Ronnie Lee #part1 - From Animal Liberation Front Activist to Vegan Advocate #animalrights

hello and welcome to medicine without cruelty I'm sevita founder of medicine without cruelty we are a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing evidence and providing information about you know living and animal free reality today I have with me Ronnie Lee Ronnie is probably best known for being one of the founders of the animal Liberation Front and for having spent about 9 years in prison for Alf activities in more recent years though he has turned his attention to vegan Outreach and freque

ntly speaks of the importance of vegan education and of local vegan activist groups and for the achievement of animal Liberation so thank you so much Ronnie what brought you to founding the ALF movement here in the UK well well actually what happened I became vegan in the spring of 1972 and that wasn't enough for me I wanted to be an activist and so I uh I I got involved with hunt Saabs and started my own hunt Sab group where I lived in at the time in Luton but there was a form of hunting that w

e weren't really able to do much about the hunt Subs is is is mainly about trying to interrupt the the the the pursuit of a fox or you know another Wild by the hounds but and and they use various methods to do that but there's a a type of of hunting or or really it's not really even hunting it's kind of Slaughter of young foxes Fox CS that takes place in the early part of the hunting season round back August where basically they just send the send the dogs into a wood to M the young foxes to kin

d of train you know give the dogs a taste of blood and and we found that that was very very difficult to sabotage and and so the few of us started thinking what what can we do about that and uh we had a meeting six of us we had a meeting in London about it and we decided that what we would do is we'd go to the hunt kennels in the early the morning before one of these cup hunts and we damaged their vehicles so they couldn't actually go and say gool you see so we we couldn't do that as a hunts app

so we we thought we needed to form a different organization and and have a different name so initially we called ourselves the band of Mercy which is sounds like a rather strange name but it was Robin Hood yeah yeah it was the name of a of an rspca youth group or name given to you know there were various bands of Mercy that were R rspca youth groups in the Century you know just just about when the rspca was formed and they were really quite they really quite militant they used to they used to t

ake direct action you know these young people and you know cause damage to guns used by Shooters and things like that so we thought we oh we'd like to revive the spirit of that and so we we decided to call ourselves the same name um but then that the name was changed three years later in 1976 the name was changed the animal Liberation Front and we also very quickly um decided not just to focus on um on hunting but to take uh direct action against all forms of the oppression of other animals and

so we um we attempted to destroy a vivis laboratory that was being built uh uh in Milton ke yeah and we damaged a couple of boats used for seal hunting up on the wash in linshire so it wasn't just you know we were weren't just kind of focused on fox hunting we you know our activities covered a wide range of uh of different ways in which other animals oppressed so I I mean I'm quite new to the uh animal rights animal advocacy you could call it movement so there's there's probably a couple of thin

gs that me and probably our viewers probably want some definitions on firstly Viv section is essentially any operation or any procedure that's performed on a live animal I guess people probably now don't use that word so of I I don't often hear it these days originally it was it it it was meant to just refer to The Cutting of it animal The Cutting but then it became used to refer to all animal experiments in fact way before the 1970s the word was being used there were two organizations here in t

he well here in England the national anti section society and the British Union for the abolition of intersection and they and and and they existed for like decades before the 1970s so that the word has kind of has really quite a history the B has changed its name now they're now known as crueltyfree International I think the national antv rection Society is still the same as far as I know it's funny isn't it because crueltyfree International I mean I feel like the term crueltyfree every when it

comes to especially the Cosmetics industry everyone knows what crueltyfree means I wonder a lot about language that we use these days and it it kind of goes back to you know us putting it mildly what is happening to the animals within a laboratory and you you often hear the words oh you know we make sure that we provide minimal suffering to the animal we provide you know think about animal welfare and no you know any sort of procedure that's performed on an animal will cause them harm being loc

ked in that cage is going to cause them psychological suffering and so you know maybe we should go back to the old ways calling a spade a spade call it Viva section well I the fundamental wrong is the oppression and exploitation of the other animals you know how how much how much actual suffering they undergo is is kind of secondary I mean we shouldn't be humans should not be using other animals for for our own purposes in the first place really in any other in any way whatsoever yeah and so tha

