Ted Benton

Simon Redfearn

The Politics of Animal Rights—

Where is the Left?

At the beginning of 1995, in the midst of a generalized governmental crisis,

with accusations of ‘sleaze’ and corruption in high places, historically high lev-
els of unemployment, fears about the commercialization of the health service
and unprecedented government unpopularity, the political system was sud-
denly rocked by an explosion of protest—about the live export of veal calves!1
Much of the reaction of the Left has been, predictably enough, sceptical and
dismissive. Even Red Pepper, the leading forum for red/green politics in the uk,
concluded a survey of the new wave of protests in sharply disdainful tones:

Any genuine, lasting results from the new wave of grassroots activism can
only be welcomed. But the much-vaunted empowerment of middle-class,
middle-aged, Middle England can be easily over-rated. Come the next
election, the insurrectionary deeds could well be just a hazy memory.
Many will doubtlessly retreat behind their net curtains again and vote
Conservative.2
43
Interestingly, this scepticism was not widely shared among the estab-
lished media, most of which was initially sympathetic in its coverage of
the protests. A relatively little publicized boycott of p&o and Sealink
ferries had begun in 1993. When, in October 1994 these companies dis-
continued live exports, the trade was taken up by smaller operators,
using minor ports and airports. Mass protests at Shoreham began early in
January of 1995, soon followed by commencement of live export of sheep
from the small port of Brightlingsea on the Essex coast. Massive, and
generally sympathetic news coverage followed the tragic death of one of
the protesters, Jill Phipps, at Coventry airport at the beginning of
February. Probably as a result of the protests, Shoreham stopped exports
of live animals in June, but the exports, accompanied by daily pickets,
protests and blockades continued at Brightlingsea throughout the
spring and summer until the exporter’s announcement, at the end of
October, that it would be ‘suspending’ its operations. Exports from
Dover continue to be contested by demonstrators, including contingents
from Brightlingsea.

As the protests continued, shifting news values and the evolution of the
issues at stake rendered media coverage gradually more complex and dif-
ferentiated, but it remained far removed from the hegemonic hostility
which has characterized media treatment of industrial action by workers,
as well as other more obviously comparable forms of protest action, such
as those of campaigners against the Criminal Justice Bill, hunt saboteurs
and motorway protesters. It is also significant that no major public fig-
ure disputed the moral case advanced by the protesters, though there
were numerous attempts to discursively reconstruct the issue. One of the
most concerted of these was to link compassion and high standards of
animal welfare with national identity: ‘we’, of course, long ago banned
the rearing of veal calves in crates. The export trade continues only
because we have so far failed to persuade other European countries to fol-
low our example. For the Euro-sceptics on the Tory Right, the issue,
constructed in these terms, was a gift: if it were not for trade regulations
imposed on us by Brussels bureaucrats, we would be free to ban this dis-
gusting trade.

For the government itself, the European dimension was a useful way of
deflecting the issue from its own jurisdiction: the protesters should join
us in attempting to persuade other European publics and governments
to abandon these cruel practices. The chief government spokesperson on
the issue, William Waldegrave, was somewhat undermined by the
widely reported discovery that calves from his own farm had been sold on
into the export trade. Even the main farming lobbies affected moral con-
cern for the calves, but posed the protesters with a practical dilemma.
The export trade in veal calves is largely a by-product of the dairy indus-
try. If farmers are not to dispose of their surplus male calves in this way,
what are the alternatives—slaughter of these calves immediately after
birth? Morally regrettable though the trade is, all of us who consume

1 The authors wish to thank the Brightlingsea activists for giving their time and

thoughts, and also Robin Blackburn and David Fernbach for their helpful comments
on an earlier draft of this article.
2 Red Pepper, 10 March 1995, p.15.
44
dairy products must acknowledge that we are implicated in it, no less
than the farmers. Meanwhile Labour called for changes in the Treaty of
Rome, for tighter regulation of animal transport, and for a ban on the
veal trade. On the 30th January, the Financial Times led on the issue with
a critical discussion of the moral case itself. In the view of the Financial
Times, the case for extending the concept of rights to animals is shaky and
incoherent. However, that we have a moral obligation not to mistreat
animals does have the virtue of coherence. This is a distinct moral argu-
ment, but whatever its merits, it does not legitimate attempts by pro-
testers to prevent the exporters from ‘pursuing a legal trade’. The
separation which the Financial Times leader effects, between the question
of the moral status of animals, on the one hand, and the political and
legal issues and conflicts surrounding this status, on the other, is an
important one. As we will be arguing, failure to recognize its signifi-
cance is one reason why the Left has so far, and for the most part, failed to
address the ‘animals issue’. But before we develop this argument, and
provide our evidence for it, it will be helpful to set the recent wave of
protests in their context.

