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You and Yours - Transcript BBC Radio 4 |
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THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. FACE THE FACTS Animal Rights - Programme 5 Presenter: John Waite TRANSMISSION: Friday 20th August, 2004 BBC RADIO 4 |
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WAITE This week we travel to Staffordshire to investigate how an entire community has come under threat. It's the first time that any of the people involved have spoken publicly of what they've been through and how the whole of this little village here, in its sleepy setting amongst rolling farmland, has become a target for animal rights extremists. We won't reveal its location for fear locals may receive further reprisals, more families threatened with physical violence, who see their houses and possessions attacked. Some have even lost their jobs, their home and their livelihood. And the crime they've committed that's produced all this? Not that they themselves are involved in any way with animal experiments, it's just that among them lives someone who is. And so from the pub landlord to an old age pensioner looking after her autistic grandson they wait in the darkness for their punishment to come. CLIP It is pure and simple terrorism. They come in balaclavas, they come in the middle of the night, they bang, they shout, they throw bricks through your windows, bricks through your doors. You don't want to go to bed at night because - are they going to come tonight? You live in terror from day to day. WAITE And the reason so many people must live in terror - this farm which supplies guinea pigs for medical science, an 800 acre spread that's been in the same family - the Halls - for three generations. And which over the years has had to diversify in order to stay afloat. Arable crops, a 300 head dairy herd, selling young turkeys, rearing young minks - all have been tried. But it was in the early '70s that John Hall and his family first got into breeding guinea pigs, a move which has changed their lives and that of the village. HALL Here we are these are the sheds in which the animals are kept in, we can't go in because we have a strict routine where people entering the sheds have to change their clothes, shower and go in, in masks and gloves and obviously we're also inspected by the Home Office. So we don't feel that we are guilty of keeping animals in a poor condition and a poor state of health because if you think about it we wouldn't survive if we did. WAITE For almost 20 years no one took much notice of the Halls and their guinea pigs, it was only five years ago that the family became the target of a sustained campaign by animal rights activists when hundreds of threatening letters began to arrive. John Hall had the windows of his house smashed, as were those of the home of his 86-year-old father, where red paint was poured in. Graffiti accusing the Halls of being "evil scum" and "animal abusers" was daubed on village walls and roads. John's wife and daughter received death threats which they took seriously because back in 1991 the family had received more than a threat. HALL In the post around Christmas time a cylindrical package came which you normally associate with a calendar from people that we deal with, but we had had a phone call to say that there were some explosive devices in the post and that anything that looked like that should be treated with suspicion. I took it into the workshop and donned the chainsaw gear, which is a helmet, visor and heavy clothing, put it in the vice and pulled the end off and there was an almighty bang, which had I have been holding in my hand would have no doubt blown fingers off. WAITE Though few animal rights campaigners believe bombing is a legitimate tactic some, nevertheless, see the Halls and their farm as a legitimate target. And then those who simply work for the Halls have also come under attack. Nick Sanders is a farmhand and not one who works with the guinea pigs. On the day we met he was overseeing a neighbour's herd of cattle being rounded up for inoculation. SANDERS Okay we've just brought all the cattle in, they're going to be jabbed for TB now. WAITE So this is your job is it? SANDERS Yes this is what I do during the day yes, nothing to do with guinea pigs whatsoever. WAITE Never had anything to do with it? SANDERS Never worked with them in all the time that I've been here in 13 years. WAITE Nevertheless, Nick Sanders has become a target of a sustained campaign of hatred with jeering demonstrators turning up on his doorstep and malicious letters describing him as a convicted paedophile sent to all his neighbours. As were forged medical reports on NHS stationary saying his partner had a sexually transmitted disease. It forced the couple and their two young children to move to another village nearby and to install close circuit TV cameras and other security devices at their new home. But within weeks this too had been targeted and the terror tactics resumed. SANDERS They poured paint stripper all over the cars on three occasions, which ruined the paint work and the car has come to the stage now where it will not take any more paint at all, they slashed the