It’s reasonably difficult to unite the disparate partisans of town and gown in Oxford, but this mob have figured out how to do it.
The chants of ‘Oxford University: Animal Abusers! Oxford University: Animal Killers!’ went up outside the Sheldonian on Saturday. People were graduating, although the Oxford student the protesters decided to target wasn’t a graduand - just on her way to a function requiring sub-fusc.
The story has all the elements of a killer epic, though. And like so many of their ilk, the Animal Libbers’ exaggerated sense of moral certitude seems to have set many local peoples’ teeth on edge. We’ve had bombs in an Oxford college, chanting protesters swirling around the Examination Schools (during Finals, too) and the Bodleian Library shut down for ’security reasons’. And being fairly comical dopes, the building they managed to shut houses the University’s classics and philosophy collections. It’s the famous one featured in the Harry Potter franchise. Go figure.
The Animal Libbers also produced a peculiarly Oxford non-response. Seemingly incapable of defending their science or their ideas, the University’s Dons and Nobel Laureates finished up led by a 16 year old high school student who founded Pro-Test, a body supporting the Oxford Animal Lab.
Inevitably, too, there’s a peculiarly British political angle. Brendan O’Neill in the New Statesman had this to say after the first big Pro-Test demo:
It was the loudest, liveliest and most youthful demo I’ve been on in a long time. Its demands were progressive - in defence of ’science, reason and the welfare of mankind’, no less. And yet the left was nowhere to be seen. There weren’t any of those SWP placards that usually cluster around the merest sneeze of protest, and no veterans of 1970s splits bickering on the sidelines over whose position was most correct. It was a left-free zone.
That is because it was the demonstration to defend the building of a research laboratory at the University of Oxford, where experiments will be conducted on animals. And when it comes to animal research, the left keeps a cowardly silence or, worse, pitches its tent on the wrong side of the barricade.
Saturday’s demo was organised by Pro-Test, the brainchild of Laurie Pycroft, a 16-year-old boy from Swindon, who thinks it is time that progressives stood up to the animal-rights activists. About 700 people - students, academics, mums with sick kids and others - marched to the half-built lab, chanting catchy slogans such as: ‘Animal testing cures disease/Human beings before chimpanzees’.
I’m not convinced the political dimension is as clear as O’Neill makes out, but there’s no doubt some of the sillier and more obscurantist elements in the environment movement seem allergic to modernity and what it embodies. Sometimes, it’s almost as though they resent the fact that all those plasma tellies finish up in the loungerooms of people once considered ‘poor’.
There’s a public Facebook photo essay of Saturday’s protests available here.
UPDATE: The Pro-Test site is down, not sure why. It was fine when I wrote the post last night (UK time), but has fallen over since. With any sort of luck it’ll be back up soon.
39 Comments
It’s pretty comical. Again the Romance of Hardcore provides a great place for people who need to
feel morally superior to everyonefight the good fight.Goof fighting has nothing to do with victory however: 85% of Oxford student support animal testing. Well done ALF.
Still here’s the anti-testing ‘bad science’ page. You can tell it’s selective but it’s not entirely lacking in merit. It’s also more humane not to experiment on animals if you can help it.
My favourite sentence from the BBC piece is: “animals which will be treated extremely cruelly by men in white coats.”
White coats? Would it be alright if they wore tweed?
From commentary on the BBC piece:
A Student, Oxford
Well my advice to A Student comes from an incident at the Griffith Uni Hum Common Room. There was a particularly irritating young International Socialist - from UQ typical!!!
- who liked to come in with her megaphone and give us all lectures thru it. A swatch of damp newspapers in the business end is most effective. Alternatively there’s what Belushi does to the guitar in Animal House.
Remember to say sorry.
As the old poem goes, the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. So fanaticism trumps commonsense.
Keep the news coming through Helen!
They’re certainly very confronting, particularly for science area students. It’s much better than it was, though, mainly due to the noise and area restrictions imposed by the injunction. I wondered why the demo outside the Sheldonian never got that big - there’s a ‘no more than 50′ rule as part of the court order. Otherwise they just mob students and university officials - and do considerably more than get in our faces, too.
