Ronnie Lee (born 1951)[1] is a British animal rights activist. He is known primarily for being the Press Officer for the UK Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1976. He also founded the magazine Arkangel in 1989.[2]
Lee was a member of the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) in the 1970s, and formed an offshoot of it, which he called the Band of Mercy. The original Band of Mercy was started by a group of activists in England in 1824 to thwart fox hunting by laying false scents and blowing hunting horns. Lee and another activist, Cliff Goodman, revived the name in 1972, and set about attacking hunters' vehicles. They progressed to attacking pharmaceutical laboratories and seal-hunting boats, and on 10 November 1973, they set fire to a building in Milton Keynes with the aim of making insurance prohibitive for what they saw as industries that exploit animals, a strategy the ALF continues to pursue.[3]
In August 1974, Lee and Goodman were arrested for taking part in a raid on Oxford Laboratory Animal Colonies in Bicester, which earned them the name the "Bicester Two". Daily demonstrations took place outside the court during their trial, with Lee's local Labour MP, Ivor Clemitson among the demonstrators. They were sentenced to three years in prison, during which Lee went on the movement's first hunger strike to obtain vegan food and clothing. Paroled after 12 months, Lee emerged more militant than before, and organised 30 activists to set up a new liberation campaign.[4] Seeking a campaign name that would "haunt" those who used animals, he chose the Animal Liberation Front.[5]
"Valerie's" story
In Free the Animals (2000), Ingrid Newkirk, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), tells what purports to be the true story of one of the first ALF activists to set up a cell in the United States, and how she was helped by Lee.[6] The activist, named "Valerie" by Newkirk, flew to London in the early 1980s to seek Lee's help. She made contact with him by making an appointment to interview Kim Stallwood, then the executive director of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), and later executive director of PETA.[7] Valerie pretended she was writing an article about animal rights, and asked Stallwood whether he knew how to contact Lee, as she wanted to interview him too. Stallwood told her BUAV allowed Lee's "volunteers" to use an office in the BUAV building, because Lee had just been released from prison. Stallwood made it clear that Lee and the BUAV did not agree on the merits of direct action.[8]
Newkirk describes how Stallwood introduced Valerie to Lee in a nearby pub. Before agreeing to speak to her, Lee asked Valerie to hand over her wallet, the contents of which he checked, take off her jacket, stand up, and lift her shirt over her stomach.[9] When he was satisfied that she was not recording the conversation, he told her he could arrange for her to join an ALF activist training course in the north of England. When they parted, he declined to shake hands with her, because he said he couldn't afford to be seen doing anything that looked as though he was sealing a deal. "What you do is our handshake," he told Valerie.[10] Newkirk describes how the participants in the training course did not know each other's real names, using code names throughout, with Lee being the only person who knew everyone's identity.[9]
Lee became the ALF's full-time press officer in the 1980s, and was sentenced in connection with this to ten years imprisonment in 1986. While in prison, he founded Arkangel, the animal liberation magazine. During this time he furthered his education by learning foreign languages. He was released in 1992 after serving six years and eight months.[2]
Beliefs
Lee has written that animal liberation requires widespread, radical changes in the way human beings live.
True animal liberation will not come merely through the destruction of the Dachaus and Buchenwalds that the occupiers have built for their victims, but demands nothing less than the driving back of the human species to pre-invasion boundaries. So, in practical terms, what does this mean? It means the end of environmental pollution and the industrial society which causes it. The end of such things as the private car. The end of methods of agriculture relying on pesticides, artificial fertilizers and other poisons. The end of cities and vast urban conurbations, which are like deserts to most wild animal species. The end of large-scale farming which provides little habitat for them either. And perhaps above all, a drastic cut in the number of the human species. The radical American environmental group Earth First! has estimated that the right level of human population world wide should be about 50 million. Today more than that number live just in Britain.[11]
Current activism
Lee is reported to maintain a low profile in England.[12] His participation in the animal liberation movement includes making public statements in response to news stories about ALF actions, expressing views that are frequently more militant than those expressed officially by the Animal Liberation Press Office. For example, he issued a statement in 2001 openly condoning an armed assault on an executive of Huntingdon Life Sciences,[12] the subject of an international animal-rights campaign called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), which ALF activists are believed to be involved in.
In 2008, Lee expressed regret that when active he had sought to target properties and institutions involved in animal abuse rather than the individuals. He stated that had he had his time again he would now target individuals he perceived as animal abusers, in their own homes as opposed to their places of work.[13] Lee also put in an appearance in disguise in the 2006 documentary about the ALF 'Behind the Mask' where he again expressed radical views about violence towards people he perceived as animal abusers.[14] Under the pseudonym of Tony Peters, Lee founded the anti greyhound racing group Greyhound Action, which folded in 2011.[citation needed]
Vegan advocacy
Ronnie Lee was a guest of Animal Rights Zone (ARZone), appearing as a live guest on the global animal rights social network, which is transcribed[15] on the online site.