tyres, they cut the telegraph pole down round the corner so it would knock the electricity off which would take the CCTV cameras out and all the security lighting and then come in and smash the windows. MRS SANDERS That's the children's toy room with all the toys in and everything and I thought god the children's toy room, they could have been in there playing. SANDERS Lots of their toys we had to sort out and chuck away because they were just all covered in splinters of glass - all their cuddly toys. They've even sent us letters saying that our children are going to become orphans because they're going to kill us. ACTUALITY AT HOME Bye bye. Bye bye. Say: "Bye bye grandma, granddad". WAITE The concern of Nick and his partner for their two young children is understandable because even the little boys - one of whom has autism - have become embroiled in the hatred of extremists. ACTUALITY AT HOME Are you giving him a kiss? Bye bye sweetie. WAITE When their parents are at work the youngsters are looked after by their 70-year-old grandmother, a former school cleaner, who has been the target herself of abusive hate mail and frightening acts of vandalism. Acts which were preceded in May last year by a chilling warning in a letter containing two squares of yellow card. Display the cards in the bedroom windows where the little boys slept, the letter said, so when we come to smash the rest we don't put in theirs. A warning their grandma chose to ignore but it was no idle threat. GRANDMA Oh we were in bed at half past one in the morning, we just heard bang, bang and when I came down the window was in. WAITE And then you got a stream of letters. GRANDMA A stream of letters, yeah, ugly letters, which were sent to neighbours as well. WAITE Saying what? GRANDMA Well the content was that my daughter could visit me at the crematorium and I'd sexually assaulted someone at the bottom of the street, I'd knocked a baby out of its pushchair, I was on medication. WAITE But it is very sinister. GRANDMA It is sinister but they're very sick people aren't they. My family have stopped coming to see me because of these people, in case they get followed to where they live. That does hurt me what they've done that has affected them that way. WAITE At Nick Sanders home fear of his family receiving further reprisals means that every evening sees an elaborate security regime before the household can go to bed. SANDERS At night I come into the kitchen, I lock the back door, I turn the key, I put the chain on, I put the bolts on. I check all the locks on the windows and then that's the kitchen done then and I know the kitchen's done itself. Then I move into the living room, I switch the CCTV camera on, I set the video and then the camera is then running then and filming the front of the house. We've got a motion sensor in the front garden that if anybody actually comes into the front garden or goes round to the car or up to the windows it actually sets a buzzer off that we hear in the bedroom and it then wakes me up. BUZZER NOISE WAITE Ah yeah there it goes. SANDERS Then we lower the shutters down on the front of the house, nothing can come through the shutters - no bricks or anything - because they're metal shutters coated with plastic. WAITE So basically you've shut yourself in to almost like a prison? SANDERS Yes it's like a fortress at night once it's all locked up and closed down. WAITE And you're happy to live like this? SANDERS It's a case of having to live like this to keep ourselves safe from these people. WAITE These days it's a similar story of extensive security for Rod Harvey who also has nothing to do with the guinea pigs. He and his son run a small fuel delivery service from their home and Rod's crime in the eyes of the activists is that he supplied fuel for the Halls' tractors. The pattern of intimidation is the same. In November 2000 Rod's vehicles had paint stripper poured over them. Everyday he received up to 75 menacing phone calls, abusive e-mails poured in from all over the world. But Rod tried to ignore them and continue running his fledgling business as normal. Tried, that is, until the physical attacks on his home began, when balaclava hooded figures in the middle of the night stove in his windows and smashed down his door. The first few attacks he weathered until … HARVEY Well I was just going to bed and I heard this noise and I thought oh dear that sounds like the window in the bay and the next thing was a brick came through the door and it actually hit me foot. The glass from the door it just shattered and it cut me hand and I thought that's it, I can't stand anymore, it could have been me wife that was there, it could have been anybody and if they're going to start and do things like that when we've got all the lights on, they know there's cameras, it's just frightening. And we were just so worried - I was so worried for me wife - I thought that's it, I've got to finish. WAITE And you did. HARVEY And I did. WAITE Rod Harvey stopped delivering fuel to the Halls in October 2003 but the impact on him and his wife continues. Seventy-three-year-old Mrs Harvey says they no longer advertise their fuel business for fear of attracting further attention and they've changed their phone numbers, all, she