t then if that use involves suffering you know that's an additional as aspect to it but the fundamental wrong is is the exploitation of those animals or or the oppression of those animal that's the fundamental wrong because of course the people who carry out out the experiment will say oh no we antiz the animals they don't feel anything you know they painlessly put to sleep and obviously that that isn't true there horrendous suffering in Laboratories and you know if if if that was done to humans

it would amount to torture it be classified torture it is torture but uh even if their claims were correct and the Animals didn't suffer it would still be wrong it would still be wrong to use those animals and to and and to kill those animals you know for the purposes of humans so it's really the use the impression that's the fundamental wrong yeah yeah absolutely it's kind of coming to the second part of your career you know veganism if you think about it you know you cannot be a vegan and sti

ll live an unkind life in other ways cuz I remember when we had a phone call probably about last year and we were talking about how you know I I know quite a few people who work Laboratories and are still party to that oppression whether it's through through the research they do the products they are using and they yet they still call themselves vegan or vegetarian saying that they they do not use animals or an animal products and I just remember what you said about it and I'd love for you to ta

lk about it fundamentally if someone Works in a laboratory and is is party to animal experimentation they cannot be a vegan they cannot be a vegan you see vegan veganism is isn't isn't a diet I mean obviously the diet that you know the food is a really important part of it but fundamentally it's the philosophy uh I mean Donald Watson who founded the vegan Society said that veganism was a philosophy that was opposed to the exploitation of all sentient life so it's opposition to exploitation and I

'd say oppression as well because you know it's kind of it would be inconsistent to to be just opposed to exploitation and not be opposed to oppression at the same time and so any exploitation of other animals is inconsistent with veganism it's not you know someone who exploits animals in any way cannot cannot be a vegan you know they might they might eat a plant diet or plant-based diets but they're not they can't be vegan and one of the problems is that you know there are a lot of people reall

y these days misunderstand the meaning of veganism and what it means to be vegan and I think there's a lot of Education you know needs to be done with regard to that yeah yeah I completely agree you know I found it really crazy I remember going in this was must be second year of my degree and being really Disturbed at the fact that animals were still being used in Laboratories because it's a bit of a shock to us and you think we would know about it in secondary school but no it's it's probably m

ore kind of highlighted when you get to University level and I remember meeting someone and you know she worked within the the animal abro and she told me that she oh I make sure that I do not eat any animal I am vegetarian I do not you know even though I am doing this here at work I don't feel the necessary it was shocking at that time you know you just think oh okay you know she's trying to reduce it as much as possible and and now I look back on those conversations you know you know being enl

ightened by yourself and you know the the animal free movement that is there you know after hearing all of this it just shocks me how wrong it is and I I kind of wish could go back and you know have the words to you know really really give her a talking to what are you doing well I I I I think it's important uh that people you know understand the true meaning of veganism I came across somebody like that I said do you understand what what veganism means do you understand what it truly means to be

vegan do you know what the founders of the vegan movement intended veganism to be because if we're going to look for a definition of what veganism is we have to go back to what the the people who founded veganism founded the vegan movement intended it to be we can't just make it up aware of any of that and and they tend to think it's just about food and it's just about diet and and it's not it's about far more than that I mean obviously the food is a very important part of it and mainly exploit

ation and oppression of other animals by the food industry is absolutely horrendous I think it's about 8 billion other animals are slaughtered every year to feed the UK population worldwide it's 50,000 uh other animals are second k killed you know to feed humans when it's all totally unnecessary we can live perfectly well on vegan diets and uh so is really important for people to just to stop eating animal products you know that's that's a big aspect of it but it's not the only that isn't what v

eganism is all about it's far it's a far bigger idea and a far bigger concept than that okay well thank you for that no I think people who are listening are definitely could have eyes and ears I don't anyone listening to you know to be convenient if if someone becomes vegan adopts a vegan diet that equates to the sparing of almost 100 animals every year here in the UK every person who consumes animal products on average is responsible for the slaughter of almost 100 animals a year through animal

