Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC)

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Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC)

LEADER: Greg Avery

YEAR ESTABLISHED OR BECAME ACTIVE: 1999

USUAL AREA OF OPERATION: Britain, the United States, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland

OVERVIEW

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) is an animal rights campaign group formed in November 1999 with the aim of closing down Europe's largest animal-testing laboratory, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), near Cambridge, England. SHAC's controversial campaign has seen a variety of tactics used and it has been widely imitated by other animal liberation campaigns throughout the world. Despite claims that it uses and supports only nonviolent methods, SHAC has been tainted by frequent accusations of extremism.

HISTORY

Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is Europe's largest animal-testing laboratory. It is situated near Cambridge, in the heart of Britain's chemical and pharmaceuticals research industry. HLS tests products such as pharmaceuticals, pesticides, domestic cleaners, and food additives on around 70,000 animals every year, including primates, rats, rabbits, cats, and dogs. HLS also has an operation in the United States, in New Jersey. The importance of laboratories like HLS to the British pharmaceutical industry alone is enormous: in 2003, pharmaceuticals were worth a net total of £3.6 billion to the British economy.

Britain, nevertheless, boasts a long-standing tradition as a nation of animal lovers. As far back as 1863, British women in Florence are commonly credited to leading the first organized protest against vivisection, and the Cruelty to Animals Act was passed as early as 1876. Animal testing in the U.K. peaked in the 1980s, but as a result of the development of alternatives and public pressure, has been on the decline since. A European Directive on Scientific Procedures on Animals in 1986 brought in more stringent regulation on testing laboratories.

Nevertheless, work by organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the more radical Animal Liberation Front (ALF) that uncovered abuses in testing laboratories continued to prompt periodic outrage even as the number of animals being tested declined. One such investigation, "A Dog's Life," screened by Channel 4 TV in 1997 showed in graphic detail abuses carried out at Huntingdon Life Sciences. One particularly unseemly piece of footage showed a laboratory worker punching a beagle in its face.

Unsurprisingly, the film evoked outrage among Britain's animal lovers and helped increase the ranks of protestors. Following the film, three of the laboratory technicians filmed were suspended from HLS and the two men shown hitting and shaking the dogs were later arrested and prosecuted under the Animals Act of 1911. HLS also saw its work drop by a third in the flurry of bad publicity that followed.

KEY EVENTS

1997:: Screening of "A Dog's Life" on television 4, showing abuses of animals at HLS.
1999:: Greg Avery and Heather James form SHAC with the intention of closing down HLS within three years.
2000:: SHAC obtains and publishes a list of HLS shareholders. Many withdraw their stake in the company, including the Labour Party.
2001:: Royal Bank of Scotland revokes HLS's banking facilities after a campaign of protests at its branches. The Bank of England steps into its place.
2001:: Brian Cass, HLS Managing Director, is beaten by three men.
2001:: Avery jailed for six months for "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance."
2005:: The British government proposes to establish crimes of "acts preparatory to terrorism" and "indirect incitement to terrorism." The laws could be available to pursue SHAC.

It nevertheless took more than two years for animal rights protestors to turn their ire on HLS in earnest, when, in November 1999, a campaign entitled Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty was born. Founded by Greg Avery and his first wife Heather James, they both were hardened animal rights campaigners, who had served prison terms for their work. SHAC's foundation coincided with the successful conclusion of a long-running operation against an Oxfordshire cat farm that bred cats for laboratory testing. This huge campaign, which often teetered over into overt violence and intimidation, involved not just protests outside the farm's gates, but the targeting of its employees and their homes, as well as suppliers and businesses even only tentatively associated with the farm. During the two years of these targeted protests, police arrested 350 people involved with the campaign and twenty-one were jailed.

When the full attention of Britain's animal rights movement was turned to HLS, SHAC soon came to include many of these facets in its campaign against the laboratory—despite its repeated insistence that it only used nonviolent means.

Setting itself the goal to close down HLS within three years, SHAC waged an extraordinary war of protest, propaganda, and intimidation.

Employees were followed home, shouted at, spat on, and threatened. On one occasion, ten employees had their cars firebombed during the middle of the night. Posters were plastered around the neighborhoods featuring employees and personal details divulged. HLS's Managing Director, Brian Cass, was set upon outside his home by three masked men wielding pickaxe handles and seriously injured; HLS's Marketing Director, Andrew Gay, was attacked on his doorstep in front of his three-year-old daughter with a chemical spray that temporarily blinded him.

