Ronnie Lee (Page 2)

Arkangel

Arkangel 1-5, 7-11 (1989-1994. London, England)

The Complete Combat

Combat 1-2 (1990, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)

After 6 years of operation in Toronto, a lull in activity caused the ALF Supporters Group Canada to shut down. Other volunteers picked up the slack and soon the SG was moved to Alberta. At this time the ALF was fairly active in the great white north, and soon their night time activities were being covered in a new magazine known as Combat. Considered by many to be the predecessor of Underground, Combat closely followed the template for supporters group publications set by The SG in England with one important difference: They had awesome cover art!

Combat is amongst the most rare militant animal rights publications produced in North America, and when we received this first issue for scanning we were delighted to find a long and thoughtful prison letter from Ronnie Lee, updates on the arrests of Jonathan Paul, Bill Keogh, and Cres Velluci, and a short listing of international action reports. There was also a hastily added pamphlet stuffed inside with an update on the jailing of Henry Hutto, an early movement hero who was amongst the first members of both PETA and Earth First! Very little information is available about Henry, who passed away in 2003, but he is a minor legend in some circles and the pictures of a rally held in his honor made holding this magazine that much sweeter.

A full three years and one month after the posting of Combat #1 we received a copy of the second issue. Rumored to have been almost completely confiscated by RCMP officers the day it came back from the printers, Combat #2 is one of the rarest publications on our site. This issue is less ambitious than the first, but the real problem is the actions that it is covering. Both cover stories were public relations disasters for the animal liberation underground at a time when direct action was already in decline, and one was a disaster for the non-humans it sought to save.

The Cold Buster contamination hoax, like all contamination hoaxes before and after, was mostly successful in convincing the world that animal liberationists were willing to target the public and risk killing random consumers. These hoaxes do generally cause large amounts of financial damage- but none of them has ever stopped a product from being animal tested and it is difficult to believe that the benefits outweigh the costs. When the Animal Rights Militia announced a week after the initial scare that the contamination was a hoax, the media barely paid attention.

The Billingsgate Fish Market action was even more tragic. The action itself involved economic sabotage and arson, both defensible acts against the capture, confinement, and killing of non-humans, except that in this instance fire was set to trucks which were parked directly against the building itself. The flames caused a short circuit to the building’s electrical systems, halting pumps to crab and lobster tanks inside. More than a dozen were killed. While it is true that those animals were already slated for death, it is still unconscionable that their lives were cut short by animal liberators.

This isn’t to say that there is nothing redeeming about this second and final issue of Combat. One of the original messages from the Western Wildlife Unit is presented here unedited, and there are also rare accounts of some of the last major hunt sabotage actions in the United States.

The Complete ALF Supporters Group newsletter

In: Most Popular, Periodicals, The SG

The ALF Supporters Group newsletter 1-19 (1982-1986. Nottingham / London, England)

The Complete No Compromise

No Compromise 1-30. Includes Strategic Non-Violence for Animal Liberation insert included with issue #8 as separate publication. (1996-2006, Sacramento, CA / Minneapolis, MN / Caldwell, NJ / Old Bridge, NJ / Santa Cruz, CA / San Francisco, CA)

Text postNo Compromise, which billed itself as “The militant, direct action newsmagazine of grassroots animal liberationists and their supporters,” was the most important animal rights publication of the 1990s. Despite its many problems, frequent delays, and constant changes in editorial staff, the magazine energized the movement in a way that is difficult to explain to a generation that never witnessed pre-internet activism.

In the mid 90s there were a few, isolated groups around the country who were participating in civil disobedience actions and staging loud protests against local labs and fur stores. These groups were largely unaware of each others’ existence and without a gathering like Earth First!’s Round River Rendezvous, unable to share tactical advice or co-ordinate targets.

In 1996 there was a national meeting of animal rights activists in Washington DC dubbed World Animal Awareness Week and March for the Animals. The event was considered a failure as only 3,000 of the estimated 100,000 participants materialized. But staff from No Compromise were present passing out the first issue and asking grassroots organizations for their contact information. Suddenly groups like the Animal Rights Direct Actions Coalition were meeting with the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, the Animal Defense Leagues, and the Student Organization for Animal Rights.