told me, in an attempt to undo the distress and the lies they've had to endure. The couple are well known local darts players and activists even sent scurrilous letters about them to the Amateur Darts Association, which still have the power to horrify. MRS HARVEY I just don't believe and never have believed, until this has happened to us, that people have got such dirty, filthy, foul minds and have got the time to write what they think in their minds on to paper and send them out to people. WAITE Because they've accused your husband of being a paedophile and of you helping him to procure children. MRS HARVEY …yes, definitely. My husband never, ever came to my youth dart matches, never ever. It's just horrendous. WAITE Horrendous it may be but it's by no means unique. Other targets in the community here include the local golf club where John Hall used the gym. When threatening letters were ignored turf on its greens was dug up and red paint poured over the fairways. Mr Hall chose to resign. His newsagent was targeted and no longer delivers the papers. His solicitor bowed to pressure and no longer acts for the family. The glazier, who repaired the farm's vandalised windows, was threatened and withdrew his labour, so did the local vet. And the Halls have been stopped from visiting the nearby hotel when it too received warnings. Indeed the entire community here received letters of abuse and accusation about the Halls and their alleged cruelty to animals, including the village pub, the Red Lion, where landlords, the Marklews, tried at first to resist the pressure. MRS MARKLEW We had a letter to say that the Hall family have been using the Red Lion and that we'd got to stop them coming in, which we ignored it. So then we got intimidating letters and threats, what they were going to do - they were going to burn the place down, they were going to trash the cars, they were going to smash the windows. Then after that they sent letters to everybody in the village telling them not to use the Red Lion because we're serving scum - i.e. John and his family. MARKLEW And that's when the bricks started coming through the window. The phone calls was horrendous, you'd get them 24 hours a day non-stop and every time you picked the receiver up, because you had to because I was running a business, you got silence or abuse. WAITE But the Marklews stood their ground and point blank refused to bar the Halls. However, when senior management at the Union Pub Company, which owns the Red Lion, also became the target of hundreds of hostile letters, phone calls and e-mails, officials met the Marklews and told the couple that it would be best if they left their tenancy. Managing Director Stephen Oliver told us it was a move he deeply regretted but one he felt was necessary to safeguard the security of the other 1100 pubs in the chain, as well as employees, suppliers and business partners. So the Marklews quit the pub in which they were hoping to see out their days. Their stand was ended and for taking it so were their careers. MARKLEW We said that this was our last pub. It was a chocolate box and it was, we were a chocolate box and it was a fantastic place. As a publican I'm on the scrapheap. WAITE So you paid a really heavy price. MARKLEW Oh yeah. WAITE And you may never work again as a pub landlord as a result. MARKLEW As a result, yeah, I can see that happening yeah because now we're in the situation .. WAITE That no brewery would dare touch you. MARKLEW I think that's going to be it - no brewery will touch us. WAITE Just for serving Mr Hall a drink. MARKLEW Yeah just serving the Halls a drink, yeah and even if he only had shandy, he didn't drink, he only had a pint of shandy with his meal. PROTEST NOISE WAITE For the past five years and regular as clockwork every Wednesday and Sunday afternoon the legitimate face of protest takes place here opposite the farm. Today, about 20 people, including children and pensioners, stand on the grass verge with their placards and whistles, whilst at a discreet distance the police observe events. It's noisy, as you can hear, and in the past it's occasionally been heated but it's lawful, where protestors can legitimately vent their anger about this farm. We have been shown video footage, taken by activists, which they say shows dead and dying guinea pigs in the sheds across the road there. But when it was taken and where we have no way of being certain. All reasonable people are surely against animal cruelty and if proven its perpetrators should be prosecuted, something by the way that's never happened to the Halls in more than 30 years of breeding guinea pigs. But then this programme is not about the dispute between protestors and the Halls, it's about the way ordinary people, who simply live in this remote village community and have no connection whatsoever to animal experiments, have themselves become targets and their lives filled with fear. Like many protest groups the one demonstrating here has a special website. Besides news about the progress of the campaign are reports, posted anonymously, of the kind of direct action we've been hearing about today. READING FROM WEBSITE It is time to get the animal killing Hall family kicked out of their local haunt - the Red Lion. Please