SHAC also turned its attention to other companies and investors that had a connection with HLS. Many, including the embarrassed Labour Party (which held shares in HLS through its pension fund), moved their money out to avoid further harassment. Institutional investors, including Shroeders, also withdrew. Not surprisingly, the value of the company plummeted: being valued at £360 million in 1990, its market valuation fell to £5 million in 2001. HLS was also dropped from the New York Stock Exchange. When protests directed at its bankers, the Royal Bank of Scotland, led to its account being closed, the Bank of England—at the request of the British government—was obliged to step in and provide banking facilities. This was an unprecedented step.

SHAC remained unrepentant, despite its continued avowal of nonviolent means. Greg Avery said, "They've made their beds and now it's time to lie in them, and they're all whining." Nevertheless, SHAC inferred that the attacks were carried out by Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activists, with which it said it had no connection. This was a curious claim given that ALF news was carried on the SHAC web site and several of its senior members gave unequivocal support to the ALF. Indeed, Avery, together with his first wife and SHAC co-founder, Heather James, and his second wife and SHAC spokesperson, Natasha Avery, were jailed in December 2001 for criminal incitement.

As SHAC's three-year target for the closure of HLS neared, criticism about its methods mounted. One monitor of extremist groups likened its "frankly terroristic tactics" to those of "anti abortion extremists," while others seized upon its policy of publishing names and addresses of employees.

LEADERSHIP

GREG AVERY

Greg Avery founded SHAC in November 1999 with his first wife Heather James, when he was thirty-one. Along with his second wife, Natasha Avery, he acts as spokesperson for SHAC. For legal reasons, SHAC is not a registered organization nor does it have a formal leadership, but Avery is its most famous and infamous protagonist.

A committed animal liberation activist, for twenty years Avery has been at the forefront of direct action campaigns against hunting, the fur industry, and latterly, vivisection. He likens himself to Nelson Mandela on account of his strong beliefs, commitment to resistance, and the fact that he has been imprisoned for his beliefs, and claims that he has devoted his life to saving 2.7 million animals that die every year in scientific research laboratories. On several occasions, Avery has been jailed because of his actions: He spent eighteen months on remand after police found 100 incendiary devices in the Birmingham house he was staying at with another activist, but was later acquitted; in 1998, he served six months for affray; and was jailed for "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance" in 2000 and in 2001.

Nevertheless, he claims to not condone or agree with violence, though conversely asserts that a "realistic" attitude has to be taken and that companies have "made things worse for themselves" by taking legal measures to try and stop protests. Speaking to the Guardian in 2004, he said, "That's why people are turning up at 2am or 3am and throwing bricks through windows, throwing paint over cars."

SHAC, for its part, maintained that it did not condone illegal activities and only published names and addresses so that people could protest peacefully and legally. However, testifying before a House of Commons Committee in March 2003, Dr. Ian Gibson, MP, quoted from a SHAC internal document on tactics: "A simple tactic has been adopted recently. Pick your target. Throw a couple of rape alarms in their roof guttering or thick hedgerow, and leg it … Being kept awake at night hardly puts you in a good mood at work or with your family … Another idea is to set off extra loud fireworks from a safe distance that will wake up the HLS scum and everybody else for miles around … From the comfort of your own home, you can swamp all these bastards with send no money offers. They cause huge inconvenience and can give them a bad credit rating. Order them taxis, pizzas, curries, etc, the possibilities are endless. Above all, stay free and safe, and don't get caught. The more preparation you do the better … Think, think, think. Don't lick stamps, use gloves when pasting stuff … No idle talk in pubs. Burn your shoes and clothes after your night of action."

"Such activities may sound like a bit of fun or undergraduate play," said Dr Gibson. "But they are serious. They intimidate people, and they can lead to people with baseball bats getting stuck into managing directors, and so on."

Yet, SHAC had seen its campaign make huge inroads. By the middle of 2002, it claimed it had effectively wrecked the viability of HLS and that only the intervention of the British government and HLS's directors was keeping the company afloat. "Out of all the tens of thousands of banks and financial institutions world wide," it boasted on its web site, "Huntingdon cannot find just one to lend them money."

Moreover, it had seen its campaign internationalized with SHAC groups forming in eleven different countries outside the U.K. The highly effective tactics adopted by its protestors had also been copied in other campaigns, most notoriously in the U.K. against Darley Oaks farm in Staffordshire. The farm, which bred guinea pigs, suffered an appalling catalogue of intimidation and violence before closing in July 2005. This included the desecration of a grave of a distant relation of one of the farm's owners.

