Tom Harris on the SHAC campaign and the significance of grassroots advocacy Artwork

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How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Tom Harris on the SHAC campaign and the significance of grassroots advocacy

November 05, 2024 • Amy Odene & James Ozden

There are not many people who have spent time in prison for their commitment to help animals, but Tom Harris is one of them. We spoke with Tom about his time in the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign (SHAC), one of the most well-known animal rights campaigns of the last 20-30 years.

We speak about why he thinks the campaign was so effective in applying pressure to companies, things he would do differently, common misconceptions about the SHAC campaign and the importance of grassroots advocacy in the animal rights movement. We also spend a bit of time talking about his future plans for rebuilding the grassroots advocacy scene in the UK so stick around to the end for some exciting plans.

Resources:

Your Neighbour Kills Puppies: Tom Harris
SHAC Justice Site - The campaign to have the convictions appealed
Contact Information
Email Contact for SHAC Justice

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us - we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!

Tom: I feel that absolutely what we're missing in the modern movement is firstly, those local autonomous groups and secondly those kind of targeted campaigns. Because I think for me, like, if I was going to protest outside an abattoir, for example, it kind of makes no real sense to me to do that unless I'm trying to close them down. And why aren't we trying to close them down? But they're just businesses. If you can close down a multinational laboratory, you can close down your local abattoir. And I strongly believe, like, pretty much any business can be shut down.

Amy: Hi, my name is Amy.

James: And my name is James.

Amy: And this is How I Learned to Love Shrimp, a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement.

James: There are not many people who have spent time in prison for their commitment to help animals, but Tom Harris is one of them. We spoke with Tom about his time in the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign, one of the most well known animal rights campaigns of the last 20 or 30 years. Together we spoke about why he thinks the campaign was so effective in applying pressure to companies, things he would do differently if he did it again, common misconceptions about the SHAC campaign, as well as the importance of grassroots advocacy in the animal rights movement. He also spent a fair bit of time at the end talking about his future plans for rebuilding the grassroots advocacy scene in the UK. So stick around to the end for some exciting plans. Hope you enjoy the episode.

James: Hey, everyone. We are joined today by Tom Harris, who's an activist, artist and author of Your Neighbour Kills Puppies. Tom has been involved in all parts of the animal liberation movement for over 25 years and has helped close down a military research laboratory, several chicken farms and an illegal puppy farm. He also helped coordinate Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which fought to close Europe's largest animal testing lab. So welcome, Tom.

Tom: Thank you.

James: We're excited to have you. Lots of things to talk about today and actually, fun fact, I recently got your book. I haven't actually read it yet, but my- my roommate is a big fan. So he gave me some questions to talk about. So I'm excited for that. But first of all, what is something you changed your mind on recently and why?

Tom: I feel that I tend to be fairly considered when I come to opinions. So I tend to wait until I kind of know enough of the facts to hopefully make an informed decision. So I probably don't change my mind that regularly. I feel like I constantly evolve, but more generally, like over the last, like, few years, I definitely have come to realise the importance of our movement as a vibrant ecosystem, that everyone has a place in this. And actually it's so important that we all kind of bring to the table what we can bring. Whether that's inside game, outside game, radical action, whatever it might be. Like all of it is necessary and all of it is needed. That's definitely something I've kind of really firmed my opinion on over the last few years.

James: That's very cool. Did something happen that made you kind of more solid in that view or like, what changed?

Tom: I think having a slightly forced absence from the movement through going through prison and licence and then kind of finding my way back in. I think it kind of allowed me the space that I didn't have before because I was so focused on full time activism. I didn't really have the time to focus on anything other than what I was focusing on. Whereas kind of having that kind of objective, kind of oversight of everything. I think it became very clear actually how it all kind of interconnects and yeah, how all of it is essential. And you know, studying other social movements as well, that they've all been based upon this ecosystem.