s that are obviously you know killed to to to feed them are in the process of feeding them so so so just that is a huge step you know how how could we spare a hundred animals from you know from from Slaughter and suffering because you know in most of it does involve horrendous suffering as well as well as the you know the fundamental wrong which is is the exploitation and and killing of those animals what what else what other form of you know animal protection activity could we do that that spar

es that many animals you know it's such an important thing to this is why I think vegan Outreach is so important it's so important that as many vegans as possible or I think probably almost all vegans you know could could be involved in spreading the vegan message and involved in Outreach you know because if we educate just you know just one other person to be vegan then we've spared you know almost 100 animals a year from suffering and Slaughter and I think if we we're active in vegan Outreach

we educate far more than just one person to become vegan is that what motivated you to kind of move away from say the anti section so how did that transition come about well well basically what what actually happened was if if you go back talk about the the you know the the birth of the animal rights movement and and and really it kind of arose it arose here in uh in in the UK and obviously the concepts spread throughout the world but it it arose in the 1970s and and that was when um the word sp

eciesism was coined by uh by Richard Ryder who was a professor Oxford University and he wrote an antiv section book actually called victims of science which was focused on animal experimentation you know a couple of years some years before that but it was actually was mainly in that book that it featured victims of Science and people might want to get hold of a copy of that and read it if they can find a copy of it I think it's published in back 1975 so it's quite a long long time ago uh and the

n you had that you know the idea of animal rights in the was you know the animal Liberation fronts arose in the in the 1970s so it was kind of this this kind of hot bed of of change really and kind of people becoming more radical and becoming really more militant as well in their in their activities 1970s but and of course the vegan Society existed as as well then the vegan site was formed in 1944 but the vegan site is more more existed to kind of really help people who want to become vegan you

give help and advice they didn't really they weren't very much a campaigning organization in terms of campaigning really campaign for veganism we were all campaigning on what might be referred to a single issues you know anti seexual against the first grade against Hunter you see and that and that's what happened and then the animal Liberation Front arose and the animal Liberation from you know really had had a great deal of success uh in in the you know our actions against Riv section industry

actually were I'd say they were responsible for for hugely reducing the number of animal experiments that took place every year I think because of the pressure that it it put on the industry and the other big success here in the UK for the animal Liberation Tru was against the fur trade where Al actions you know took place against fur shops and department stores that sold fur and it resulted in you know a massive decline in the fur trade to the point that you know the only I mean obviously fur f

arming was banned here in the uh in in the UK in the early 2000s but fur can still be sold here it's still you know it's still to be imported and to be sold and that's a loophole but quite a few of those loopholes around here this yeah there there are lot yeah I mean there's lots of loopholes I mean a huge example of of of something that's full of loopholes is of course the hunting act that was supposed supposed to B fox hunting and actually hasn't really done so but you know going back to the t

he fur train the only department store now that sells fur is herods in London and the only High Street fur shops that exist in the whole of the whole UK are in are just in London in a certain part of London so all these towns and cities that had fur shops and had department stores that sold F you had fur departments that you know that that that and that's all gone and and and lot of that really was to do with the animal depression so the had a lot of success and obviously you know that resulted

in millions of animals being spared you know from from Slaughter and you know and and and suffering in most cases you know the the and and then of course what happened is the authorities through various methods kind of cracked down on on on the AL and you know a lot of people were were sent to prison as indeed I was but you know actually hundreds of hundreds of activists spend time in prison and new laws are brought in and and a and and a big and a big kind of problem for that that sort of actio

n these days is is surveillance we have surveillance everywhere but you know way back in 70s 80s into the 90s say there wasn't the surveillance it wasn't the CCTV that you've got now and a lot of places there you know that secure it you know wasn't very great because of the expense but now in the digital age it's so cheap to you know have cameras and cctvs everywhere so the chances of you know doing an are very very small these days so just couldn't get away you know that sort of activity now us

