animal. We do not shrink from challenging specific kinds and settings of oppression. Many of us plan each day and our whole lives to further this social movement.

Are you against the ALF?

I’m not opposing the ALF but rather challenging counterproductive and ethically troublesome methods of activism -- no matter who promotes them. Into the eighties, Capers explains, “the Animal Liberation Front held fast to pacifist principles”; but the ALF has increasingly been pushed by its self-ordained spokespeople to promote military-style tactics that are morally offensive and at the same time easily turn a farmer or university lab into a public victim.

In light of critiques of your book, would you write the same book today?

I would. I learn from every discussion offered about the book, whether positive or critical. All have, in some way, enriched my thinking, and this will inform my future work. But the book’s ideas, the connections it makes as well as its recommendations, and its definition of animal rights -- I believe all are sound. At the very least they are worth serious consideration.

What message did this incident at the London Vegan Festival send to the animal-rights movement?

People acting through deceit, secrecy, and coercion display the opposite of what veganism stands for; this makes animal liberation impossible. Veganism should be seen as the norm, not a fringe, not something that is carried out in secret, and not a mean-spirited undertaking. It's disturbing that a clique planned an attack on non-violent veganism and its supporters, sad that a meeting open to the community was sabotaged. This shouldn’t happen, and it can only happen if other vegans sit on the sidelines. Make your voice heard. Stop giving supporters of coercive activism a free pass on discussion and news lists. Stop admiring them and flattering them. Stop believing the nonsense about being either with them or with the exploiters. Call them out, because all of that benefits hierarchy. I understand that the people who employ bullying methods are hurt, upset, and lashing out. It hurts us all. Ask them to check themselves and process the effects of what they are doing.

Veganism is conscientious objection to war: whether it be war between nations, or against other conscious beings, or against vegans ourselves.

Speak out, people. Don’t wait for the BBC to ask you if you’ve got an opinion about whether bullying is an acceptable part of an animal rights movement.

NOTES:
Lee Hall is legal director for Friends of Animals and a 26-year vegan. The 12th annual London Vegan Festival took place in Kensington Town Hall, central London, on Sunday, 6 September 2009. The BBC article quoting John Curtin is located at  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/staffordshire/3747064.stm. The primary reference discussed in this comment is Capers in the Churchyard: Animal Advocacy in the Age of Terror (published in 2006 by Nectar Bat Press). The book critically examines actions of the Animal Liberation Front, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, and several other animal- and Earth-advocacy groups and campaigns, in light of the goal of transcending human dominion over Earth and its nonhuman inhabitants.