Templeton has large playing fields, and apparently that’s how the would-be bombers managed to get into their main building. It’s harder for them to attack the colleges in the city centre, so they go for college property - the Hertford boat house copped an arson attack. Not sure why it is, but the animal libbers over here are really over the top.
I’m opposed to pseudoscience generally, so find the ALF types irritating from a skeptical point of view (as if we don’t have enough to deal with when it comes to the anti-vaccine and intelligent design crowds). I doubt I’d have cared enough to take pictures and write this post if I hadn’t been hauled out of Hall by the incredible racket and rudeness on display.
I remembering the BBC doing a feature on this about a year ago, and the protestors seemed pretty ridiculous.
You should check out some of the short-stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, while he’s from the environmental activist bent, he parodies a wide variety of different targets, from parodies about consumerism to new-age shysters of various bents. I particular like the stories of the delusions of the more conceited over-the-top environmental activists. I think the story of the raid of the Hedda Gabler FreeRange Turkey Ranch is the funniest I can remember, I think it is in the “Without a Hero” collection.
But I’d also recommend Boyle’s parody on wannabe beat-poets - now there is a tiresome breed that needs scientific experiments carried out, we might see if it is possible to extract an original thought out of such poseurs.
Wonder if they’ve dug up any good graves lately?
As Deus said, these people are more than just annoying, they are utter fruitcakes.
Sadly the Victorian Greens want to ban the use of DDT to control feral animals even though it has been instrumental in bringing many native animals back friom the brink of extinction, eg. through Western Shield- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Shield
However plenty of fair dinkum conservationists like myself see animal libbers as they truly are- that being a clique of reactionary rightists, like this Thatcherite turkey- http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DF163DF93BA3575AC0A96F958260.
I’d never drag you in with this lot, Steve - we may disagree on many things, but I suspect nutty animal libbers isn’t one of them. Also to be fair, the weirder aspects of animal libbing seem to be less common in Australia among people of a greenie bent - although that’s just my observation, and you may have encountered some nutjobs in your travels.
BTW Deus’ link is seriously disturbing, Yobbo is dead right.
Munn
Your link doesn’t open up.
“a clique of reactionary rightists, like this Thatcherite turkey-”
You commie idiot, get your definitions right when you’re attacking your political enemies. Thatcher was no reactionary.
———————-
Sl.
He only likes indig fauna. Kill a possum and Munn is your enemy for life. Little bastards are always on our roof. One of these days I’ll hand grenade them even at the risk of taking out the entire family while sleeping
“Also to be fair, the weirder aspects of animal libbing seems to be less common in Australia among people of a greenie bent”
When you’re not a mental health expert all lunatics seem the same, as it’s hard to categorize demented fools and offer a proper diagnosis. Just refer to them as morons- a catchall phrase that captures all green mutants in one lump of messy poo.
Is your sagging arse still glued to your swivel chair, Guiseppe?
I advocate the culling of native animals in certain circumstances including possums, koalas, kangaroos etc where they are degrading the environment.
“One of these days I’ll hand grenade them even at the risk of taking out the entire family while sleeping”
What a sick comment even if it’s supposed to be a joke. You are now perfectly credentialed to run as an LDP candidate.
I don’t own a hand grenade Munn and never will, now turn off the moralizing you mirthless rag doll as it really does get to grate on people’s nerves. I was a joke.
You may want to explain to us why exactly you suggested that non link of yours was anyting to do with Maggie T.
“I advocate the culling of native animals in certain circumstances including possums, koalas, kangaroos etc where they are degrading the environment.”
Yea, but not those sitting a roof and keeping you awake 1/2 the night.
Oh and since when have you nature lovers been given the friggen right to decide what dies and lives. ANd what exactly do they degrade other than eating.
This is senseless killing. I see it even worse than sports shooting. It’s really quite sick.
#6 – Wow! Amazing. Six years spent fighting a war against guinea pig breeders the evil scum. And they won. They broke in and freed 600 guinea pigs. Be free guinea pigs, free lunch for owls and rats and dogs and cats.