Amy: I feel like we've definitely all been guilty of that. Just, we are so head down, right? We're like just taking the time to like actually step back. And I think other social movements definitely like super helpful, but yeah, just appreciating everyone's contributions. I think it happens for everyone when we're just, yeah, focusing on our little section.

Tom: I think it's very easy to get frustrated with what other people aren't doing or what they're perceived to not be doing. Like they should be doing what we're doing. But then actually when you do step back and you kind of see, well, actually if this hadn't happened, this wouldn't have happened and that wouldn't have happened and then we wouldn't be here. And yeah, I think it's very easy to get that kind of frustration. But actually if you do stop and focus on what you're doing and, but also just be mindful of how others are impacting, it's very healthy.

James: Yeah. I also had that exact same experience when I was at Animal Rebellion. I also felt like, why isn't everyone else doing this? Like everyone else is literally doing nothing. Like what are they? Like, what are all the main NGOs doing? Being so frustrated and then, yeah, after a bit of time not involved or almost like doing different stuff, you realise, oh, okay, you know, these wins are good for that. And These wins are useful for this and it all fits together. So I totally agree. This being appreciative of everyone else's work is just, I think, a good mindset to bring to the table.

Amy: So, for those that don't know, can you give a brief overview of what Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which is known as SHAC and will be referred to as SHAC throughout the rest of the conversation, what you set out to achieve.

Tom: So a brief overview is a little bit hard. You just saw the size of my book. Essentially SHAC, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, was founded in 1999. I promise it's a fun and light read. It was founded in 1999 after undercover video footage came out of two of Huntingdon Life sciences laboratories which showed- I mean, it was horrific footage and it was really footage that I think impacted an entire generation of activism. But realistically, it was just another day in a life of any laboratory. But this was the first time we’re seeing it from anywhere. So obviously Huntingdon became this epicentre of, you know, punching dogs in the face and cutting open live primates without anaesthesia and throwing puppies against the wall.

Tom: Yeah, I suppose it radicalised the generation and it brought with it through Greg, Natasha and Heather, who founded SHAC, this idea that we weren't just going to be participants in this, that we weren't just -this wasn't like a spectator sport and we weren't just going to ask this company to close down or do something different, we were going to close them down ourselves. And so it's a very uncompromising mindset. And to do that, we kind of developed this campaigning model, often referred to this as the SHAC model now, which identified that a company doesn't exist in a vacuum, that, you know, you can't ask a company to close down under capitalism, that's not how it works.

Tom: But you can identify all the other companies or the secondary companies that they need to operate and you can put your focus on these much softer targets and convince them to lose one contract. Is much easier than asking a company to close down. And so we focused on. On these secondary companies and we also focused on the people in those companies that had the power to make the decision. Like, we weren't angry at a company, we were angry at the person that was writing these contracts and signing off for these dogs to die. And all the other animals that die. 500, 500 animals a day died in there.

Amy: That's like a normal figure. Or was this particularly high?

Tom: They were Europe's largest animal testing laboratory, but, you know, they had competitors and there's many companies still that exist that continue to kill hundreds upon hundreds of animals every day. Yeah.

Amy: Wow. And they're dying as a result of.

Tom: Well, they're not dying. They're being killed. I'm sorry, that's bad language on my part.

Amy: No, sure. So they're being killed once they've used whatever they need to from them, or they're dying or being killed as, like, as a result of injury sustained?

Tom: Huntingdon Life Sciences, they were a contract research organisation, and essentially what that means is that other companies pay them to prove that their products are safe for regulatory approval.

Amy: Okay.

Tom: So their job isn't to, you know, discover whether these products are safe, it's to prove categorically that they're safe, regardless of whether they are or not. And if they don't, then the company will go to one of their rivals and get them to prove it. So most of what they do is toxicology experiments, which is essentially taking a product, a toxic product, and in one way or another, essentially poisoning, you know, a batch of animals until, you know, see what. See what happens. And then, you know, if it's too bad, then you'll find another batch of different species, different sex, different bedding, different lighting, until you kind of get the results you need to kind of tick that box. But, yeah, they're poisoning them to death, essentially.