Compromise and Concealment

There is, of course, nothing new about campaigns against animal cruelty.
One of the most influential commentators on attitudes to nature in early
modern times, the historian Keith Thomas, notes that urbanization
increasingly distanced a growing human population from direct involve-
ment in instrumental and exploitative uses of animals. Even in the urban
setting, of course, animals continued to be used for transport and as
beasts of burden, as well as for food. As late as the 1840s, Engels vividly
describes the practice of keeping pigs in the courts between the cottages
in the working-class districts of English cities such as Birmingham,
where they would feed on the putrefying animal and vegetable waste of
the inhabitants. But Thomas’s point is that the new urban setting also
provided conditions for a new kind of sensibility to animals to emerge,
especially among the middle classes, on the basis of non-utilitarian rela-
tionships with animals. Primary among these new relationships was pet-
keeping. This practice:

Encouraged the middle classes to form optimistic conclusions about animal

intelligence; it gave rise to innumerable anecdotes about animal sagacity; it
stimulated the notion that animals could have character and individual person-
ality; and it created the psychological foundation for the view that some ani-
mals at least were entitled to moral consideration.3

There were, no doubt, other sources of a changing moral sensibility with

regard to animals. The Protestant sects were in the vanguard of the
changes, and this may have been connected with their association of
cruel sports with base human pleasure, whilst other authors have con-
nected legislation against cruel sports with a concern to discipline the
pleasures of an unruly and threatening working class. Also, a broader
cultural association emerged between civilization and a greater ‘human-
ity’ in our dealings with animals. Whatever its—probably overdeter-
3 K.
Thomas, Man and the Natural World, Harmondsworth 1983, p. 119.
45
mined—sources, there is general agreement that the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth century did see a shift towards a more expansive concern
for the well-being of non-human animals. However, this new sensibility
continued to coexist with—even to indirectly depend on—practices of
utilitarian exploitation of animals as sources of food, means of transport,
objects of amusement and so on. Already, in early modern times, a cul-
tural contradiction is set at the heart of the civilization. This is how
Thomas characterizes it:

The early modern period had thus generated feeling which would make it
increasingly hard for men to come to terms with the uncompromising methods
by which the dominance of their species had been served. On the one hand they
saw an incalculable increase in the comfort and physical well-being or welfare
of human beings; on the other they perceived a ruthless exploitation of other
forms of animate life. There was thus a growing conflict between the new sensi-
bilities and the material foundations of human society. A mixture of compro-
mise and concealment has so far prevented this conflict from having to be
resolved. But the issue cannot be completely evaded and it can be relied upon
to recur. It is one of the contradictions upon which modern civilization can be
said to rest. About its ultimate consequences we can only speculate.4

Thomas’s ‘compromise and concealment’ is a cogent summary of subse-

quent responses to this contradiction. On the one hand, increasing regu-
lation of the uses of captive animals in the laboratory, legislation of
minimal standards of animal welfare in farms and zoos, growing legal
enforcement of the responsibilities of pet-owners, and so on. These are
the compromises. On the other hand, the ‘core’ areas of material exploit-
ation of animals as sources of food, knowledge and profit are increasingly
sequestered from the public gaze. Ironically, the secrecy and defensive-
ness of the animal research laboratories is legitimated by the invasions of
the animal liberationists. Meanwhile, the institutional forms and the
marketing images of the meat industry conspire to ensure that the
‘process disappears into the product’ still more decisively than is the case
with all other commodities. Increasingly the consumers of meat buy it in
highly processed forms, packaged in such a way as to offer as few
reminders as possible of its status as a part of the corpse of a dead animal.
Traditional practices of plucking, skinning and disembowelling of birds
and animals for the table are increasingly transferred from the domestic
scene to the processing industry. Meanwhile, dairy products are mar-
keted with images of ‘laughing cows’ dancing happily in sunlit flowery
meadows. These are the contemporary forms of ‘concealment’.

The Intensifying Reification of Animals

But the situation has changed significantly since the period described by
Thomas. The contradiction he identifies has deepened in ways which
render the tactics of concealment and compromise ever less effective as
forms of avoidance. The instrumental and exploitative side of our rela-
tion to animals has, indeed, been subjected to a framework of public
regulation. However, any benefits this may have had for animal wel-
fare should be set against the changes both in scale and intensity of
animal ‘husbandry’ practices since the nineteenth century. The shift to
4 Ibid.,
pp. 188–9.
46
commercial agriculture in early modern times may well have had bene-
fits for animal welfare, as farmers and stockmen increasingly saw their
animals as valuable assets whose needs had to be met if they were to repay
the costs of maintaining them. Also, husbandry practices tended to allow
at least some species of domestic animals to live something quite close to
their mode of life prior to domestication. Workers employed to take care
of animals acquired knowledge, skills and, often, powerful bonds of
affection and responsibility for the animals. But these practices were pro-
foundly transformed with the intensification of rearing regimes and the
growing internationalization and monopolization of the agri-business
sector which took place from around the time of the Second World War.
In the new indoor regimes, animals and bird are kept in wholly artificial
environments, deprived of all but the most minimal opportunities for
physical movement, and prevented from establishing normal patterns of
social behaviour. These conditions cause acute stress, pathological
behaviour, and increased vulnerability to disease. In general, the indus-
try has responded to these problems, in so far as they clearly affect prof-
itability, by ‘technical fixes’ such as ‘debeaking’ of chicks, extensive use
of antibiotics, and genetic research and innovation. Although these tech-
nical problems implicitly acknowledge the status of farm animals as liv-
ing beings, the whole dynamic of postwar technical reorganization of
these labour processes can legitimately be described as one of growing
‘reification’. Farm animals have become objects of economic calculation
and technical manipulation, like any other material input factor.
Meanwhile, the division of human labour in animal ‘husbandry’ has
become transformed in ways which obstruct the formation of long-term
affective ties and craft knowledge which characterized previous forms of
animal ‘husbandry’.