Green Party
Lee has become an active member of the Green Party of England and Wales[16] and has co-founded a group called Greens For Animal Protection, for members of the Green Party who campaign on animal issues.
↑ Monaghan, Rachael. "Terrorism in the Name of Animal Rights," in Taylor, Maxwell and Horgan, John. The Future of Terrorism. Routledge 2000, pp. 160–161.
↑ Molland, Neil. "Thirty Years of Direct Action" in Best & Nocella (eds), Terrorists or Freedom Fighters, Lantern Books, 2004, ISBN1-59056-054-X, p. 68.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights nonprofit organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. PETA reports that PETA entities have more than 9 million members globally.
Ingrid Elizabeth Newkirk is a British-American animal activist and the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the world's largest animal rights organization. She is the author of several books, including The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble (2009) and Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries About Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion (2020). Newkirk has worked for the animal-protection movement since 1972. Under her leadership in the 1970s as the District of Columbia's first female poundmaster, legislation was passed to create the first spay/neuter clinic in Washington, D.C., as well as an adoption program and the public funding of veterinary services, leading her to be among those chosen in 1980 as Washingtonians of the Year. She is an atheist.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates. It has been the subject of several major leaks or undercover investigations by activists and reporters since 1989.
The Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) is a United Kingdom organisation that uses hunt sabotage as a means of direct action to stop fox hunting. It was founded in 1963, with a first sabotage event at the South Devon Foxhounds on Boxing Day 1963.
Lantern Publishing & Media is an American non-profit book publisher founded in 2020, having acquired the assets of Booklight Inc. DBA Lantern Books in 2019. Booklight was founded in 1999, and first located in Union Square, before moving to Brooklyn in 2007, where Lantern Publishing & Media now has its offices. The subject areas that Lantern Publishing & Media covers include veganism, animal rights, humane education, spirituality, wellness and recovery, and social justice. Lantern distributes books published by the American Mental Health Foundation, and is in turn distributed by Red Wheel Weiser.
Robin Webb is an English animal rights activist. He is a former member of the ruling council of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), and former director of Animal Aid. A British court ruled in 2006 that Webb was a "central and pivotal figure" in the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).
The Justice Department (JD) was founded in the United Kingdom by animal rights activists who declared they were willing to use a diversity of tactics up to and including violence against their opponents. Initially calling for "abusers to have but a taste of the fear and anguish their victims suffer on a daily basis", activists established a separate idea from adhering to the Animal Liberation Front's (ALF) guidelines of non-violent resistance, similar to that of the Animal Rights Militia (ARM).
The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.
Hunt sabotage is the direct action that animal rights activists and animal liberation activists undertake to interfere with hunting activity.
In 1985, a raid took place at a laboratory belonging to the University of California, Riverside (UCR) that resulted in the removal of a monkey by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). This monkey, called Britches, was a stump-tailed macaque who was born into a breeding colony at UCR. He was removed from his mother at birth, had his eyelids sewn shut, and had an electronic sonar device attached to his head—a Trisensor Aid, an experimental version of a blind travel aid, the Sonicguide—as part of a three-year sensory-deprivation study involving 24 infant monkeys. The experiments were designed to study the behavioral and neural development of monkeys reared with a sensory substitution device.
This timeline of Animal Liberation Front (ALF) actions describes the history, consequences and theory of direct action on behalf of animals by animal liberation activists using, or associated with the ALF.
The Western Animal Rights Network (WARN) first appeared in 2005 as a coalition for animal rights groups in the West of England and South Wales and acted as a news service for animal rights demos and action reports.
Arkangel was a British-based bi-annual animal liberation magazine, first published in the winter of 1989. The magazine, which was sold internationally, covered global aspects of underground and overground animal rights campaigning, and promoted a vegan lifestyle. The magazine is no longer active.
Roger Yates is an English lecturer in sociology at University College Dublin and the University of Wales, specialising in animal rights. He is a former executive committee member of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), a former Animal Liberation Front (ALF) press officer, and a co-founder of the Fur Action Group.
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an international, leaderless, decentralized political and social resistance movement that engages in and promotes non-violent direct action in protest against incidents of animal cruelty. It originated in the 1970s from the Bands of Mercy. Participants state it is a modern-day Underground Railroad, removing animals from laboratories and farms, destroying facilities, arranging safe houses, veterinary care and operating sanctuaries where the animals subsequently live. Critics have labelled them as eco-terrorists.
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment".
Matthew Michael Ball is an American animal activist. He is co-founder and President of One Step for Animals. He is currently working on a new book, Losing My Religions.
Kim W. Stallwood is a British animal rights advocate, author, independent scholar, and consultant. He is European director of the Animals and Society Institute, an animal rights think tank. He was executive editor of The Animals' Agenda, an animal rights magazine (1993–2002), and is the editor of Speaking Out for Animals (2001) and A Primer on Animal Rights (2002). Stallwood blogs under the name Grumpy Vegan.
Gary Yourofsky is an American animal rights activist and lecturer. He has had a major influence on contemporary veganism.
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