Tom: So it'd be either oral garbage, which is a tube down the throat, or gas, like inhalation through a face mask, or dosing their food and then, yeah, just increasing the doses and seeing what happens when you give this or that toxin to. To however many animals. So, yes, they're being poisoned to death.

James: Obviously, this is, you know, a pretty big target to take on. This is like Europe's biggest animal testing lab. Did the group that kind of formed SHAC, did you guys focus. Do, like, the similar strategy of secondary targeting on other targets before or, like, why did you pick Huntingdon Life Science as, like, the first big target?

Tom: So Huntingdon wasn't the first big target. So before that we had- there was a campaign against Consort Beagles, who bred dogs for animal testing, just like MBR Acres do in Cambridgeshire now. And they were closed down using this. This structure. And then Hill Grove Cat Farm came next, which bred cats for research. They were closed down. And then when it came to, Sorry, I have a hairy child here, when it came to the third one, went for Huntingdon Life Sciences. But I think there is a misconception that they were picked because there was this big symbolic. You know, they were Europe's largest animal testing the laboratory. It would be this huge win for us. But actually the reason they were picked is after this undercover footage came out, their shareholders, their customers deserted them in droves, their share price plummeted.

Tom: And then local campaigners kind of, you know, started increasing the pressure and they actually started, you know, some of the secondary targeting on the shareholders and others. And so when SHAC actually formed, Huntingdon Life Sciences were really, you know, on the verge of bankruptcy and they had a 24 million pound loan from the NatWest Bank. And so actually the campaign when it started, all it had to do was convince one bank to cancel one loan and we'd close down Europe's largest animal testing laboratory. We gave ourselves three years. We did it in a year. The loan was withdrawn after a year and then the government stepped in. And yeah, that's kind of, I suppose, the beginning of the end or when things started going wrong. But we kept going for another 13 years after.

Tom: But yeah, that was a seismic shift and everything at that point.

James: So actually it was more like you picked it not because it was so big and symbolic, but actually because it was so weak and frail.

Tom: Exactly, yeah.

Tom: It was low hanging fruit at the time.

James: Yeah, yeah. The fact that you stuck with it for 13 years is to me, like, incredibly notable. I think, like, I can't think of many campaigns nowadays that have been running on the same target for like 13 years. And from the, from like the offset, you said you were committed for three years. And then how did it end up going longer? Like, was that a conscious decision to be like, we'll extend no matter what or?

Tom: No, I think if you read the book, I feel like it kind of makes sense of how we were all feeling at the time, which was literally like we were going to win any day. And every day that we invested, like, you know, people were getting double digit prison sentences. Like there's a guy on the, in America who's still on the run for actions against Huntingdon Life Sciences, like over 20 years ago. You know, people were sacrificing a lot or a lot was being put into it. And we genuinely felt constantly like one more push and we're there.

Tom: It kind of got to this point and this was, you know, commented on widely in the newspapers, in parliament, in the White House, like that it basically got this point that we had to win because us winning would have been the beginning of the end of the animal testing industry. And they had to win for the same reason. If we won, then they lost everything. If we close Huntingdon, we could close anywhere. And so it kind of became this symbolic kind of thing in a way. And I think it was hard because we genuinely, if we felt we were going to lose, we would have stopped. But we genuinely thought one more push and we win for 14 years. And then, I mean, we kind of won, but not in the way we wanted.

Amy: You did get the loan? The loan was withdrawn. So then they were struggling financially, but then, as you alluded to, the government stepped in. Can you expand on that?

Tom: Yeah. So 2001, just over a year after the campaign started, NatWest recalled their loan and cancelled their bank account. You know, It was all over the press by literally, the Europe largest animal testing laboratory is closing tomorrow because of pressure from animal rights activists. The staff were like, you know, like looking for new jobs. It was like we'd won. And then a guy called Lord Sainsbury stepped in, who was the Science Minister and he had essentially bought that position. He was a biotech billionaire who had given a huge donation to Tony Blair when he was elected in 1997 and he was given a seat in the House of Lords making Lord Sainsbury's. And from there he was elected Science Minister. And obviously he did a lot to increase the profits of his biotech companies.