In the face of intensifying reification and growing concentrations of eco-

nomic power in the food industry, the animal-welfare lobby has fought
long and hard for effective regulation to impose constraints on the most
extreme and systematic abuses. But, as Tim Lang and others have shown,
the lobby is up against immense odds in the context of a wider climate of
trade liberalization, the transnational organization of the food industry,
and the power of the agri-business lobby itself both at the level of indi-
vidual nation states, and the European Union.5 There is evidence that the
turn to direct action on the part of the animal welfare lobby is at least in
part a response to growing frustration at failure to make headway by
more orthodox means of exerting pressure.

Pets and Media Fodder

If the tactic of ‘compromise’ is in crisis because of the combined effects of

a more ruthlessly reifying ‘material’ dimension in the exploitation of ani-
mals, together with a more powerfully organized and politically inacces-
sible food industry, the tactic of ‘concealment’ is in no better shape.
Here, we need to take into account two dimensions of change in the cul-
tural context of the ‘animals issue’. The first is the long term, diffuse cul-
tural shift in attitudes to and beliefs about animals, the early stages of
which are described by Keith Thomas. A key moment in this shift was
5 T.
Lang, ‘This Meat Business’, Red Pepper, 13 June 1995, pp. 33–5.
47
the popular diffusion of Darwinian evolutionism after 1859. From then
on, it became a commonplace of secular opinion that humans are
descended from ape-like ancestors, by way of an evolutionary mechanism
which implies that all other animals are our more-or-less distant kin.
Despite the immense cultural struggles which have been waged ever
since to appropriate Darwinism for the service of one or another political
tendency, few now seriously doubt this central proposition, with its pro-
found implications for our place in nature. The later studies of animal
behaviour in the wild, the emergence of the science of ethology,
premised on Darwinian assumptions, established the social, psychologi-
cal and emotional richness and complexity of the lives of other animal
species. But the unparalleled opportunities for popular diffusion of these
new ways of thinking about animals provided by advanced photographic
techniques, film, and, above all, television have brought these ideas into
almost every home. Again, however dubious and contestable the cultural
‘scripts’ which are woven into the new genre of wildlife programmes,
they cannot fail to communicate a view of animals as sentient beings,
often possessed of social and emotional propensities readily intelligible
from the standpoint of human experience.

During the same period, the practice of pet-keeping, to which Thomas

assigned so much importance, has become, in many Western countries,
something close to a universal cultural ideal. In particular, its status as a
specifically middle-class practice has long since been transcended. Again,
a whole panoply of periodical literature, television programmes, chil-
dren’s stories, not to mention the advertising of the manufacturers of pet
foods and other accessories, complements the pet-owners’ direct experi-
ence of the sentience and companionability of non-human honorary mem-
bers of the household. Perhaps, too, we should note the specific
association between pets and children: having a close relationship with
and being allocated responsibility for caring for an animal in the house-
hold is increasingly a formative experience for children of all social classes.

This cultural shift, with its various practical, cognitive and normative
sources has also become intertwined with another deep cultural change,
one which is perhaps less universal, but nevertheless very powerful. This
is the emergence of a transnational consciousness of adverse human
impacts on the environment. The emotional sources and tone of this new
consciousness are quite different from those associated with animal wel-
fare. What is often experienced is not so much a spiritually generous
compassion for the needless suffering of a sentient being, but often a
directly felt panic about our destruction of our own ‘life support’ systems
in nature. But no matter how different their sources and forms of cultural
and political expression, the new ‘green’ sensibilities do converge with
the politics of animal welfare in their shared rejection of the hitherto
hegemonic conception of humans as set apart from and above the rest of
nature.

These broader, more diffuse and long-term cultural shifts all take us in
the direction of respectful, compassionate, convivial, and even egalitar-
ian relations with non-human animals. The gulf between the material
basis by which our civilization feeds itself, and the system of meaning
through which it understands its relationship to the rest of nature
48
becomes ever deeper and wider. Since this ‘material basis’ is nothing
other than an appropriation of that ‘rest of nature’, this gulf is quite pro-
perly described as a contradiction. Still, it does not quite follow that the
tactic of ‘concealment’ can no longer do its job. What might be the
prospects for an indefinite coexistence, in separate cultural spaces, so to
speak, of intensifying reification, and growing conviviality? Here we
come to the second of the two shifts in the cultural context of the animals
issue which we signalled above. This is the work of the animal welfare
and rights campaigners themselves, who have used the techniques of
investigative journalism to expose to public view the widespread abuses
of animals in agriculture and in research laboratories. None of this could
have happened in the absence of the cultural shifts which have produced
a receptive and responsive audience, not to mention broadly sympathetic
communications media. But neither, of course, would the upsurge in
public concern on these issues have been possible without the work of
social movement ‘moral entrepreneurs’ who have succeeded in breaking
the barriers between the ‘exploitative’ and the ‘convivial’ domains.