Sorry JC, but you are just plain wrong at #12. I know I’ve been ignoring you of late, but this is too important an issue to let slide. Yous say: “I was a joke.” Clearly this is absolutely wrong and the public record must be set straight. On the evidence of today’s outpourings (not one sensible contribution on any thread) you “joke” status remains intact. Therefore the present tense is called for in that sentence. And it really is quite wrong of you to be attempting to mislead the Catallaxy reading public. Let the record show, JC, you are a joke.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DF163DF93BA3575AC0A96F958260
You know Metro Mick the only way you ever try to make headway is when you try to slime people through word plays and little tricks.
You really are pathetic.
You spent two weeks trying to slime a poor woman every single day- even enlisting the assitance of Pointess pontificator- until you were told to go get medication for you obsession. So don’t try to turn things round on me you baseless moron.
#13 is JC against culling native animals when they become a problem?
Or just against it because Mel is for it?
Let’s see if it works this time:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DF163DF93BA3575AC0A96F958260
Guiseppe, wear ear plugs and leave the possum alone.
You’re sliming Alan Clark, now munn. The guy was all that is great about British eccentrics and human uniquieness.
When he’s dead!
Neither Steve. JC wants to genetically modify native animals so that they will stop being part of the food chain and drink camomille tea with their oat cakes before beddie byes.
Oats aren’t part of the food chain?
Steve
Why exactly is it necessary to cull these animals?
Munn says because they degrade the environment. Again all that shows is the personal preference issue i keep mentioning when it comes to the selfish green movement.
The envirnoment is a natural “culler” of fauna. When there are too many lots perish as there isn’t enough food.
More to the point it fucks up the evloution process good and proper when you think about it.
Over time only the stronger of the species would survive with natural culling. All we’re doing is incubating stupidity in other species by preventing evolution to do its thing.
These greens are real toal morons, i have to say.
On the one hand they’re telling us man is adversely affecting the environment but on the other hand they’re out there killing species if they think there are too many of them. Is it a large number thing? Greens can’t count?
Evolution is prevented to do its thing with this culling crap.
Generally its because the population has run rampant because of some external influence, the classic ones being kangaroo numbers being so high because of farming increasing the water supply.
Which is why we cull 5 million plus roos a year.
Roos and crocs and numerous other critters.
But the point is that are preventing their adaption through the only way they can achieve it… evolutionary change.
that’s the trouble with the cancerous green movement, even the critters have to suffer statist intervention by being shot on sight..
Ummm………. we are
Well generally its farmers who like culling roos. Nor do I think it was greens shooting the crocs either.
Steve
Munn spoke about how culling needs to be done to “save” the environment from degradation. Lot’s of culling happens for that reason.
Sure and some of it is requested by farmers who don’t want plagues of roos to destroy their land.
Yes, but why the senseless killing Munn supports.
Oh and by the way, the whalewatchers (greenpeace) were holed up in a milk factory today protesting the use of GM food…. one main thing that would limit land use. Green movement- as malignant as can be.
On topic, please people - you know who you are. This isn’t the open thread.
Jeesh. Stop spoiling the fun, SL
Munn is off topic even when he’s on topic whereas I’m on topic even when off topic. that’s just the sort of guy I am compared to the Munnster.
Roo tastes great, btw. If you haven’t already tried it, do so. Good stuff. There, now I’ll have Animal Libbers leaving death threats in my pigeon hole
Sorry but I thought JC seemed to be taking the animal lib position there with his line about the cruelty in culling which was somewhat of a surprise to me.
Anyway I thing we are fortunate in Aus not to have been as badly afflicted by the type of extremist animal lib groups that they have in the UK. I mean the people digging up graves is just unbelievable.
Roo tastes great,
True.
The grave-digging kind of takes the biscuit, doesn’t it. Even though bombing colleges, bricking windows and burning down boat-houses is objectively far more dangerous, there’s something really creepy about digging up someone recently interred. Makes the skin crawl.
Steve
look, I think killing animals for things other than necessities is one of the most disgusting acts a humans can perform.
Culling easily falls into that category when the issue of degradation comes into it.
Humans will always come first, but critters come a close second.
I think killing animals for things other than necessities is one of the most disgusting acts a humans can perform.
Such a softy. And just when I was thinking of inviting you ’round for some kitten croquet.
The Pro-Test site is up again - well worth a look-see.