Preacherman
Member
And don't forget that the English people aren't allowed to use (or, in most cases, even own) firearms for self-defense... 
From the Telegraph, London (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...hls27.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/07/27/ixhome.html):
This is the front line in the animal rights war - and the doorstep is the battlefield
By Andrew Alderson
(Filed: 27/07/2003)
Staff who work for HLS, the animal laboratory, have been under attack for four years. But the violence is about to become a lot worse, reports Andrew Alderson
On Thursday, 1,200 company employees will be sent a short, factual e-mail by their management. It will warn them that animal rights activists are planning a 48-hour weekend of action from midnight on August 1 and staff should take extra care over their safety at home.
For two days and nights, employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) will face an even greater likelihood of having bricks thrown through their windows, their cars covered in paint-stripper, incendiary devices put through their letter boxes and hooded men attacking them as they walk from the car to the front door.
HLS's main research centre in Cambridgeshire and the homes of its staff have become the front line for Britain's forgotten war: a confrontation that has been going on for four years but which, in recent months, has intensified as the tactics of the animal rights' campaigners have become more prolific, violent and fluid. Activists say that they sense "victory" in their attempt to shut down Europe's largest contract medical research centre.
HLS, which was founded in 1952 and is licensed by the Government to carry out testing for pharmaceutical and other companies, is equally adamant that "terrorism" will not triumph. It, too, has gone on the offensive, taking legal action to curb the intimidation of staff, while at the same time lobbying the Government to introduce new laws against harassment.
The company has acted after a senior official working with one of HLS's suppliers came close to becoming the first fatality of the animal rights' activists.
The Telegraph can reveal that the executive was attacked when he heard intruders outside his home and discovered them setting fire to his barn. Assailants knocked him to the ground and left him unconscious besides the burning barn, but he regained consciousness before the flames engulfed him. His company, which has severed its links with HLS because of staff harassment, would not confirm the attack last week.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was formed in 1999, two years after an undercover reporter working for a Channel 4 documentary infiltrated HLS's research centre at Huntingdon and obtained secretly-recorded footage of technicians abusing a beagle. The images were disturbing: a puppy punched in the face and brutally shaken by frustrated staff as it resisted having a blood sample taken.
HLS has admitted that such behaviour is deplorable and three technicians were sacked over the incident, including two who were convicted of animal cruelty. The following year a new management team was brought in which introduced greater openness and new training methods.
HLS, whose motto is "working for a better future", insists that the incident was isolated and alien to the way it treats the 74,000 animals a year - mainly rats and mice but also a few hundred dogs and monkeys - that are used, as the law requires, to test new drugs before they can be declared safe for human use. Virtually all of the animals are humanely killed because autopsies are carried out as part of the research.
Animal rights activists have used the documentary footage and reports of other alleged cruelty by HLS staff to gain support for a campaign which has cost the company and British taxpayers millions of pounds for private security and policing.
The protests began with demonstrations by less than two dozen people outside the gates of the Huntingdon centre. These quickly turned violent, with threats to kill staff and to attack their families.
Within a month, activists began making "home visits", often in the middle of the night. Windows were broken, cars damaged and rape alarms thrown on to roofs so that the piercing noise could not be switched off.
Two senior directors of HLS - Brian Cass, the managing director, and Andrew Gay, the marketing director - were attacked. Two years ago Mr Cass, 54, was set upon and beaten so badly that he needed hospital treatment.
"I arrived home in the dark, got out of my car, turned around and there were three individuals with what looked like pick-axe handles already raised above their heads. I protected myself as best I could but they hit me on the back of the head," he said.
Mr Gay, 47, who is married with four children, was also assaulted outside his home. "Andrew stepped out of his car and two people sprayed something in his face and punched him," a company spokesman said.
"He stumbled against his front door and fortunately it opened. He fell in front of his wife and three-year-old daughter. Andrew went to hospital and for hours didn't know if he would see properly again." Mr Gay made a full recovery, although on another occasion last year 180 protesters turned up at his home highlighting his "murderous" activities. It was the biggest of more than a dozen protests at his house during the past year.
Andrew Baker, the chief executive of Life Sciences Research, HLS's parent company, spoke last week of his anger that the Government is not doing more to combat attacks. "The entire movement is intellectually bankrupt. It is run by a small, rather pathetic bunch who want to destroy things and who have picked on a 'cause' where they manipulate and whip up naive, impressionable people," he said.