Philosophy and the Moral Standing of Animals

Even this, however, would not have been enough without a further cul-
tural condition. Many non-Western cultures assign special symbolic
importance to particular species of animals and birds, and there are often
associated practical constraints, such as taboos and rituals governing
relationships with these species. However, these practices and beliefs do
not generally take the form of universalistic moral rules. It would be
illogical, but by no means sociologically or anthropologically surprising
to find a cultural ‘double standard’ applying to different animal species.
Indeed, we do find this within and between contemporary Western cul-
tures. The British find something disgusting in the French habit of eat-
ing snails, but regard oysters as a delicacy, while the eating of horses is
considered an abomination, but the eating of beef a prerequisite of man-
hood. There are, then, numerous cultural resources in terms of which
compassion for the members of one animal species might be prevented
from seeping out to affect feelings for another. We might care passion-
ately about our dogs, hamsters and budgies, but remain indifferent to
the fate of cows, chickens and pigs.

Here it may be that, notwithstanding a tendency for postmodernists to

recruit animal politics to their cause as instances of a politics of diversity,
a universalistic form of ethical reasoning is crucial for the emergence of
the new politics of animal rights and welfare. The latter presupposes a
free flow of attitude and feeling from the human to the non-human, and
from the domesticated to the wild, from the household to the farm and
the laboratory. It relies on a sense that all these differentia, along with
the differentia of species, are irrelevant to an underlying commonality of
moral consideration. Among the traditions of Western philosophy, the
one which is most directly open to the extension of moral concern to
non-human animals is utilitarianism. In its classic nineteenth-century
versions this moral theory identified the good with pleasure and the
absence of pain. Morality and legislation could be put on firm rational
and scientific foundations, in so far as actions could be objectively
assessed in terms of their contribution to the totals of pleasure and pain
49
in the world. Against the prevailing Western ontological separation of
human and animal natures, Jeremy Bentham famously insisted on the
inclusion of animal pleasure and pain within the utilitarian calculus. The
point was, not could they reason, but could they suffer. The most widely
cited philosophical work in contemporary animal politics—Peter
Singer’s Animal Liberation—is also within the utilitarian tradition, and it
may be that the animal welfare movement’s concern with animal suffer-
ing is a measure of the pervasiveness of utilitarianism as the ‘common
sense’ of secular morality.6

The Rights of Animals

Of course, there are other philosophical and theological sources which

have been drawn on by protesters—non-Western attitudes to nature
widely appealed to in green and ‘New Age’ circles, heterodox readings of
the Christian tradition, but, perhaps most influential of all, the language
of ‘rights’. We say ‘language’ of rights since it is often not clear how
much of the moral and legal import of the concept of rights can be
retained beyond the species boundary, but that the phrase ‘animal rights’
has wide currency can hardly be denied. The most rigorous case so far
made for the extension of rights to animals is to be found in Tom Regan’s
The Case for Animal Rights.7 Regan shares some standard philosophical
objections to utilitarianism as a moral theory, such as that it appears to
licence what would be recognized as intrinsically evil acts, if it can be
shown that they would increase the total of pleasure in the world. Regan
appeals to a rival moral theory, according to which acts may be inher-
ently good or bad, at least to some degree independently of conse-
quences. The belief that some beings are inherently valuable, and so have
a right to be treated respectfully belongs in this tradition. Historically,
the ethics of the ‘rights’ tradition have been markedly anthropocentric.
To qualify as an inherently valuable being one had to possess ‘reason’,
‘autonomy’, ‘moral agency’ or some other capacity generally restricted to
humans.

Regan gets ‘rights’ across the species barrier by means of two tactics.
One is to soften the qualifying criteria, whilst drawing on the post-
Darwinian understanding of animal psychological complexity. Though
animals are not moral agents in the full sense, they do have enough
sense of self as persisting through time, ability to express preferences
and so on to be said to have ‘interests’, which may be harmed or
favoured by human agents. Such beings are said by Regan to be ‘sub-
jects of a life’, and on this basis they count as bearers of rights. The other
tactic is to point out that the more narrow qualifying criteria tradition-
ally employed in the rights-tradition succeed in excluding non-human
animals from the status of rights-holders, but at the cost of also exclud-
ing some categories of humans. That is to say, there are many human
individuals—the severely psychologically damaged, very young infants
and others—who do not possess the full attributes of rational autonomy
and moral agency. Do we deny that these individuals have rights? On
the contrary, it might well be argued that it is just because of their lack of
6 P.
Singer, Animal Liberation, second edition, London 1990.
7 T.
Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, London 1988.
50
these attributes that they are in special need of the protections offered
by the attribution of rights.