Tom: And part of that was, in his words, like eliminating pests. And so his first real big notable step was when this loan got cancelled. He convinced his friend, a guy called Warren Stevens in America, a big financier, to replace the loan agreement. And Lord Sainsbury set up banking for Huntingdon Life Sciences through the British government, which hasn't been done for any other company before or since.

James: And it's the same with insurance, right? Like it was the first company to ever be insured through the UK government rather than a private company.

Tom: And then the last, it hasn't happened again with that. And it was, you know, we had the big win with the bank, then we had the big loss of the government, but they were out. And so we moved on to their insurers and yeah, the same thing happened. Insurance. Insurance company pulled out and the government stepped in and gave them insurance, which literally never happened before since. We moved on to their auditors and their auditors pulled out and then they were allowed to not file a tax return for three years. And, you know, the only company in British history, they were allowed to not file a tax return for three years. So, yeah, I mean, it became increasingly obvious that the government were going to do everything they could. And, you know, we had lawyers looking into what the government could and couldn't do.

Tom: And they, like, they couldn't give them money is one thing they couldn't do. And we focused then, like more on their customers and then, you know, if they haven't got revenue, the government isn't allowed to give them money. So that will close them. So we focus more on their customers. Yeah. So we kept trying different things and everything felt like a big step towards us winning. And, you know, after four- well, within less than 14 years, really. But after 14 years, they. Well they, they got kicked off every stock exchange in the world and then they got bought out by their CEO and became a private company and then he can sustain it. And so they merged with another company to form a new laboratory company. That failed. And so then they got bought out by a rival company, Covance, now LabCorp. So.

Tom: So we kind of. We did close down Huntingdon Life Sciences, but absolutely not the way we wanted. The laboratory still stands.

James: Yeah. To hear that story is kind of crazy because I remember doing some research into this, actually maybe a couple years ago, in fact, you basically won, like, all the main ways you could expect to win, like you said, you know, with the banks, the insurers, auditors, and just, you know, the UK government, like you said, they would just do anything in their power to stop you winning and it’s almost like, there's nothing more you could have done. Like, it went beyond all expectations. So I think, yeah, in many ways, like I said, amazingly successful. But that doesn't always bear fruit when I guess the opponent is so powerful, which is very sad.

Tom: Yeah, I think we were just unlucky. We had Lord Sainsbury. If Lord Sainsbury's hadn’t existed, we'd have just won within like a year. He did. And the pharmaceutical industry as well, they were blackmailing the British government that they would withdraw all investment in the UK if we weren't stopped. And actually there was a point where GlaxoSmithKline, who were Britain's largest pharmaceutical company, they actually stopped all R and D spending in the UK because of our campaign. And then AstraZeneca told the government they were going to do the same. And then that's really where they clamped out on us, began from that point. So we were just unlucky that really. Lord Sainsbury's. And also, yeah, the government was already in these secret meetings with the pharmaceutical industry before we came along about other things and they just extended the blackmail threats to us.

James: And can you expand on the secondary targeting a bit more? Like, what did that look like in practice? So what did you and the people involved in the campaign actually do to get them to withdraw their loan?

Tom: So I suppose it was like a movement wide campaign. And I think again, this is probably something that people misunderstand a little bit about the SHAC campaign is actually there was always a core of people, maybe like, I mean, there's the three founders and then often, you know, a core of people, maybe five people, up to five people around them who were focused on doing a lot of the research and finding out who these companies were and their connections to Huntingdon and where their offices were and, you know, contact information and updating the website, the newsletter, all that kind of stuff. And also organising the big national protest, the marches and you know, big nonviolent direct action type things like lock ons and things like that. The big. The big kind of showstopper kind of events.