To help counteract SHAC and its various imitators, the British government introduced a raft of legislation designed to limit the rights of protestors and to increase police powers when dealing with threatening behavior. Judges and magistrates have also begun to treat each incident as part of a wider campaign of harassment, rather than as isolated breaches of public order. Nevertheless, SHAC apparently remains undeterred and has hinted darkly that its campaign may yet reach another level. Quoting John F. Kennedy, Kevin Jonas, leader of SHAC-USA has said: "If you make peaceful revolution impossible, you make violent revolution inevitable."

PHILOSOPHY AND TACTICS

Although animal welfare has a long tradition in Britain and elsewhere, SHAC gives no philosophical basis for its campaign. While its stated aim is to close Huntingdon Life Sciences down, they provide no explanation on their web site as to why animal cruelty is wrong, nor what rights they should expect. This is entirely assumed.

Instead, its campaign "… is all about action. Words and tears mean nothing to the animals trapped in their cages inside HLS waiting to die," says its web site. "They deserve nothing less than our utmost commitment to take action every day to close down the lab that holds them captive and slowly kills them."

This action takes on many forms. Most visibly, it comes in the way of demonstrations, organized at short notice and by cell phone technology to avoid police detection. In reality, SHAC's direct action manifests itself in other, more insidious, ways. Despite its repeated claim that it does not condone violence, its publication of the names and addresses of HLS employees or investors so that its supporters might "protest" often sees its campaign teeter over this boundary. Protest tactics have included physical assaults on targets; intimidation (e.g., the photographing of a target's family such as dropping the children at school; phone calls in the middle of the night; fake bombs delivered; and so on); vandalism (e.g., the firebombing of cars; paint stripper poured on cars; red paint thrown on a target's home); and other disruptive tactics (e.g., ordering unwanted pizzas or taxis to a target's address; diverting mail.).

The SHAC web site reveals that it is explicitly clear about where it stands on the issue of violence against targets. Each page carries the disclaimer: "Please note that SHAC does not encourage illegal activities." Yet, much of its content is incendiary. As well as the publication of targets and their names and addresses, it contains much invective that may incite. A typical passage reads: "We know that violence is happening inside HLS on a daily basis as hundreds of beautiful animals are terrified and abused at the hands of their tormentors. It is violent to force a tube down animals' throats or jab needles into their veins and pour toxic poisons into their systems, it is depraved to poison animals and dispassionately make notes as they suffer and die, it is violent to kill and dismember puppies while other dogs sit waiting their turn, trembling in fear, it is abusive to punch dogs in the face while other people sit around laughing—these people are monsters and they are the violent ones, not us. SHAC does not support violence of any kind."

Despite its continued disavowal of violent means, SHAC is not a registered organization, instead a loose affiliation of individuals—essentially so it cannot be prosecuted or sued. This has also made it difficult for HLS to obtain injunctions to prevent protests outside its gates. Nevertheless, SHAC retains many of the characteristics of a corporate or charitable body and maintains a web site, mailing address, telephone information line, mailing list, and bank account. It is also split regionally across the U.K., with campaigns against suppliers and associated businesses conducted on a local level.

PRIMARY SOURCE
Threats.com: Radical Animal Rights Activists Set the Stage for a First Amendment Showdown

In 2002, Kevin Jonas, president of the extremist animal rights group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA (SHAC USA), told the Intelligence Report, "[W]hen push comes to shove, we're ready to push, kick, shove, bite, do whatever to win."

But after a series of SHAC USA-sponsored harassment campaigns resulted in substantial property destruction and threats of personal injury, the federal government is now doing the shoving.

On May 27, 2004, SHAC USA, Jonas and six other members of the radical group were indicted for engaging in a conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act [18 U.S.C. § 43] and other federal laws. The "SHAC Seven" are accused of using the Internet to terrorize the employees and business associates of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), a pharmaceutical research company that uses animals to test drugs and chemicals.

As the SHAC Seven head to court, so too does the First Amendment. The ultimate question: Does the First Amendment shield individuals from criminal liability for Web site postings that encourage third parties to engage in campaigns of harassment?

SHAC ATTACK

Over the past four years, SHAC USA activists have harnessed the power of the Internet to harass Huntingdon's employees and its business associates across the country. But the online campaigns have made life difficult for SHAC USA as well. The group faces civil actions in at least two states and the federal criminal indictment naming the SHAC Seven.