Regan and those who follow him in extending rights to animals do so

because they consider that this is a way of entrenching much more pow-
erful and all-encompassing forms of protection than can be offered by the
traditionally more moderate linkage of utilitarianism and animal welfare
reform. There is also the added benefit of latching on to the currently
near-universal moral priority attached to human rights. The strategic
limitations of tying the case for animals to the concept of rights are, how-
ever, quite considerable. One is that the case for extending this concept
over the species boundary is much harder to make than the utilitarian
reliance on mere sentience, something which hardly anyone nowadays
would deny. The Financial Times leader is evidence of the way this can be
used against the protests. Another limitation of the ‘rights’ strategy is
that in its most fully developed form it demands equality of considera-
tion between animals and humans, and so demands both social transfor-
mations and lifestyle changes of very fundamental kinds. This means
that only quite small minorities of people who are prepared to adopt a
vegan diet, avoid all animal products in their choice of clothing, and so
forth, could go along with the ‘rights’ perspective with a good con-
science. Another problem with the ‘rights’ perspective is that it accords
moral status to non-humans only in virtue of their psychological resem-
blance to humans—it offers nothing at all to animals not conforming to
the ‘subject of a life’ criterion, and it is quite difficult to reconcile with a
broader ecological morality.

The Brightlingsea Protests

Now what the controversy over animal ‘rights’, and the disputes over
human and animal equality have concealed from view is the emergence
of an unprecedented consensus on the more basic issue of whether animals
are proper objects of moral concern as such. This is not, of course, to deny
that animal abuse is still widely practised. However, the symptom of the
value-shift is that such abuse no longer dares to speak its name. The
defenders of blood sports insist on their efforts to minimize animal suf-
fering, the defenders of vivisection do so on the basis not that animal suf-
fering is insignificant, but that it is necessary to preserve us from some
greater harm. So, whether animals have rights is strongly contested, but
that humans have an obligation to treat them well is publicly denied by
almost no-one. Although the protests against live exports have been
loosely trailed as about animal rights, they have, in fact, in their objec-
tives—if not in their campaigning styles, and moral tone—stayed firmly
within the utilitarian–welfarist tradition. One newspaper reporter glee-
fully played with the irony of protesters taking a break from struggling
with the police to hungrily consume hot bacon rolls. There may be irony
here, but no real contradiction. The campaign has been focused on a spe-
cific, rectifiable abuse. Many of the protesters do, of course, take a much
deeper ‘rights’ position, but the limiting of the protests to identifiable
‘welfare’ targets has been crucial in maintaining the breadth of public
support which the campaign continues to enjoy. A large poster draped
from a Colchester pub read: You Don’t Have To Stop Eating Meat To
Care—Ban Live Exports.
51
A sample survey of Brightlingsea residents was commissioned by the
Town Council, and carried out by Eric Tannenbaum of Essex
University’s Government Department during May 1995.8 Among other
things, this survey attempted to discriminate between morally based and
‘nimby’ opposition to the export trade. They found 71 per cent opposed
to the trade wherever it took place, with a further 6 per cent opposed to it
if it went through Brightlingsea. Of course, it would be a mistake to
jump to the conclusion that this 6 per cent represents the nimby vote,
and it would also be wrong to overlook the role of ‘localist’ sentiments
for the other 71 per cent. This is a complex issue to which we will return.
For the moment it is important to note the huge majority feeling against
the live export trade. Only 8 per cent were reported as not being at all
opposed. A subsequent qualitative study, involving more open-struc-
tured interviews with protesters confirmed the clear implication of the
sample survey that opposition to the export trade crossed the political
spectrum. The regular public meetings organized by bale—Brightling-
sea Against Live Exports, a local ad hoc organization formed just before
the first convoy of live animals was turned back in January 1995, but
later disbanded under the threat that the police would use the Public
Order Act against the protesters—drew huge attendances, and were
addressed by, among others, politicians of both the Right and the Left.
All of this, together with the initial media coverage suggests that the
moral case for animal welfare is close to a national consensus, and that it
is not, as a public issue, identified with the Left or the Right. Its status in
this sense as ‘non-political’ has, arguably, been of considerable impor-
tance in maintaining the wide public support, both locally and nation-
ally, that the protests have achieved.

All of this might seem to confirm the appropriateness of much of the

Left’s distanced, and even contemptuous response to the protests—
notwithstanding the vote for a ban on live exports at the 1995 Labour
Party conference. For some on the Left, those who choose to protest
about animal suffering in the context of high unemployment, growing
polarization between rich and poor, systematic threats to the welfare
state, human rights abuses and so on, display a bizarre sense of priorities.
The widespread media images of the protesters as Tory-voting ‘middle
England’ has served to confirm leftist suspicion, even hostility. But this
response is a superficial one. For one thing, it assumes a narrowly ratio-
nalistic and inappropriate view of the sources of political commitment—
a view that the interview material we present below powerfully refutes.
It is true, also, that there is no ‘natural’ affinity between the politics of
the Left and the moral case for animals. However, as we have seen, the
moral case on behalf of animals is a powerful one. But here, as elsewhere,
good moral arguments need to be complemented by sound social,
economic and political analysis and strategic thinking. When we start
to think of animal welfare in the context of the structure of economic
interests involved in intensive agricultural regimes, food production,
processing and distribution, for example, it becomes clear that the newly
emergent moral sentiments come into conflict with the same old class
enemies of the traditional Left. In short, whilst the moral case for animal
8 E.
Tannenbaum, Animal Transport Through Brightlingsea: Report of an Opinion Survey,
Department of Government, University of Essex, 1995.
52
rights is one the Left must take far more seriously, the forms of social and
political analysis developed by the Left are also a valuable resource for the
further development of the politics of animal rights.