Tom: But most of the activism that was being done was by the network of local groups we used to have. There was maybe like 300 local groups across the country and these local groups were entirely autonomous and they would just act and carry out actions however they wanted. And the way it really worked is if you were taking a lawful or ostensibly lawful action against Huntingdon Life Sciences, then you could do it under the banner of SHAC. If you chose to not be lawful, then you couldn't claim it as a SHAC action because SHAC was a lawful campaign. But there was other organisations like the Animal Liberation Front or whoever else, or you could just do it anonymously as an individual, whatever. So there's a huge diversity of tactics happening.

Tom: People certainly inspired each other and you know, the SHAC website and newsletter and other websites as well, kind of really helped. I think people inspire each other across the country and then across the world to take these actions. But the diversity of tactics was huge. So 99% of protests, particularly SHAC protests, were what you would imagine a peaceful protest to be. Standing outside with leaflets and placards. There's a lot of office occupations, people running into offices and demanding people. This is how long I was there. But demanding the CEO of a company watch the VHS because, you know, we didn't have social media. If you want the CEO of a company to watch the footage from inside Huntingdon, the only way to do that is to put it in their hand and say, watch it and then I'll leave your office.

Tom: Whereas now you can just tag a company on Instagram or Twitter or whatever and there's a chance at some point someone senior is going to see it, but we didn't have that. So, yeah, we did a lot of office occupations, we did a lot of home demonstrations because they used to be lawful, they're not now because they didn't like them. But we would turn up outside people's houses and protest outside their house. And that's where the title of my book comes from, because we would literally tell these people's neighbours, your neighbour kills puppies. Like, that's why we're here. Do you want us to go, better stop them killing puppies? So, yeah, and that was a hugely effective tactic, which is obviously why it got outlawed. This is a thing, we were too good at being lawful. They just kept changing the law.

Amy: Yeah. Move the parameters.

Tom: Honestly. But they're doing it again now with campaigns, aren't they? It's like. Yeah, they complain about, like, you know, aggressive protests or unlawful protests. It's like, well, if there's anything wrong with them, why do you have to keep changing the law? But, yeah, so. So there's a big diversity of actions, some of it lawful, some of it not lawful, but all the SHAC stuff was lawful.

Amy: So you talked about, like, a misconception there. Is there others that you still hear about the SHAC campaign, obviously, so long ago now, but still continued for so many years after. I'm presuming that there's, like, differing opinions on the success of the tactic, you know, what it's led to in terms of animal liberation, following on from that particular campaign, are there other kind of common misconceptions you hear about the whole programme?

Tom: I think there's a lot, and I think a big one is what I've said is that actually, like, this wasn't some centrally coordinated campaign particularly, but there was a central hub, but that was mostly doing the research and that kind of stuff, and the actual actions were carried out locally. So when people kind of criticise a certain SHAC action, like, there's a 99% chance it wasn't anything to do with anyone who, you know, officially, as if you, like, coordinated for SHAC. In order to - when they finally came for us, which I'm sure we're about to get onto.

Tom: But when, when the state came down really hard on us to kind of justify what they did, which was, you know, essentially dragging, in many cases, teenagers, pensioners from their beds and you know, putting them in these show trials and having people sent to prison for years and years for a conspiracy that didn't exist based on evidence that was planted by undercover officers. In order to kind of justify that to a public that rightly or wrongly views themselves as an animal loving public, a public that I think at best is probably sceptical of animal research. To justify all of this, they had to get the state, the government, the police, the media, had to create a narrative that demonised us.

Tom: And so really, if you look, unless you're reading my book, really, if you look into the history of the SHAC campaign, if you Google it, if you look on like any kind of media source, what you're going to find is essentially the residue of the psychological warfare that was being used to demonise us and vilify us and make us people that the public would happily rally against, when actually they should have been rallying behind us. Because most people agree with what we were, at least with our cause and probably if they actually realise what we're doing with the way we did it too. Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest hangover from that period and the biggest kind of misunderstanding is when people try and research SHAC what they're seeing isn't the truth. They're seeing a state lie that was used to demonise peaceful protesters.