As the grassroots grew increasingly aware of the efforts of other organizations, regional demonstrations began being planned. The first such demonstration after the March for Animals took place at the Seattle Fur Exchange, where activists used bike locks to attach themselves to each other and block the drive way of the fur auction. All of the action got reported on in No Compromise, and suddenly bike locks gave way to lock boxes, which gave way to super boxes and barrels and tripods as civil disobedience tactics spread across the country wherever the magazine was distributed. There was an explosion not just in voluntary arrest scenarios, but also in underground direct action. The print runs of No Compromise kept climbing and it became the must read publication for animal rights militants.

The tone of the magazine at its start was hopeful, and each issue was packed with increasingly daring protests and direct actions. As the movement struggled to find focus and dealt with the departure of founder Freeman Wicklund, the the mood shifts to frustration and confusion, only to be plucked back into hopeful territory with the rise of SHAC.

After 30 issues, the steering committee of No Compromise decided to stop publishing in 2006. Their decision could not have come at a worse time. With the SHAC website and newsletter killed by the convictions of the SHAC 7, Bite Back being published only sporadically and with a limited focus, and the Earth First! Journal mired in infighting, the sudden absence of No Compromise meant that the primary sources for radical animal liberation news, opinion, and strategy were the twin sewers of online social networks and the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. These were dark times for our movement, and we are only just beginning to recover.

The raw stuff of history: An incomplete, unfinished Ronnie Lee manuscript.

In: Books

Unfinished Manuscript (Early to mid 1980s, England)

A few months ago we contacted our friend Robin Webb to borrow some of his animal liberation publications for scanning. Robin cheerily agreed to send us a package, and when it arrived it included some of the rarest publications we have yet received. We gingerly pulled one gem after another from the box, and just when we thought we couldn’t be more excited we found this unfinished history of the ALF written by Ronnie Lee.

Drafted almost thirty years ago, this publication spent decades in police custody before ending up in the possession of the ALF Press Office. After its trip through the evidence room the manuscript is missing over a hundred pages, but still bristles with history.

We are still investigating the story behind this document, but felt it would be unfair to our readers to keep it out of circulation any longer. Here, distributed to the public for the first time, is the story of the Animal Liberation Front as told by one its founders.

The Mothercage

In: Books

The Mothercage (2004, Wolverhampton, England)

“Those who carry out direct action in the cause of animal liberation are,
indeed, doing something extraordinary, but they are not super-beings, just
ordinary people who care sufficiently to risk their own liberty in bringing
freedom to other creatures. But ordinary people have their differences,
their frailties, their loves and hates and their fears…”
Ronnie Lee, from the introduction.

Maire ni Bhradaig’s The Mothercage is a fictional portrayal of an Animal Liberation Front raid. Originally published in England, it was never widely available outside of Europe. Although it is written for young adults, the characters are complex enough to hold the interest of older readers. The author’s knowledge of militant AR culture makes the story a realistic representation of how activists might interact, and unlike Rage and Reason and Animal Rites, there are no former green berets running around with machine guns.

The strength of this book is Bhradaig’s willingness to present the people behind the mask as plainly, painfully human. Outside of Paul Chadwick’s Concrete: Think Like A Mountain you will not find a more accurate portrayal of a group of radicals. While some of the book’s cast are wonderful people, others are bigots, adventurists, or cowards hiding their flaws behind a balaclava.

The grassroots animal and wilderness liberation movements indulge in far too much hero worship, a tendency that has led us to embrace some very shady characters over the years- characters who often harm our credibility in the long term. The Mothercage serves as a reminder that the masked figures we so admire are not always so admirable, and more importantly, that improving ourselves increases our effectiveness as activists.

Against All Odds

In: Books

Against All Odds (1986, London, England.)

Editors note: The TALON Conspiracy endeavors to archive the best, most complete copies available of all publications in our collection. Although Against All Odds had previously been posted on March 14, 2011, we have since found a higher quality copy from the original publisher. Our first posting had been a Canadian reprint with bad generation loss that was also missing several photos printed in the British edition. The Canadian version can still be found here.