The Radicalization of Protesters

That the project of a broader coalition of the Left and social movements
such as this is not mere wishful thinking is illustrated by our interview
material and, to a lesser extent, by the sample survey. There are four fea-
tures in particular which suggest that campaigns such as the port
protests hold significant possibilities of politicization of previously ‘non-
political’ people. Moreover, there are dynamic tendencies in the form
taken by this politicization which are very favourable for the Left.
However, there is nothing automatic about this, and much depends on
how far significant currents in the Left, most obviously the green Left,
are prepared to address the issues posed by the new ‘animal politics’, and
to acknowledge the seriousness of the transformation of the political
agenda that these issues imply. The four features we have in mind are,
first, the shifting forms of self awareness which come from participation
itself. Central here for those—the majority—for whom this was their
first protest action, was the displacement of popular stereotypes of pro-
testers as ‘weird’, different and ‘other’, so opening up the possibility of
ways of identifying with other, more distant struggles previously closed
off by media stereotyping.

This takes us to the second feature, the heightened consciousness of edi-

torial practices, and development of critical skills in analysing media
coverage of events in which they had themselves taken part. The third
feature was the massive and widespread transformation of perceptions of
the police and ‘law and order’ which took place from the initial use of
police in riot gear very early on in the protest campaign. This spread out
into an intense local debate about civil liberties, public order and the
wider judicial system, against the wider backdrop of the campaign
against the Tory government’s so-called Criminal Justice Bill. Fourth,
and more manifestly tied to the substantive aims of the demonstrations,
many protesters reported having undergone extensive soul-searching
about their lifestyle, and had gone on to call into question the whole sys-
tem of intensive food production, and the wider system of power and
property whose interests it serves. Several protesters, former Conserv-
ative voters, declared themselves as having been ‘pushed to the Left’ by
their experiences, or as no longer being able to vote Tory. But others,
previously supporters of other parties, or determined non-voters, also
reported significant changes in their political outlook as a result of tak-
ing part in the protests.

First let us consider the direct implications of participation itself. Our

interviews are full of testimony to changed consciousness. Though most
of our interviewees became progressively better informed and more con-
cerned about animal-welfare issues as their participation in the protests
continued, a surprising proportion had not initially joined the protests
because of this concern. Others mentioned the issue of live exports as
only one of the reasons why they felt they had to be there. One inter-
viewee, a builder, had started to go on the protests out of curiosity, then
53
out of feeling for the animals, and, finally to exercise his right to protest
in the face of negative police behaviour. Several of the protesters for
whom the animal-welfare issue was now central had not been aware of it
until the protests began. One pensioner who had been involved in the
action from the first day had only heard about live exports at the first
public meeting: ‘To be honest, I have never thought about the way
things were killed and treated until this came up. I buried my head in
the sand.’ Another commonly stated motive for involvement, alongside
concern for animal welfare, was a sense that civil liberties were under
attack, and that police tactics had been unacceptable, so that it was
important to take a stand.

Here, as elsewhere in the interview responses, there was often a signifi-

cant element of ‘localism’. It was the experience of being ‘pushed around
by outsiders’ that caused resentment. Also, the fact that the export trade
was being conducted through their own town was clearly significant for
most of the protesters. For some, this acknowledgement took the form of
a more or less shame-faced confession that they would not travel else-
where to protest, and that if the trade were moved elsewhere ‘a lot of
Brightlingsea people would say, “Right, it’s out of Brightlingsea, let’s
forget about it”.’ This comment was from someone who had participated
in earlier protests, unconnected with the animal trade, against heavy lor-
ries passing through the town to use the port. This earlier protest had
failed to mobilise such large numbers of local people, and had also been
experienced as divisive within the community. Nevertheless, there was
evidence that this broader question of the local environmental impact of
the port continued to play a part in the current wave of protests. In other
interviews, the ‘localism’ of the dispute was presented in a more positive
light. The fact that the trade is happening locally forced people to take a
stand: ‘When something is on your doorstep, you can protest because it
is there’. Proximity was seen as a feature which not only enabled previ-
ously ‘non-political’ people to get involved, but also gave them a
stronger sense of their moral responsibility to do so: ‘How awful, it’s
happening here. The fact that it was a long way away [Shoreham] didn’t
seem to register in the same way’.