James: On that point. Because I remember you mentioning in a different podcast saying, in a way, you didn't always correct some of this stuff because you kind of, I think there was this aura of like, you know, SHAC is just, you know, tenacious. They all just get shit done no matter what. And it's almost good to have this air of like, oh, no, we don't want them to come after us and if they do, we should instantly cave. So I think there's a bit of like, when these other individuals or groups did do things like, you know, digging up graves or some more violence, if you didn't necessarily distance yourselves from that. Is that right?

James: And like, what was thinking at the time to like, to not say, no, this definitely wasn't us?

Tom: No, I would say, like, so the grave incident actually had nothing to do with the SHAC campaign at all. It wasn't targeted against them, it was targeted against a completely other company. But it was a different campaign. But when there were actions that went beyond, I suppose, what you would view as nonviolent direct action. So when the managing director of the laboratory, for example, was assaulted outside his house, actually SHAC emphatically distanced themselves from that action and those activists. So I think we did though, like, more broadly, like, you know, when banks were being sabotaged or people were having their cars damaged o-r we didn't ever, we had basically a policy that we wouldn't criticise other people's actions because we were a lawful campaign. But we're not like the campaign police. Do you know what I mean?

Tom: We're not going to go around telling everyone, like, that’s literally the police's job, we're not going to tell people they’re wrong. Maybe they're right. Like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going to be effective, what's going to work, what's going to win hearts and minds, what's going to just win, like, we don't know. So that wasn't. We never felt that was our place to criticise people. And were accused actually by the state of fostering this climate of fear. But actually we didn't do anything. But there was a secret police unit that was set up to spy on us essentially and police us. And they were the National Extremist Tactical Coordination Unit. And they used to go to companies. One of my friends, her dad worked for a pharmaceutical company.

Tom: These cops turned up at his office and showed like all the staff this video of these, like, crazy actions, like most of it not from the UK, most of them not even connected to animal rights, but, you know, bombings and arson attacks and all this, like these really wild actions. And they were like, basically, yeah, if you're named as a target, this is going to happen to you. And like, you know, you have to like, get electric shutters on your windows. You have to get like. And. But these cut- this police unit, they were set up as a private company, so they were part funded by the Home Office, but they're part privately funded.

Tom: And so they would get these companies to pay, to give them security briefings and then they'd just go in and spin these wild yarns about how like, all their employees were going to die unless they did this and this. And so they were funding themselves, creating this climate of fear that was then used to like demonise us. But from our perspective, if they're going into a company saying, if you're connected to Huntingdon Life Sciences, this is all going to happen and that company is like, okay, then we're never going to work with Huntingdon Life Sciences. Great, then, like, we don't have to go and hand out leaflets or whatever, like, the police are doing it for us.

Tom: So in hindsight, probably we didn't do enough to counter that narrative because it was quite effective and helpful for us to, for the police and the state and the media to kind of be creating this climate of fear. But, yeah, it didn't help us in the long term, for sure.

Amy: And you talk about the localised groups and I think that's always the. I think that's the biggest kind of sadness, I guess, out of the end of this campaign and kind of losing that local- the local activist groups like having that pressure to put towards animal issues, obviously if they did still exist and you can utilise them now, you know, for many more animal issues, moving on to things like farmed animal work. I think that's always the biggest, like, loss for me is that sense of those local groups. I guess there's two questions in there. So my first question on that is, did you think about bringing them under your wing?

Amy: Was it like a lack of resource as to why you didn't dictate what they should be doing under SHAC as a more kind of bringing everyone together, united on the same action? And also secondary, kind of, what happened to those groups? You know, we obviously, I know that they don't exist now, but what was the kind of catalyst that made all of those groups disperse?

