Mobilise! No. 7, February 1984

(From previous page)

ALF Activists are all volunteers:

There are no sales for profits: No fat salaries: No expense accounts: No free lunches: They have nothing to gain and everything to lose: If they are caught they lose their jobs, are responsible for their own fines and are often persecuted: They lose their accommodation, are rendered penniless and homeless... and the animals they work for cannot even thank them:

Fortunately now that numbers of ALF are growing into thousands it is impossible for magistrates to jail them all...

Most supporters of the animal rights philosophy are unable to physically break into laboratories... destroy vivisectors' equipment... draw attention of the public to cruel practices like the fur-trade...

However we can not allow members of cruelty-oriented industries to call them cowards

ALF Logo

Mobilise! relates for its readers a first-hand account from a member of the United Kingdom Animal Liberation Front:

"It isn't funny getting up at 1 in the morning, leaving my family with the thought I might not be coming back unless it's in a police car, walking miles over muddy fields in minus temperatures, waiting around for hours, breaking into somewhere like a laboratory or a battery farm to be faced with the most horrendous sights possible, ... to carry out as many animals as possible - again miles through muddy fields and then to go home at 5 in the morning and to be up again at 7 for work. But what else can I do? Some people talk about the possibility of ending animal abuse 'sometime' in the future - but that's little comfort to the animals being exploited now. I'm just saying that I'm not prepared to wait for a day that may never come... I want to do something now... and that's exactly what I'm doing."

When asked... "But what if you get caught and go to prison?" the activist answered:...

"...So what? A year or so in prison out of my whole life is nothing compared with the agony and torment that an innocent animal in a laboratory or battery farm has to tolerate... There's no comparison is there?"

Who, Mr Goodman - is the coward

"For all their unquestionable morality, those raiders' actions are considered illegal by many in the light of existing laws. But are they really illegal? Perhaps not, if we keep in mind the arguments of people like Professor Lawrence Kohlberg of Harvard, who at the time of the Vietnam war suggested that a Government might become illegal, rather than those who insurge against it. Wrote he in Moral Reasoning:

'Laws can and should be challenged or changed when they are seen to violate more general humane principles. When the Government consistently violates humane principles, one has the right of revolution, because the Government has broken the social contract.'."
- Hans Ruesch, CIVIS Bullet-in Nr. 1 of November 1983


NZAVS | New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society

www.nzavs.org.nz | 2003