The Shifting Identity of New Activists

The sample survey revealed that some 46 per cent of the population of
Brightlingsea had attended at least one public meeting, and 40 per cent
had participated in at least one of the daily anti-lorry protests. These are
remarkably high levels of participation, and they suggest that the shifts
of consciousness which are revealed in our interviews may have, to a
greater or lesser extent, been widespread through the rest of the com-
munity. Perhaps the most significant of these shifts was one of iden-
tity—to see oneself as a protester, as someone taking action on a public
issue. Some of our interviewees had been active in other campaigns—
with Friends of the Earth, at Greenham Common, or on Anti-Nazi
demonstrations. One had been involved in another earlier action at
Brightlingsea, the miners’ picket. However, most reported no previous
political action and some had not even cast a vote at elections. For these
newcomers to activism, there were clearly deep effects. As we shall see,
these included changed perceptions of the issues directly at stake, and of
54
the police and the media. But there were also elements of self-revelation:
‘I don’t mind what I say to the police now. I’ve said a lot of things that I
never thought I would say to anyone’. And, again: ‘Do you know X?
She’s got the mauve hair at the front, earrings through the lip. I never
thought six months ago I would be sitting in a pub, laughing and joking
with someone like that’. Another protester, who had been brought up
with ‘racist tendencies’ recalled seeing Asian riots on television. As a
result of his experiences at Brightlingsea, he felt they might have a legit-
imate grievance, and that the police might have aggravated the situa-
tion: ‘You look at things different’. Yet another, who saw himself as
non-political—but later turned out to have been a life-long Tory
voter—confessed that he now felt guilty about believing media coverage
of the miners’ strike, and for having written off the mass pickets at
Brightlingsea in those days as ‘rent-a-mob’.

Media Criticism

This takes us on to the wider question of the shifts in perception of the

media evidenced in our interviews. Some interviewees conceded that at
least some media outlets had given the issue fair coverage, at least early
on, and there was evidence of considerable sophistication and discrimi-
nation in comments on this topic. However, three main areas of criticism
were frequently voiced. These were, first, that police violence was not
shown and injuries sustained by protesters were not covered, whilst
media attention was lavished on one policeman who was injured. One
older protester with no previous history of activism put this down to
police influence on media editorial decision-making: ‘The police have
picked out what they wanted to show. The tv has shown what the police
said they could show. They have had to cut out the pieces that would
have been to our advantage’.

A second complaint concerned media stereotyping of protesters: ‘They

pick out people with long hair, or green hair. It’s giving the wrong
impression . . . It is important if they are giving the wrong impression
because that is how we will get support’. Another protester noted that
the press tend to target ‘punky types’, and that ‘a lot of people from out-
side still think we are a load of purple-haired New Age travellers’. There
was a clear awareness that representations of protesters as ‘other’, as a dis-
tinct cultural type, different from ‘ordinary’ citizens played an important
role in obstructing wider public identification with the campaign.

The third complaint against the media had to do with the way ‘news val-
ues’ distort public perception of the issues, and also influence the course
of the campaign itself. One of the younger, unemployed interviewees
found it disappointing that ‘a large protest that is peaceful does not get
as much press as a small protest that is violent’. Another felt that ‘the
national press are more involved with hyping up the action, rather than
voicing the issue’. Interestingly, this criticism was also made by one of
the few locals to voice opposition to the protests. This man claimed to be
against the export of veal calves, but disagreed with the methods
employed by the campaigners. For him, ‘tv news is as much about enter-
tainment as anything else. It is not a mere mirror of events, it is a market
maker as well’. These news values affect what demonstrators do in order
55
to get their message across: ‘The problem is, the media responds to direct
action. People cannot get their view across unless they do something
dramatic.’

Bound up with these comments on media coverage were wider con-

cerns about the distribution of power in society, the erosion of civil lib-
erties, and police misbehaviour. Almost all of the interviewees
expressed criticism of police handling of the protests, whilst all,
including non-participants in the protests, felt that the episode had
damaged relationships between police and public. Some protesters
focused on what they saw as biases and inconsistencies in the treatment
of protesters, whilst others questioned management tactical or strate-
gic judgements—the threat to use the Public Order Act received near
universal condemnation—or were shocked by the alleged dishonesty of
statements made to the media by senior police officers. More than any-
thing else, however, the protesters expressed shock—even disbelief—
at what they experienced as excessively violent action against the
protesters. Almost all reported radical changes of view of the police
service. Phrases such as ‘could not believe what I was seeing’, ‘pushed
around’, ‘bullied’, ‘mob from Basildon’, ‘authoritarian’, ‘ruthless’,
‘kicked, punched, and dragged by the hair’ came up again and again in
the interviews. Perhaps not surprisingly, the few protesters who did
not appear shocked were those who had previous protest experience.
Some of the most traumatized were previous Tory voters, with little or
no past experience of political activity.

‘Where’s Democracy?’

