Homeland Security and Counter Terrorism Animal-Rights Terrorism and the Demise of Political Debate Bill Durodié

inning over the many may be Estimated costs for the facility, including The Home Office decision to tighten-up W difficult but remains essential for measures to protect it, had spiralled from and strengthen existing police powers, defeating the few. £24 million to £32 million. however, may not satisfy scientists and businesses, who had been lobbying for This summer, the United Kingdom Home Nearby, Britain’s biggest new, more specific legislation. The Office launched a crackdown on animal- laboratory, Huntingdon Life Sciences, has proposed enforcement plans, which will rights protestors who intimidate or harass become an almost permanent protest include extending anti-stalking laws and people associated directly, or indirectly, site. There have been sporadic clashes making use of anti-social behaviour with experiments on animals. The move against the police charged with protecting orders to curb the activities of the more followed action against the construction the facility. Its director has been physically extreme elements, fall far short of of an £18 million biomedical research attacked, requiring hospital treatment, bringing in the army to protect supplies facility at South Parks Road in Oxford. whilst other members of staff suffer and facilities, as some had called for in This had led the main contractor, Walter continually from various forms of abuse. order to make the government show its Lily & Co Ltd, like the concrete suppliers support for such research. RMC before them, to pull out of the Over recent years, a small element within project to replace and update the univer- animal-rights groups appears to have Accordingly, this autumn, a leading City sity’s animal-testing facilities. started targeting suppliers, including of London organisation, whose members junior staff and their families, as well as control pension funds worth £650 billion, Both companies are subsidiaries of researchers, in their campaigns. They are are set to take matters into their own Montpellier plc, whose executive cars held to use smear tactics and threats hands. They argue that the UK has had been damaged with paint. The against staff and their children, bombard already lost over £1 billion in investment parent company’s investors had also them and their families with malicious as companies take their business else- received spoof letters purporting to come telephone calls, post and e-mails, and a where, dissuaded by the unreceptive from the senior management team, and tiny number have gone on to damage climate to their work here. It is claimed advising them to withdraw their interests property, use crude incendiary devices that they will be announcing details of a in the company or risk being identified on and launch physical assaults. £25 million bounty for any information a website run by activists. Why anyone leading to the arrest of the purported ring- would think that a company would Certainly, there would appear to have leaders. Notably, this is more than the threaten its own shareholders is not been a significant increase in both the reward available from the CIA for the evident, but this led to a 20 per cent drop number and severity of incidents capture of Osama bin Laden, which in the share price as some investors involving such campaigners. In the first currently stands at $25 million. bailed out. few months of this year there were 54 attacks on the homes of company direc- So, are animal-rights activists, terrorists Earlier in the year, Cambridge University tors and employees. By May, there had on a par with the likes of al Qa’ida? shelved its own plans to build a neuro- been 117 arrests, compared with 15 for Certainly they share a similar anti-human science study centre, which would have the same period in 2003. However, these outlook. But it is also clear that those housed a primate research laboratory. figures could also reflect more reporting criticising the protestors lack resolve This followed a similar campaign to that of such incidents, as well as a growing in winning this debate. Despite the in Oxford, made worse by five years of willingness on behalf of the authorities to horrendous-sounding nature of some of delay in obtaining planning permission. take action. the incidents concerned, it remains the

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case that they are few and far between. of regulation that would have precluded support, the authorities will continue to And there already exist laws to deal with many of the insights and advances we, lack real resilience in the face of a handful criminal damage and assault. The police and they, benefit from today. of activists and cave in too easily. themselves have estimated that there are Accordingly, those few who do raise their only 20-or-so hard-core animal-rights Despite accusations by some that such heads above the parapet are readily activists in the UK responsible for experiments do not transpose to under- targeted and live their lives under siege. carrying out such . standing the effects of drugs or other But the knee-jerk response, to secure products upon the human metabolism, society and its facilities from the outside, If the protestors succeed it will have less they have already led to treatments, rather than winning the argument from to do with their own ruthlessness and vaccines and cures for diseases and the inside, will offer little long-term organisation than with the defensiveness conditions such as polio, leukemia, benefit. Rather, we will all be losers from of those they confront. And this lack of asthma and diabetes. They remain a the assumption that a solution lies in real resilience goes to the very heart of necessary step to sifting out unexpected restricting the actions of a few. the issue itself – a reluctance by scien- reactions and identifying future potentiali- tists, corporations and politicians to stand ties. And without these procedures there Winning this fundamental argument up for the benefits and necessity of would be little hope for our future under- could offer any government that is truly animal research. For instance, some of standing of how to treat other human committed to engaging the public in a the advocates of animal research had afflictions, such as cancer, heart disease, dialogue, a tremendous opportunity to re- pointed to the fact that neither of the multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and establish some of the essential bonds of proposed new facilities in Oxford or Alzheimer’s disease. social discourse that have become Cambridge would have led to an increase eroded in recent years. It would also go in the number of animal experiments So, it is not violence alone that forces some way towards challenging the conducted. This rather concedes the some companies out of this market. For profoundly anti-human, anti-modern, point that there is a problem with such targeted individuals, the tactics of some anti-Western views of the animal-rights research in the first place. activists may well be intimidating, but it is lobby. These views are almost entirely the reluctance of government and the Western in origin and go on to inform Others have suggested that by closing scientists and corporations involved to other, more extreme, nihilist terrorists. down facilities in the UK, experiments will defend the principle of animal research simply be conducted abroad where, it is that provides an opening for cranky, Sadly, so far the response of the various assumed, regulation regarding animal immature threats, as well as extremists. authorities to the purported threat posed welfare is less stringent. Apart from the This situation is then further exacerbated to society by a tiny number of extremist stereotypically racist undercurrent to this by a stream of cancellations and conces- campaigners, rather betrays their own line of argument, it also lends itself to sions by the authorities concerned. It is sense of confusion and isolation. It is this considering that animal, rather than this moral and intellectual cowardice that crisis of confidence and insecurity human welfare, should be the priority. No they seek to compensate for through amongst the elite of society, and their number of expert or lay ethics commit- calls for legislative coercion. unwillingness to resolve this through prin- tees can get away from the fact that some cipled political debate that both under- experiments involve putting chemicals in It was the government that stalled on mines them and encourages others. animals’ eyes or planting electrodes in giving the go-ahead to the Cambridge Worse, by seeking to short-circuit or their brains. So there is little room for primate centre and it was the Labour bypass the internal process of political squeamish evasion by posing as cham- Party that withdrew its own pension fund engagement with the external imposition pions of . investment from Huntingdon Life of further rules and restrictions, they end Sciences, subsequent to being pres- up revealing a contempt for ordinary No scientist enjoys using animals in sured by the Political Animal Lobby. More people on a par with that of any terrorist. ■ experimental procedures, but nor should recently, it was the chair of the science they be forced, by adapting to the current and technology Commons Select guidelines that emphasise a strategy of Committee who declined to appear on Bill Durodié is Director of the refinement, reduction and replacement the BBC’s flagship Newsnight International Centre for Security (the so-called three Rs), to curtail the programme for fear of being targeted. Analysis at King’s College London drive to explore and innovate. Scientists where he coordinates the ESRC- themselves have been particularly poor at Without forcing a broader public debate funded Domestic Management of standing up against this sentimental tide on the matter and engaging wider Terrorist Attacks programme.

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