Tom: So to answer the first question, I think I need to answer the second question because actually the problem was not that these local groups lost their autonomy, but because we focused as a movement at the time, our focus became very strongly on the anti vivisection issue. And a big part of that I think is, you know, 2001 we saw the banning of fur farming, 2004 we saw the ban of fox hunting. That obviously didn't actually achieve anything as it turned out. But I feel like the things we felt were winnable at the time because, you know, it's worth remembering at this period, being vegan was- just being vegan made you an absolute fringe extremist.

Amy: Sure.

Tom: And it was not like now. And so the issues we support as a small movement that we could actually win, realistically, was hunting circuses and animal testing. And so that's where most of- we did focus on farmed issues as well. Farmed animals or other farming- cause obviously animals using vivisection of farms and animals using fur farms and farms. But we focused on animal agriculture as well. But in terms of what we felt we could win, most of our focus was on those issues. And really the problem with that then came when the government led by Lord Sainsbury's decided that they were, and in his words, they were going to eliminate the anti-vivisection movement. When they did that, and they did that very effectively because when they came for SHAC, we weren't the first.

Tom: They'd already gone through North America and taken up SHAC USA. They'd gone to- the FBI had done that. The FBI then moved to Canada and helped the Canadian police stop SHAC Canada. Then the FBI came to the UK and advised the British police to round up a lot of people involved in this Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs campaign. And then those police went to stop Sequani Animal Testing, which is another laboratory. And then the police came for us and then they went for the SPEAK campaign, which is trying to close down a laboratory in Oxford. And then those British police then went to Austria and tried to stop the anti-vivisection movement in Austria. So this was like an. A genuine attempt and a successful attempt to eradicate the anti-vivisection movement in the UK and beyond.

Tom: And I don't think I fully appreciate it because when I went to prison for this, I was in the second wave of the SHAC stuff. So some of my friends had just been to prison. Me, me and my partner at the time and others, we kind of got together and were like, you know, we have to keep the campaign alive. And so we started coordinating the campaign. We went to prison and I didn't realise at the time, but then other people tried to step up. They got taken out in a series of raids and then someone else stepped up and they went to prison. And so people either were just beaten, quite often literally into submission, or. Or people just got scared and either left the movement or moved on to other things or whatever.

Tom: And because the local group network was so focused on vivisection issues, when all of the vivisection grassroots campaigns had gone, there was kind of nothing, there was no focus for them and they just kind of fizzled and disbanded. So actually what we needed probably was more autonomy. And if those local groups had focused maybe a little more on local issues, things that were more pertinent to them, then the kind of death of SHAC, the death of SPEAK and all the other groups wouldn't have had such an impact because they were like, oh, well, I guess we go back to campaign against our local abattoir or our local oceanarium or whatever else it might be until the next big campaign comes along.

Tom: So I think that actually was probably the death of the local groups, was they kind of started to lack that community feel and that kind of local buy in and the autonomy, really.

James: That government repression, sadly, is both so terrible to hear and like you mentioned before, kind of similar to, I think, what's happening right now with some of the environmental groups for sure. So I'm fairly good friends with people involved in, like, Just Stop Oil and XR. Many of my friends and I were involved previously and definitely in the last few years things have really stepped up in terms of, like you said, new legislation, which means you can't disrupt key national infrastructure, which is kind of the point. But anyway, that's now not allowed. And yet people are serving, I think four or as long as five years for, like some of you guys, basically nonviolent direct action.

James: And people have been critiquing them for basically making it harder for anyone to take part in climate activism, which obviously feels a bit like a confusing one because I guess they're saying it's making the movement kind of smaller and basically more radical and less inclusive, I guess. How would you respond to people that say these kind of things about JSO? Maybe it was said about you, but I don't know.

Tom: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think it's quite interesting because I started writing this book in 2020 because I could see- a big part of my motivation, apart from the fact I wanted to record our history and record it correctly for the first time, but also I could see what happened to us happening again. Like it's literally all happening again, and again this is probably the earlier stages of it, kind of the Priti Patel era of it. And it was, you know, I could see the smear campaigns used against us being used against Black Lives Matter. I could see the increasingly draconian sentencings happening to Just Stop Oil and others.