The experience of police power, and of ‘what they can get away with’ had
induced something close to fatalism in some protesters. One demonstra-
tor with no previous protest experience had originally thought that local
democracy would prevail. However, he now felt ‘we are all stuffed: there
is nothing we can do. The police and Government are too strong’.
According to another: ‘They [the police] have the means at their disposal
to move heaven and earth’. Others reported having been ‘made aware’ or
‘awakened to’ wider questions of civil liberties in this country. A white-
collar worker and previous Tory voter had formerly had a negative view
of the civil-rights movement, but the Brightlingsea experience had
‘widened my appreciation of why people are campaigning against the
Criminal Justice Bill’. Others linked civil rights with national identity,
and past popular struggles:

Even the first week I started feeling, ‘My goodness, what is this? It isn’t Eng-
land.’ And you start questioning more and more things, ‘Where’s democracy?’,
and so, now...well, it’s made us much more politically aware, I think, as a result
...I think all sorts of people are going to be questioning all sorts of things.

And, in the words of an elderly campaigner:

I feel they have taken away all our rights that we fought for in 1939. The right
for us to be free: free speech, free to do what we like, but we haven’t been free to
walk on the road. If I could do something about that [the Public Order Act] I
would.
56
Even a prominent opponent of the protests noted the involvement of
children and adolescents, which would be ‘damaging their relationship
with police and authority generally... What we see here is a reaction to
the increasing centrality and impersonality of modern government and
life in this country.’

Finally, on the question of animal rights itself, we have seen that some
campaigners did not see this as the main issue at stake, while very few
saw it as the only issue. Nevertheless, participation in the campaign had
brought most of the protesters up against a whole complex of questions
about the food industry, farming and their own life-style choices in rela-
tion to the treatment of animals. As we’ve already mentioned, several of
our interviewees were not initially motivated by the ‘animals issue’, and
only became aware as a result of their involvement. Others said that they
had begun as vegetarians, but had shifted to veganism under the influ-
ence of the protest. However, there was no evidence of a desire to impose
these lifestyle changes on others. One of the newly-converted vegans
insisted ‘this is not a vegetarian issue’. Some protesters expressed uncer-
tainty and confusion on this, and one remarked that she had meat in the
freezer but no longer had the heart to eat it. The most widely expressed
view was a ‘welfarist’ one: there was nothing in principle wrong with eat-
ing meat, but it was important that animals were reared ‘with dignity’
and ‘humanely’. Most protesters reported having cut down on meat con-
sumption, and/or having gone to considerable lengths to buy organic,
free-range meat products. Others were content to assure themselves that
the meat they bought originated in Britain.

As with the other issues posed by the dispute, there was considerable
variation in how far our interviewees called into question wider assump-
tions and attitudes. One protester said that she was not aware of alterna-
tive farming methods, and had ‘not really gone into it’. Others took the
view that greed for profit was at the root of the ill treatment of the ani-
mals: ‘Farmers have to earn a living, but money takes precedence over
animal welfare. The farmers could do more.’ One protester reported a
wider perspective on food production, and saw low-intensity farming as
something which would benefit everyone. Several people saw William
Waldegrave’s predicament as symptomatic of a wider hypocrisy in a gov-
ernment which had the power to stop animal abuse, but does not
‘because they earn an awful lot of money out of it’.

Animal Rights and the Left

Although, as we have argued above, there is now a near consensus on the

moral standing of animals, and the Left has no ‘natural’ monopoly on this
area of concern, it does not follow that the politics of animal rights and
welfare is free-floating. Attempting to do something, even something so
apparently moderate as these campaigns have tried to do, brings protest-
ers up against the power of capital and the full force of the law. Almost
all our interviewees reported having changed their political identity as a
result of their participation in the protests. Several were previously Tory
voters, and none of these felt they could continue to be so. Others
described themselves as previously non-political, but as having now
become aware. One, already on the Left, reported disagreement with
57
socialist friends in another part of the country who had challenged the
relevance of the animals issue.

We think that the interview material we have presented here goes some
way to making intelligible the shifts in identity and political awareness
through which taking action on a moral issue begins to effect a broader
change of political orientation. Being the subject of media representa-
tions, as distinct from a consumer of media images poses wider questions
about the power of and conditions of access to the media. Being sub-
jected to or directly witnessing heavy policing methods challenges
deeply held assumptions about the institution of policing itself, as well
as presenting in a new and more immediate way contemporary disputes
about civil liberties, and the legitimacy of protest action. And, finally,
the issue itself poses questions of a very basic kind about the political
economy of the food industry, the political power of the agri-business
lobby, and puts on the agenda the feasibility of alternative methods of
food production, and our wider relationship with the rest of the natural
world. The prospects for renewal, and even of continued relevance of the
Left will depend on how deeply we are able to rethink our moral and
political vision in response to campaigns such as that we have described.
If we can rise to this challenge we will, after all, be doing little more than
recapturing the breadth of vision of some earlier generations of the Left.
As Henry Salt put matters, long ago:

Humanity and science between them have exploded the time-honoured idea of
a hard-and-fast line between white man and black man, rich man and poor
man, educated man and uneducated man, good man and bad man; equally
impossible to maintain, in the light of newer knowledge, is the idea that there
is any difference in kind, and not in degree only, between human and non-
human intelligence. The emancipation of men from cruelty and injustice will
bring with it in due course the emancipation of animals also. The two reforms
are inseparably connected, and neither can be fully realized alone.9

9 H. Salt, Seventy Years Among Savages, London 1921.

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