A New Jersey state court has enjoined SHAC USA, its officers and "all persons acting in concert with it" from engaging in harassing tactics against HLS business associate TEVA Pharmaceuticals and one of its employees. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, the California Court of Appeals has permitted a suit against SHAC USA for trespass and harassment to proceed to trial. [See Huntingdon Life Sciences, Inc, v. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA (Cal. Ct. App. June 1, 2006).] SHAC USA's criminal prosecution in federal court only adds to the radical group's mounting legal woes.

According to the federal government's lengthy criminal indictment, the SHAC USA Web site encouraged members and sympathizers to engage in "direct action"—activities that "operate outside the confines of the legal system." SHAC USA suggested "top 20 terror tactics," including threatening to injure or kill a person's family members, assaulting a person by spraying cleaning fluid in their eyes, vandalizing or flooding a person's home, firebombing a person's car, breaking the windows of a person's home while family members are inside, and sending e-mail "bombs" to crash computers.

And for SHAC USA activists' convenience, the Web site provided nifty features called "Target of the Week" and "Ongoing Targets." With a click of a mouse, Web site visitors could find addresses for HLS employees and executives, telephone and fax numbers and, in some instances, the names and ages of the targets' children and where they attended school.

TRUE THREATS AND THE INTERNET

The SHAC Seven certainly have a First Amendment right to be free from government censorship of their political viewpoints. But this right is not absolute. [See Virginia v. Black, 538 u.s. 343, 358 (2003); R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 u.s. 377, 382 (1992).] If the words on the SHAC USA Web site constitute "true threats," as the government argues, the SHAC Seven will find no First Amendment refuge from criminal prosecution. [See Watts v. United States, 394 u.s. 705, 705 (1964).]

The best-known case to address threats over the Internet is Planned Parenthood of Columbia/ Willamette, Inc. v. Am. Coalition of Life Activists, 290 f.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2002) (en banc). In 1994, the American Coalition of Life Activists (ACLA), an anti-abortion extremist group, released a "Deadly Dozen" poster, designed in a wanted-style format with "guilty" captioned at the top and a list of names and addresses of thirteen abortion providers.

In 1997, a pro-life activist affiliated with ACLA gave a much longer list of more than 200 "abortionists" to anti-abortion hardliner Neal Horsley, who then posted them on a section of his Christian Gallery Web site labeled "Nuremberg Files." Horsley highlighted the names of those doctors and others murdered by anti-abortion terrorists by striking through their names on the list; those who were merely wounded had their names grayed out [Planned Parenthood, 290 f.3d at 1065.]

Several abortion providers listed on the posters and the Nuremburg Files site sued ACLA and twelve anti-abortion activists. A jury later found that the defendants violated the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, awarding the plaintiffs $107 million in actual and punitive damages. The judge enjoined the posters and restricted the content on the Web site. [See Planned Parenthood, 290 f.3d at 1058.]

On appeal, the defendants argued that the content of the posters and Web site were protected speech under the First Amendment. But the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld ACLA's liability, finding that the content on the posters and Web site constituted an unprotected true threat.

The court defined a true threat as a statement made when a "reasonable person would foresee that the statement would be interpreted by those to whom the maker communicates the statement as a serious expression of intent to harm." [See Planned Parenthood, 290 f.3d at 1074, 1088.] The test is an objective one; the defendant does not have to actually intend to, or be able to, carry out the threat. [Id. at 1076.] In the Planned Parenthood case, the Ninth Circuit found that it was reasonable for ACLA members to foresee that the named abortion providers would interpret the posters and Web site postings as a serious expression of ACLA members' intent to harm them.

In a more recent case, a panel of the Ninth Circuit took a more restrictive view of the true threats doctrine when dealing with criminal prosecutions. [See United States v. Cassel, 2005 Wl 1217387 (9th Cir. May 24, 2005).] In Cassel, the defendant was convicted of interfering with a federal land sale after he threatened to burn down any home built on federal property adjacent to his home. The court held that in order to prove that a true threat is unprotected by the First Amendment, the prosecution must show that the defendant subjectively intended the speech as a threat, something not required by the Planned Parenthood case.