Originally published in England as a book 25 years ago, Against All Odds was regularly distributed in North America as a low cost zine. It remains one of the best publications documenting the rise of the Animal Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Leagues in England.

In many ways, the 1980s was the high water mark of the Animal Liberation movement. In 1984, thousands of people in England participated in direct action against vivisection, staging large scale raids against six labs. Multitudes of people would overwhelm security in broad daylight and remove the oppressed creatures inside, often causing minor damage along the way and taking out valuable footage which was used to grow the movement. Many dozens of arrests followed these raids, but it is arguable that police response was not the cause of death of this mass militant movement taking shape in the UK.

Around this same time we saw the emergence of groups such as the Hunt Retribution Squad and Animal Rights Militia. Rather than rejecting the idea that animal rights activists were fanatics, HRS and ARM embraced that term and seemingly reveled in the negative imagery presented by the media. The Hunt Retribution Squad went so far as to release images of masked activists wielding clubs, chainsaws, and even pavement cutters. The front pages of newspapers widely reported on threats made by HRS to harm hunters if they attacked human opponents of hunting. In the end these counter-assaults never took place, but the damage was done. This type of macho posturing was repellant to many in the movement, and it provided great fodder for the police, courts, and conservative PR teams to use in the war against direct action. Certainly, the few acts of violence taken by the Animal Rights Militia could not outweigh the value of the mass raids and rising public consciousness taking place in England at the time and largely contributed to the recession of a growing struggle for non-human emancipation.

Written in accessible language and unafraid of nuance, its tactical analysis and historical documentation remain valuable to this day. Against All Odds is essential reading for the modern animal liberationist.

The Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group newsletter #17

In: Periodicals

The Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group newsletter #17 (1985, London, England.)

(Editors note: The complete set of SG newsletters is now available HERE.)

It is not usually our habit to put up a single issue of a serialized publication as we prefer to post an entire year, or run of magazines, in a single post. However, we must make an exception for the ALF SG newsletter #17, which contains a fantastic investigation of the Band of Mercy and comes complete with an image of their first press statement from November of 1973. The significance of that image, the very first communique from an underground group fighting on behalf of other species, can not be understated.

When one considers how entrenched animal exploitation is in our culture, the idea that a tiny band of revolutionaries could push back against that social tide by burning down an animal laboratory under construction is a watershed moment. The arson attacks and raids carried out by the Band of Mercy were pivotal in the creation of the animal rights movement.

This issue has much more in store for readers. The second communique from the Animal Rights Militia is presented in it’s entirety, and although it provides a myopic examination of the role of liberatory violence it is none the less a fascinating read for lovers of animal rights history. The story of the famous Ecclesfield Beagle raid is presented by one of it’s participants, Roger Yates has a long letter explaining his feelings on the uselessness of national groups, and funny pseudonyms abound! If you thought Earth First!ers had funny names, wait till you get a load of Captain Kirk, Martial Rose, and Black Vixen!

If you look carefully you may notice that this issue is missing some pages. We do not know if this is because they were removed by their original owner, or if this is one of the issues of the SG rumored to have been “edited” by the British government as it left post offices on it’s way to subscribers.

Outfoxed

In: Books

OUTFOXED (1983, Mike Huskisson, London, England)

After participating in a series of high profile actions, including the famous “smoking beagles” liberation, early animal rights activist Mike Huskisson went on to pioneer the field of investigations into abuse and torture. Outfoxed was the product of that first investigation. It remains an important documentation of the early days of our movement and the type of undercover work that makes groups such as Mercy for Animals so prominent today. Conflict Gypsy is proud to share this classic, complete with a new introduction from the author.

My book Outfoxed is primarily an account of my undercover work for the League Against Cruel Sports to expose the cruelty inherent in the bloodsports of fox hunting, stag hunting, hare hunting, mink hunting and hare coursing in England over a two year period from April 1981 to May 1983. Outfoxed was written immediately after the investigation ended and published before the end of that year. At the time it was quite a novel idea to join the world of hunting, a pastime that the author wholly opposed, simply in order to film, photograph and report the cruelty that occurred so as to bring that cruelty to the attention of the outside world.