register your opposition to them, allowing the disgusting Hall family on their premises. We need to send out a clear example that people who abuse animals will not be tolerated. Websites of activist groups frequently include the names, addresses and telephone numbers of people to be targeted and there's often a triumphant tone about the reporting of attacks. The local lawful protest against the Halls is organised by a young woman called Amanda Richards, there's no suggestion that she or her fellow protestors is involved in any way with the acts of intimidation that have gone on locally. So how does she explain those who've gone much further than protest and targeted ordinary villagers? RICHARDS By dealing with the Halls they are condoning what the Halls do. WAITE They're not at all condoning - that the pub landlord serves them a drink because that's his job, the newspaper man delivers his newspaper because that's his job - they're going about their lives. RICHARDS What we're saying is that the Halls are animal abusers and surely no one who's a decent person would want anything to do with these animal abusers. WAITE Well that's for them to decide not for you to tell them. RICHARDS I mean when we contact these companies we don't threaten them, we don't intimidate them, all we do is we have peaceful demonstrations outside. We put people in touch with each other who want to get there but have no transport, we send out leaflets and petitions to people and we let people know what's happening at the farm and how they can help it by joining the protests. We have nothing to do with intimidating or illegal acts and we totally condemn it. WAITE But it's done in your name. RICHARDS No it's not done in our campaign name - I don't know who's doing it - we are there with our placards and our banners, we stand opposite the farm to let people know what's going on, to let the Hall family know that we disagree with what's happening and hoping that they will change their minds and stop keeping guinea pigs in those horrendous conditions and stop selling them to the labs where they will be tortured to death. WAITE Well who is it to do with then? RICHARDS I don't know. WAITE So if you've nothing to do with it why do details of these attacks appear on your website? RICHARDS Well just as a newspaper reports items of news we report items of news, people send things in to us. WAITE This is slightly hypocritical isn't it, you know, you can publish things and you know Amanda they're fairly gloating these reports and quite proud about it, you can publish that can you in all conscience? RICHARDS As I say we publish what's sent in to us. WAITE That's totally disingenuous isn't it. It's encouraging people, isn't it, to go out and do more of the stuff? RICHARDS Absolutely not, we do not incite people and we do say that we do not condone any illegal acts. WAITE But you report those acts so others can see and follow the example and join in. RICHARDS But that's like saying a newspaper prints news and is therefore condoning or inciting people to do what's reported in their newspapers. WAITE But your website was closed down by the police. RICHARDS It was yes. WAITE So that's where the difference is - between a newspaper and your website - the police found it so disturbing they closed it down. RICHARDS Well the police haven't actually contacted the Save Guinea Pigs to tell us why it was closed down, I would certainly be interested to find out. WAITE Amanda Richards, whose campaign website, police tell us, is now the subject of a criminal investigation. Amanda may have nothing to do with illegal acts but John Curtin certainly has had. Mr Curtin is something of a legend in animal liberation circles, someone who's been to prison for his involvement in so-called "direct action". Attacking what he would call primary targets like research laboratories and secondary targets like their suppliers. But when we met it became clear that Mr Curtin is himself uneasy about the new and much more remote type of targets - ordinary residents without the slightest connection to animal experiments. Tactics, as we've heard, that are described as "sick" by that 70 year old lady whose windows and door were smashed for looking after her grandson. So what does Mr Curtin make of such methods? CURTIN My main thing in life is to stop the holocaust against animals, yeah, I'm compassionate towards people as well but we live, in Britain today, in a holocaust, we've got to stop that. To torture a guinea pig is as bad as to torture a person and that's what direct action is all about - it's using an element of force but generated from originally from love and compassion. So sometimes in life you do tell people to - oi you, no. WAITE But you know if this goes on no one is safe. These are people that are not even two removed but they're three removed. They're completely free and clear of anything to do with - apart from the fact that they live in the same village and have dealings with the man who runs the farm. CURTIN Well put yourself - let's have the background to this, let's have the animal torture, let's have the holocaust and if you put that into the background it begins to make sense, you're not just dealing with people who are just doing this for the