Mr Baker, a Briton living in America, said that the growth of the internet had made it easier for SHAC to rally support nationally and internationally.
"There have been incidents where thugs have gone to homes when the parents are out and their children are surrounded by chanting mobs threatening to kill them and burn the house down," he said. "This isn't a debate about animal testing - it's a sickness and a horrible form of human behaviour."
Mr Baker, 54, said that he and his wife had been regularly threatened at their home in New York but that US laws gave them greater protection from harassment. "I am not going to allow these terrorists to win," he said.
As the harassment has intensified, scores of companies have severed their links with HLS after their staff, too, were intimidated and, occasionally, attacked. When no high street bank or insurance company would work with HLS through fear of being targeted, the Government stepped in as banker and insurer.
It may also now be needed as accountants after Deloitte & Touche announced earlier this year that it was ending its links with HLS. The company has turned to the courts for protection. In April, it won a High Court injunction preventing protesters going within 50 yards of the homes of staff, or lobbying them at home - a ruling which has been flouted.
SHAC was formed by Greg Avery, his former wife Heather James, and his current wife, Natasha Avery, all committed animal rights activists who insist that they are not linked with the illegal activities of the Animal Liberation Front. The trio recently served one-year jail terms for conspiracy to incite public nuisance.
Last week Mr and Mrs Avery, both 35 and vegans, claimed that home visits and other intimidation - including jamming company switchboards and e-mails - were "legitimate tactics" but said that they were opposed to violence. Mr Avery said: "These are people who deserve to be named and shamed. The company has brought this on itself."
HLS believes that the new legislation is needed to toughen trespass laws and to make home visits and other harassment illegal. A spokesman for HLS said: "The arguments of SHAC have not won over anyone but the intimidation, threats and the violence have, sadly, had an effect."
Police in Cambridgeshire say that they have insufficient powers to tackle persistent, illegal protesters: they admit that with "hit and run" tactics it is hard to make arrests and harder to obtain convictions.
Chief Inspector Steve Pearl, the head of the special operations unit, said: "We do not have the legal remedies to tackle some of the things that are going on. The law needs to be changed."
Meanwhile, Mr Cass has taken to wearing an animal rights T-shirt with a difference. It says "SHAC" on the front but the acronym is spelt out on the back: "Spongers Hypocrites Anarchists Cowards".
From the Telegraph, London (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...hls27.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/07/27/ixhome.html):
This is the front line in the animal rights war - and the doorstep is the battlefield
By Andrew Alderson
(Filed: 27/07/2003)
Staff who work for HLS, the animal laboratory, have been under attack for four years. But the violence is about to become a lot worse, reports Andrew Alderson
On Thursday, 1,200 company employees will be sent a short, factual e-mail by their management. It will warn them that animal rights activists are planning a 48-hour weekend of action from midnight on August 1 and staff should take extra care over their safety at home.
For two days and nights, employees of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) will face an even greater likelihood of having bricks thrown through their windows, their cars covered in paint-stripper, incendiary devices put through their letter boxes and hooded men attacking them as they walk from the car to the front door.
HLS's main research centre in Cambridgeshire and the homes of its staff have become the front line for Britain's forgotten war: a confrontation that has been going on for four years but which, in recent months, has intensified as the tactics of the animal rights' campaigners have become more prolific, violent and fluid. Activists say that they sense "victory" in their attempt to shut down Europe's largest contract medical research centre.
HLS, which was founded in 1952 and is licensed by the Government to carry out testing for pharmaceutical and other companies, is equally adamant that "terrorism" will not triumph. It, too, has gone on the offensive, taking legal action to curb the intimidation of staff, while at the same time lobbying the Government to introduce new laws against harassment.
The company has acted after a senior official working with one of HLS's suppliers came close to becoming the first fatality of the animal rights' activists.
The Telegraph can reveal that the executive was attacked when he heard intruders outside his home and discovered them setting fire to his barn. Assailants knocked him to the ground and left him unconscious besides the burning barn, but he regained consciousness before the flames engulfed him. His company, which has severed its links with HLS because of staff harassment, would not confirm the attack last week.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was formed in 1999, two years after an undercover reporter working for a Channel 4 documentary infiltrated HLS's research centre at Huntingdon and obtained secretly-recorded footage of technicians abusing a beagle. The images were disturbing: a puppy punched in the face and brutally shaken by frustrated staff as it resisted having a blood sample taken.