This was all in a different age. It was before video cameras and hidden cameras. The movie film that was taken during this investigation was taken with a Super-8 mm cine camera. This meant the sequences were limited to just a few minutes each before the film had to be turned over. All filming had to be done in good light. The highest quality of lens was chosen in preference to having sound.

The film cameras were exactly that – 35mm Nikon film cameras. Unlike modern digital cameras you took 36 images on a single film and then had to change your film. There was no opportunity to immediately preview your images to check the quality. You chose your film and the ASA setting for it and that was that for the whole film; there was no opportunity, as there is with modern cameras, to change the film speed settings from image to image. There was also no built in flash.

Finally, this investigation was carried out before the day of the mobile phone and the hand-held GPS device. When I was in the field with the hunting fraternity I was on my own. There was no opportunity to nip behind a hedge and make a secret call for back-up, or send a text message. If my opponents worked out who I really was and sought to take me to task I would have to talk my way out of it or else! If I needed to call for help I had to find a phone box. To know exactly where I was I had to be map-aware.

Before I carried out the investigation and wrote the book I had on several occasions been in trouble with the law for animal rights activity and had been imprisoned. The investigation and subsequent book was a plea to colleagues to see that animal rights could be advanced effectively entirely lawfully. I did not want then and do not want now to see kind compassionate people imprisoned. We can beat the animal abusers and bullies by using brains rather than brawn and by acting always within the law. It is the animal abusers who should be imprisoned not those who seek to protect life.

By showing the world what our opponents get up to, the barbaric way in which they use and abuse animals when they think they are out of sight, we really can generate the public anger that can force an end to these cruelties.

Knowing that Outfoxed was about to be published the hunting fraternity made all manner of threats that they would take libel action against the author and publisher. In the event to this day I have not received so much as a single letter of complaint as to the truth of anything that I wrote. After publication and following extracts being printed in the News of the World I did receive a letter from a young girl saying that when she was photographed at one of the hunts she had been raised by her parents to enjoy hunting but with growing older she had distanced herself from the pastime and was actually now working to improve animal welfare. Curiously in subsequent years some of the hunting people that I had befriended and infiltrated also told me, strictly off the record of course, that my account was a very factual record of hunting and one Hunt Master even asked me for a copy of my book!

Some of the pictures that I took during the investigation that were published in Outfoxed were widely published by the media at large including the likes of Stern magazine and the National Geographic Magazine.

All the bloodsports that I exposed in the course of my investigation were subsequently banned in England by Parliament through the Hunting Act 2004.

I now run my own campaigning animal welfare group: the Animal Cruelty Investigation Group. This was set up in June 1989 to fund the expenses of investigation work. You can find our web site at: www.acigawis.co.uk

Mike Huskisson,

Suffolk, England February 25th 2011

e-mail: acig@btinternet.com

Animal Warfare

In: Books

Animal Warfare (1989, David Henshaw, London, England)

Based upon a television show of the same name, Animal Warfare was one of the first books written about the rise of animal liberation militancy. Its author, David Henshaw, is decidedly anti-animal rights, and at times his coverage is so unfair and deceitful that it’s tempting to write this publication off as mere tabloid journalism. That would be a mistake. While clearly written from the perspective of a person intent on smearing activists, this paperback also provides us with a look at our history less slanted by movement propagandizing and cheerleading. At times that picture is not pretty.

Authored during the rise of what some English activists called “the cult of militancy,” Animal Warfare takes the fodder provided by the most extreme actions of the early 80s and spins an ugly tale of car-bombs, poisoning hoaxes, graveyard desecration, and alliances with racist organizations such as the National Front. While there are plenty of grotesque distortions of facts, there are also valuable lessons to be learned about how the best tactical decisions consider our movement’s ability to survive backlash while building mass.

At a time when many modern activists seem intent on repeating the mistakes of the past, (or at least blogging as if they intend on repeating those mistakes), Animal Warfare contributes to our ability to learn about media falsification, the dangers of militaristic posturing, and the events which led to the weakening of England’s mass militant movement for animal liberation.