hell of it. WAITE But don't you think that this is going to be, not only self-defeating, could rebound on you, because if you go in for this tactic Mr Curtin aren't you going to undo the support that you've gathered? CURTIN Let's put this into perspective - you're dealing with the animal liberation movement, which comprises of tens of thousands of people, people are out there day in, day out, mopping up the blood of innocent creatures, doing stalls, education, school talks, you're talking about a tiny little fraction of that movement, absolutely infinitesimal small that are doing this tactic. You've picked on it because it is so nasty and it does stick out so much … WAITE Well of course. CURTIN But we're never going to become the bully boys of society, like we're made out to be, because we're generated from love and compassion … WAITE But you are the bully boys of this society. I've been there, I've seen the effect, I've seen the intimidation of an entire community. CURTIN I haven't got a problem with direct action, I haven't got a problem with right down to smashing the windows of someone's home but is that person and all the people in the house are they responsible for animal abuse? And if they are then they become a legitimate target for me. The fact is that there's people in this country, a hard determined core of people, that are going to carry on and you can bring out all the laws in the world against it … WAITE But isn't that sick, Mr Curtin, you know to take totally innocent people and ruin their lives because you believe the lives of animals have been ruined? CURTIN If it is sick you've got to put it in an ultimately sick background of absolute blood and torture and holocaust and people driven to these extremes. Whether we like it or not there are people in this country that feel so strongly that they're prepared to go to these levels. WAITE So you neither condemn nor condone? CURTIN I condemn people that go out attacking a grandmother and an autistic son in her house, if that's your game then I totally condemn that. Tactically I don't think it's the way to go. But I might be proved wrong because if it shuts down these animal abuse places, if it works, then I'm great I can have these high moral points of view but if they actually achieve what I really want is to shut down animal abuse establishments I'm left in the background you know. WAITE So even you have your doubts, that's what you're saying, even you think this may be going too far and may undermine the success of the campaign so far? CURTIN I can see in the long term how we'll aggravate people so much but it's not our role, as animal liberation people, to cow tow - to grovel down to public opinion. Our job is to do what we feel to be right. WAITE John Curtin. Whether terrorising ordinary people who simply live alongside figures of hate, like the Halls, will prove a tactic too far for animal liberationists remains to be seen. As does the impact of the Government's latest moves to combat animal extremists - setting up a new police intelligence unit to monitor their activities and introducing new legislation to limit the numbers of animal campaigners permitted to protest outside certain properties. One thing is certain though - at the farm here, at the centre of this story, John Hall says the past five years of intimidation has meant that what used to be a mixed farming operation has been forced to rely more and more on the guinea pig part of the business. HALL Over there you can see in the distance is a poultry farm where two years ago we did 255,000 day old turkeys up to six weeks when they were sold on to other farmers. And that's now shut because we can no longer get gas supplies because the gas supplier has been targeted by the ALF, their headquarters were targeted and some vehicles were damaged. WAITE And where's the dairy herd you used to have? HALL Well the dairy herd was housed in that large shed there in the winter and obviously would be out in the fields now, in the summer, but that's had to go because the company who collected the milk from us they were targeted, they had their headquarters daubed and damage done. WAITE So you in effect have been backed into a corner where you have to rely on the guinea pigs because all the other diversi … HALL Enterprises - yes that's correct, we are now mainly guinea pigs - that's the main business of the farm now. WAITE Arable? HALL Arable, we have some arable but unfortunately the man who used to do it for us he had to leave because his tackle was damaged, so he's had to pull out too. So it does leave us with just the guinea pigs really. WAITE That's deeply ironic isn't it, that the actions of these protestors have forced you to rely on the very thing they want you to discontinue? HALL Well that's what happens when you try to coerce somebody into doing something. We've always said that the way to get this stopped is to speak to the people in Downing Street where the laws are made, we're just carrying out a lawful legal business. WAITE Farmer John Hall ending this week's edition of Face the Facts, which was produced by Mark Hanscombe. Back to the You and Yours homepage The BBC is not responsible for external websites |
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