HLS has admitted that such behaviour is deplorable and three technicians were sacked over the incident, including two who were convicted of animal cruelty. The following year a new management team was brought in which introduced greater openness and new training methods.
HLS, whose motto is "working for a better future", insists that the incident was isolated and alien to the way it treats the 74,000 animals a year - mainly rats and mice but also a few hundred dogs and monkeys - that are used, as the law requires, to test new drugs before they can be declared safe for human use. Virtually all of the animals are humanely killed because autopsies are carried out as part of the research.
Animal rights activists have used the documentary footage and reports of other alleged cruelty by HLS staff to gain support for a campaign which has cost the company and British taxpayers millions of pounds for private security and policing.
The protests began with demonstrations by less than two dozen people outside the gates of the Huntingdon centre. These quickly turned violent, with threats to kill staff and to attack their families.
Within a month, activists began making "home visits", often in the middle of the night. Windows were broken, cars damaged and rape alarms thrown on to roofs so that the piercing noise could not be switched off.
Two senior directors of HLS - Brian Cass, the managing director, and Andrew Gay, the marketing director - were attacked. Two years ago Mr Cass, 54, was set upon and beaten so badly that he needed hospital treatment.
"I arrived home in the dark, got out of my car, turned around and there were three individuals with what looked like pick-axe handles already raised above their heads. I protected myself as best I could but they hit me on the back of the head," he said.
Mr Gay, 47, who is married with four children, was also assaulted outside his home. "Andrew stepped out of his car and two people sprayed something in his face and punched him," a company spokesman said.
"He stumbled against his front door and fortunately it opened. He fell in front of his wife and three-year-old daughter. Andrew went to hospital and for hours didn't know if he would see properly again." Mr Gay made a full recovery, although on another occasion last year 180 protesters turned up at his home highlighting his "murderous" activities. It was the biggest of more than a dozen protests at his house during the past year.
Andrew Baker, the chief executive of Life Sciences Research, HLS's parent company, spoke last week of his anger that the Government is not doing more to combat attacks. "The entire movement is intellectually bankrupt. It is run by a small, rather pathetic bunch who want to destroy things and who have picked on a 'cause' where they manipulate and whip up naive, impressionable people," he said.
Mr Baker, a Briton living in America, said that the growth of the internet had made it easier for SHAC to rally support nationally and internationally.
"There have been incidents where thugs have gone to homes when the parents are out and their children are surrounded by chanting mobs threatening to kill them and burn the house down," he said. "This isn't a debate about animal testing - it's a sickness and a horrible form of human behaviour."
Mr Baker, 54, said that he and his wife had been regularly threatened at their home in New York but that US laws gave them greater protection from harassment. "I am not going to allow these terrorists to win," he said.
As the harassment has intensified, scores of companies have severed their links with HLS after their staff, too, were intimidated and, occasionally, attacked. When no high street bank or insurance company would work with HLS through fear of being targeted, the Government stepped in as banker and insurer.
It may also now be needed as accountants after Deloitte & Touche announced earlier this year that it was ending its links with HLS. The company has turned to the courts for protection. In April, it won a High Court injunction preventing protesters going within 50 yards of the homes of staff, or lobbying them at home - a ruling which has been flouted.
SHAC was formed by Greg Avery, his former wife Heather James, and his current wife, Natasha Avery, all committed animal rights activists who insist that they are not linked with the illegal activities of the Animal Liberation Front. The trio recently served one-year jail terms for conspiracy to incite public nuisance.
Last week Mr and Mrs Avery, both 35 and vegans, claimed that home visits and other intimidation - including jamming company switchboards and e-mails - were "legitimate tactics" but said that they were opposed to violence. Mr Avery said: "These are people who deserve to be named and shamed. The company has brought this on itself."
HLS believes that the new legislation is needed to toughen trespass laws and to make home visits and other harassment illegal. A spokesman for HLS said: "The arguments of SHAC have not won over anyone but the intimidation, threats and the violence have, sadly, had an effect."
Police in Cambridgeshire say that they have insufficient powers to tackle persistent, illegal protesters: they admit that with "hit and run" tactics it is hard to make arrests and harder to obtain convictions.
Chief Inspector Steve Pearl, the head of the special operations unit, said: "We do not have the legal remedies to tackle some of the things that are going on. The law needs to be changed."
Meanwhile, Mr Cass has taken to wearing an animal rights T-shirt with a difference. It says "SHAC" on the front but the acronym is spelt out on the back: "Spongers Hypocrites Anarchists Cowards".