Campaigning for animals
The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they talk? But, can they suffer? - Jeremy Bentham, Philosopher 1748-1832.
Winston Churchill said of Stanley Baldwin "He occasionally stumbled
over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if
nothing had happened".
I was like Stanley Baldwin but
2002 brought about a complete turnaround in my life. I had, in 1998,
given up eating red meat and after seeing the appalling treatment of
animals during the Foot and Mouth crisis, I also gave up eating white
meat and poultry. In September of 2002 I bit the bullet and abandoned
eating fish, after seeing footage of a tuna's futile and bloody
struggle against its captors, and reading about the pollution of the
world's oceans. Sadly, I returned to eating fish after being advised to.
In March 2003 I dressed up as a sheep and squeezed into the front
carriage of a Circle Line train along with 150 other 'sheep' to
demonstrate against the export of live animals: a totally cruel and
unnecessary practice - why are we exporting unwanted calves to veal
crates in Holland when we have banned these crates in this country
because they are so cruel. At this demo I met Christopher and Elizabeth
Campbell who have become good friends and who took me on another first
- an anti-war march, something I had missed out on in my mis-spent
youth! Walking from the Embankment to Hyde Park with hundreds of other
like-minded people to protest about the Bush-Blair plan to force a war
on Iraq was something I shall never forget.
But it was an anti-vivisection rally on 7th September outside the BBC
in Portland Place, followed by a march to Trafalgar Square which really
brought it home to me that fighting for the rights of animals not to be
hurt, frightened or abused is what I am here for. I felt proud. Proud
not to be eating the flesh of animals, proud to be defending them. It
was a defining moment.
Please do have a look at the links to my favourite animals campaigning
organisations. They do fantastic work but need all the support they can
get.
Students for Ethical Science - an Open University Society
SES
is an OUSA-affiliated society of students, former students (including
graduates) and staff from all disciplines, whose aim is to persuade the
OU, by peaceful means, to end its harmful use of animals in research
and teaching.
Our activities include gathering and
disseminating information about alternatives to animal experiments,
publicising the rights of students to demand these, and enabling
members to contact each other via the ‘SES Networking’ scheme. We
have stalls at OUSA Conference and OU Open Days, and send delegates to
the conference to put forward motions and speak on similar ones
submitted by others. In March 2003 I had the privilege of representing
them at the OUSA Conference in Eastbourne. We were successful in
getting two of our four motions through; the third was defeated and the
fourth fell due to the Steering Committee linking it to our first. In
2004 I was back and we successfully deleted a bad piece of policy,
against huge opposition from the Executive Committee who had failed to
do their homework!
In the following years we achieved success in the field of education, in that the student body supported our fight to stop the OU using animals in education, but we have not yet persuaded them that the use of animals in research into human health is a BAD thing.
I was briefly appointed to the OU's Animal Ethical Committee to
represent the views of the student body, via their decisions at
Conference, but that lasted only until the university decided to not have a student rep and changed the name of the committee.