Whether the SHAC Seven face the objective true threats test from Planned Parenthood or the more restrictive subjective test from Cassel, it is likely that the Web postings will be deemed true threats. In the California civil case against the SHAC Seven for harassment of an HLS employee, the state Court of Appeals found that the Web postings, as described in the complaint, "would [likely] intimidate [the plaintiff] and cause her to fear [Jonas, the SHAC USA president] and other persons affiliated with SHAC USA … and indeed [Jonas] knew as much and that was the desired result." [See Huntingdon Life Sciences, Inc, v. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA, at 27-28.]

In the federal criminal case, SHAC USA's "targets" suffered real-life, off-line consequences as a result of the online threats. Shortly after the Web site postings, the identified targets' homes, cars and personal property were vandalized—rocks thrown through windows, the exterior of homes spray-painted with slogans, cars and boats vandalized, and, in one instance, a target's car overturned in his driveway. HLS and its business associates' facilities also experienced vandalism and smoke bombs, while online attacks shut down computer systems. To make matters worse, the SHAC USA Web site reported many of these harassing acts after they occurred, fueling the fire.

By the time the criminal trial begins, the jury is likely to find it hard to believe that the SHAC Seven didn't intend to intimidate their targets.

Catherine E. Smith is an assistant professor at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law and teaches a course on extremism and the law.

Catherine E. Smith

Source: Southern Poverty Law Center, 2005

SHAC has international offshoots in eleven other countries too, most notably the United States, but also in more unexpected places such as Portugal and the Czech Republic. There, they carry out demonstrations against supplier companies and other affiliates. Recent targets have included UPS in Italy, Glaxo Smithkline in the United States, and Hotelplan in Switzerland. The stated aim is to stop these companies from having any involvement with HLS, but sometimes the connections are looser. Hotelplan, for instance, sells package vacations to the island of Mauritius. Mauritius is the largest supplier of primates to HLS. Therefore, the entire country and anyone who does business with it is a target. "Our policy," a SHAC spokesperson told Associated Press in February 2001, "is that anybody with any connection at all with Huntingdon Life Sciences is a target."

OTHER PERSPECTIVES

"The cowardice is breathtaking. At the first whiff of gunpowder the captains of industry, the big banks, stock brokers, financiers, pharmaceutical companies and even cancer research charities turned tail and fled," wrote the social commentator, Polly Toynbee, in the Guardian, in January 2001 following the Royal Bank of Scotland's withdrawal of HLS's banking facilities. "There are precious few famous scientists and doctors putting their heads above the parapet either. The vigilante terror campaign of the animal rights lunatics has all but silenced the voice of reason. Huntingdon Life Sciences is being hung out to dry, taking the strain for the whole world of scientific research—or indeed sanity in general: a fish and chip shop got a nail bomb this week from animal madmen—a 'legitimate target' because fishing is cruel … If everyone runs away, the animal terrorists will win. What matters now is gaining wide public support for essential animal research. This craziness can only be seen off by a public hardening of attitudes which requires vigorous advocacy from cancer charities, scientists, politicians, doctors, nurses, teachers and all who are alive because of research."

"Anti-vivisection rallies in the early 1990s attracted thousands, but many have since been put off by the violence and fanaticism of the hard core," reported the Economist in April 2004. "The remaining militants have now figured out that outright violence loses sympathy and gets them arrested. So no real bombs have been sent to researchers for a while, though pretend ones abound. Physical assaults are now rare, while threats of thuggery are more common. The key to survival is to be extreme enough to attract money from the small number of supporters who want violence, while staying anonymous enough to evade the police." Despite the switch in tactics from overt violence to a more intimidating brand, it is still "bad news for drugs research in Britain, a business that turns over £9m ($16m) a day."

SUMMARY

Despite SHAC's founding aim in November 1999 that it would enforce the closure of HLS within three years, it has failed to achieve this objective, although the company remains financially wounded by what has become an international campaign of direct action, harassment, and intimidation. Moreover, SHAC's relative successes in highlighting what it terms "abuses" and targeting of loosely associated individuals and businesses have served as an inspiration for other animal liberation protestors. Although it has not effected the closure of HLS, SHAC remain convinced that it will achieve its objective and is aware of the catalog of victories its campaign has already achieved: "HLS will close," states its web site. "It is just a question of when, and only a matter of time. Look at what we have achieved so far—we have decimated their shareholder base, forced their bank to forclose (sic.) on their 22 million pound loan, persuaded any other commercial bank worldwide from giving them a bank account, and virtually every financial institution worldwide from dealing with them, forced them off the London and New York stock exchanges, crashed their share price and made the words Huntingdon Life Sciences synonymous with animal cruelty worldwide."