ed to so there's reasons why the AL went into decline but but a major problem I mean apart from that major problem with the AL was that it was kind of although it spared a very large number of of animals it could never actually achieve animal Liberation in terms of you know the widespread animal Liberation you know where we we we have a you know have Society you know other animals are no longer oppressed uh or exploited in in you know where it's like a you know that that's that's how how the wor

ld is where that you know it's widespread animal Liberation the AL could never achieve that because you're never going to achieve animal Liberation where most people don't believe in it you can't how can that happen you know when most people are like speciesist in their Outlook and their human supremacist their Outlook you're never going to get widespread animal Liberation so the only way you're going to achieve that is through through education through getting people to change the way that you

know their mindset change their attitudes and that's why I I believe that vegan education is fundamental to the achievement of animal Liberation wow that's some Journey you've uh you've been on through yeah I mean I've always wanted animal Liberation and my aims to you know achieve animal liberation so I'm you know I've always been looking for what's the best way of doing that you know through my experience you know over the years I've come to the conclusion that you know I mean there's all sort

s of ways in which people are you know campaigning for other animals and helping other animals but my view is that unless whatever people do in terms of advocating for other animals in terms of animal rescue whatever people do unless we have widespread vegan education unless we have widespread vegan Outreach we're not going to achieve animal Liberation and so it's kind of this is why I'm constantly urging region to to get involved in in our reach in whatever way they can I mean there's lots of d

ifferent ways people can do it and that's why that's always my message because I see that as vital to the achievement of Al Liberation fastic yeah I agree I see your point can I ask do you think protesting still has the uh same effect it it had back in the day you know you mentioned the fair trade and what do you think in today's climate protesting still the one I kind of think it I think it depends on the on the type of protest I think quite often I think protests can be can be equivalent of hi

tting your head against the r wall if you look at the you know the climate protests there have been you know where where people have caused disruption you know the effect of that on this government hasn't been to make them take measures to effectively combat the climate crisis what what they've done instead you know they're still carrying on you know doing things that that are making the climate crisis worse and promoting and you know promoting like the opening of new oil fields and and all that

kind of thing you know whereas at the same time they brought in more Draconian measures against protests so so that you know it could be argued that those you know those disruptive activities have actually had the opposite effect to to what they intended and and because the trouble is that you're trying to put pressure on a government that's totally ideologically opposed to what you're asking that's the difficulty and so you're kind of like constantly just sort of banging your head against bric

k wall and so really you know fundamentally you've got to look at well you know how do we change the government you know how do we you know get a government that's actually going to be sympathetic to what yeah get me back to vegan Outreach because the more vegans we have the more vegan politicians we have because some of those vegans will want to politicians and I mean i' never want to be a politician but I kind of you know really appreciate when vegans want to be politicians and I you know you

know I do kind of campaign for vegan politicians and try and get them elected you know you know ones that are around my local area because I think it's important we'd have more vegan politicians but we'd also have more vegans to vote for those politicians so you can change the nature of the administration and you know eventually vote in an Administration that's much more sympathetic you know veganism and to and and to protecting other animals across the board and so once again that comes back on

ce again to vegan outrage it's uh you know it's obviously something that that kind can't be done quickly but it's it's better to do it's better to to to to be on the right Road even though it's a long road it's still better to be on the right road than to not be on the right road yeah yeah I agree in part and I but I also think you know the phrase all roads lead to Rome I I I don't necessarily think it's just one road that's going to achieve animal Liberation we we need to celebrate all of our s

trengths I think I bring you know my my unique talents to the table and and I love listening to you as well so that's it's great to have you I was just thinking when you mentioned about vegan politicians I remembered we have a debate coming up on the 19th of February and it's on the back of the petition animal testing should be banned so this is for the you know safety testing of a wide range of chemicals which are currently done on uh animals and people think people often think it's just rats a

nd mice but no they are still testing you know these chemicals on dogs as as well and that's currently being done here in the UK If we have more vegans and we have more vegan Outreach it stands for reason we should have more vegans kind of pestering our MPS to uh you know whilst they might not be vegans themselves perhaps look at the issues that their constituents are raising so do you think you know maybe in part your work with vegan Outreach might put more pressure on the government what do yo

