Shactivists do Hampshire

We started our morning by popping into Cardinal Health on the outskirts of Basingstoke, as usual this demo point is a great way to kick start the morning by letting them know we haven’t forgotten about the lab they use to test products on innocent baboons, puppies and kittens. About an hour later, after welcoming the workers back from their mid morning fag break we headed just around the corner to our next target.

Or next demo was at Steris, this sick company also pay HLS to employ drunks, druggies and registered sex offenders to test on animals. As soon as we had set up our banner and started to talk about the atrocities inside HLS over the megaphones, employees flocked to the windows to see what all the commotion was. After the initial excitement all the workers were very conveniently relocated to offices away from the front windows, but this didn’t stop us distributing leaflets to all who passed by.

Then we headed into the centre of Basingstoke to see Barclays, the sicko bank who invested $8million of shares in HLS. Their building is big and shiny and made of glass and it is yet again disgusting proof of what blood money can buy you. After being there around 30 minutes we were ready to leave. We were well over 100 leaflets less than when we arrived and we had had nothing but support from the people of the town, but the police showed up and told us that they were going to get everyone arrested for holding a banner if we didn’t put it away. They were claiming that the same banners which were used on over 700 demos last year were causing alarm, distress and harassment and they were certain they could arrest us for it. Not ones to be bullied around by the police, especially because we knew they were wrong about the banners, we stayed over another hour to politely argue our case with them and disperse loads more leaflets and information. The people of Basingstoke were very obviously more distressed by the police’s over reaction than to our peaceful and legal demonstration.

Our next demo was another Barclays building in Alton. This area is much quieter and so out of respect for the local people, we turned our megaphones right down and proceeded to let everyone know exactly what kind of people have shares in HLS. The reaction from this usually subdued and quiet town was great. A man who had been putting up posters for a touring all human circus joined in with educating people at what little respect Barclays had for animals. One woman went in demanding to speak to the manager and gave her nothing short of a piece of her mind and another lady was so shocked and appalled by what she had seen that she DEMANDED her account be cancelled with immediate effect. It made our whole day worth it. To see that SHAC works and companies who deal with HLS are losing friends at an increasing pace.