u think I think it could but I think I think the difficulty is is that where you've got our government that's entrenched in a certain ideology that whatever pressure you you put on them is it's very unlikely to make a difference I mean remember when there was a huge protest in London way back way back at the time of the Iraq War where you know the UK it was planned that the UK would join the USA in invading Iraq and there was a huge protest over this kind of madeup thing about the the weapons an

d mass destruction that didn't actually exist but there we are and uh the huge protest in London I think two million people protested against the UK involvement in the Iraq well it made no difference Tony Blair still sent the troops to Iraq you despite two milon people protesting because that was the that was his ideology that was the ideology of that government I mean that was a labor government but you know they're far from being you know the you know labor are never as bad as the Tories with

with regard to other animals but they're still not still not great at all but um so that that's the the problem that so often you know no matter how many people protest if you're up against if you're up against um a government with an entrenched ideology it's very unlikely to make any difference so we've we' we've kind of and and it's almost like I don't know you've seen the film Groundhog Day yeah where somebody keeps repeating that it's like the idea of keeping repeating the same mistakes over

and over and over again and condemned to always have the same outcome and I've got a cat here that's just nibbled me cat she wants me to stroke her and she she'll bite my arm to get attention so i' have to stroke it with one hand while I'm talking to you keep myself safe so and and and I think that's kind of tends tends to be what's kind of happened over the years people have said oh well you know we don't like this so let's protest and and and and so often in in almost all cases it doesn't ach

ieve anything you're up against this irresistible force and what we've got to think we've got we've got to think a little bit deeper and think well look instead of bashing our heads constantly against this brick wall how do we remove the brick wall how do we remove that brick wall how do you make it so that we can get through that brick wall and how you make it so you get through that brick wall because the politicians I think you know trying to get this lot to do anything decent it's a lost cou

rse and so how do you change the politicians and so once again you've got you kind of got to change the sort of culture of society really in order to change the politics and you change the culture through changing individuals and you changing indviduals through marriage and and all right so it's it's a kind of you know it's a longer term strategy but I think it's one that that kind of has much more chance of working I'm not saying that all I'm not saying all protest is unsuccessful I think prote

st can succeed or perhaps what looks like protest can succeed where it contains an element of Education yeah and I could give you an example of that that myself my wife Louise for for about 13 years we were involved in a campaign called Ground which was a campaign against the dog racing industry we we adopted a gr and we found out that all the dogs that have been killed you know because of the dog racing industry there wasn't a campaign here in the UK against it and we thought right you know we'

ll start one off it kind of got really big we sort of ran that from the end of the 70s to the kind of early early 2000s I think you know no end of the 90s sorry not 70s end of the 90s to about 13 years and then other people took it over and so really took it to new heights to be honest and we we had all these local groups that would would stage like protests outside dog traps but the the the protests were education in fact i' probably call them demonstrations rather than protests because what th

e what they were trying to do was educate the people going into the dog racing about what happened to the dogs about how the dogs were killed by the the the dog racing industry you see so the attendances at the dog tracks went down you see and that was a very successful campaign and contributed to a lot of these tracks closing and and and then that had a knock on effect of like fewer fewer gry hands being bred you know for the industry so fewer gry hands were were then killed you see and so peop

le would say oh you know that that's a you know that looks like a protest there people there with blackards and stuff like that but really it was more of an educational effect because it was aimed at the ordinary people asking them not to support the dog racing so I think that kind of protest or that kind of demonstration can be effective but you know you've kind and then I think also you you you have these these protests outside some of the stores that have have kind of continued to sell fur in

a small way like fur fur trimmings on hats and and fur gloves and stuff like that uh places like flannel I think Canada Goose as well in you know that well I think those can be effective because basically they're educating the public they're saying to the public don't shop here because they sell for so those those stores are going to think we're going to lose money know people aren't going to shop here at all because we we're self first so you know point of view of you know money making it's be

tter to not self so I think that type of protest or demonstration can be effective but think very very often they're not and I think we have to you know carefully think about you know what protests are effective and what ones aren't really yeah