Tom: And I wanted to write the book so that people- not to put anyone off doing anything, not to say, oh look, I told you so, but so people could read it and kind of build that resilience and realise, you know, rebuild those prison support networks and kind of build that into movement unity that we need to have that resilience so that when they come for one of us, they come for all of us. And we kind of stand behind that. And it's really empowering, really, to see what Defend Our Juries are doing around that. And the political prisoner stuff that's happening, that we need that because we didn't have that we with that climate affair that the state created around us, the radical left abandoned us.

Tom: And you know, I suppose the animal rights movement has always been kind of a bit of an outcast in it all anyway, I think because not our demands, but our perceived demands for entry to the animal rights movement are quite a lot higher than other movements we expect. You know, veganism is a big step, whereas becoming anti racist you don't really have to do anything apart from not being a dick. So yes, I saw it all happening and that was a big part of me writing the book. And I think people that feel that people taking action is somehow putting off other people taking action. It's just, I don't want to be harsh to anyone, but it just seems an absurdity to me. Like the reason the government are coming down on these activists isn't because of the activists.

Tom: It's because the government don't like the message. And that was always something with SHAC. And again, this is another, I think, misunderstanding of SHAC is they were able to paint that we were these, you know, extremists or whatever because they use the actions of the Animal Liberation Front and others. But we said then and we continue to say now, it didn't matter what people were doing, it mattered what we were saying and how effective we would be. And that's exactly what we're seeing now. It doesn't matter what Just Stop Oil or Animal Rising or Palestine Action, it doesn't matter what they do. It's what they say and how effective they're being at saying it. And that's the issue. And if people standing up and speaking deters people, then were those people, like, what was their motivation in the first place?

Tom: And for me, well, you know, when I first became involved in animal rights activism, actually the reason I was drawn to this movement rather than any of the others that I really feel equally moved by and impassioned by, the reason I was drawn to the animal liberation movement in the late 90s was because we had Barry Horn in prison. We had Keith Mann in prison for double digit prison sentences. Jill Phipps had been killed protesting. Mike Hill and Tom Warby killed, being killed hunt sabbing. For me, seeing this movement where no one involved had any stake in it, we all have nothing to gain or lose. And yet people were literally sacrificing their life. Like people don't do that for a movement that they don't think is going to win.

Tom: You don't do that for a movement that is just like, you know, kind of middle class student, you know, showboating. Like you do that because. Because you know you're going to win and because you know just so deeply in your heart that you have to, like we have to do this. And so actually I was inspired and I was drawn into this movement because people were serving long prison sentences. So I think it's an error by the state. I think they don't actually, they don't understand that burning injustice. They don't understand what it means to see something so terrible happen, like what we're seeing in Gaza, like what we're seeing in every slaughterhouse around the country.

Tom: They don't understand what it is for people to see that and be so torn up inside that the only way they can look at themselves in the mirror is to fight it with everything they've got and they don't get it. And so locking up people for throwing soup at a painting, that doesn't put people off. I mean, we literally saw that doesn't put people off. Throwing soup in a painting, that makes people angry, that drives people underground and if we have this cross movement unity and we have this cross movement support and we have strong and vibrant grassroots movements, it will only radicalise people. And so, yes, some people will be put off. And if they're going to be put off by that, then it's a shame, it's a loss of the movement.

Tom: But I kind of would have to question what they were going to contribute anyway. But the people that will contribute will be absolutely moved and radicalised by this.

Amy: You've alluded to some, but I'd be interested to know, is there anything else you would go back and change about the SHAC campaign? Does anything else come to mind that you haven't already touched upon?

Tom: I think in terms of going back and changing things, I would kind of have to say no, because I feel we did everything we could with the resources and the time and everything we had. We literally would wake up and we would do this. This was our life, like 24/7. We'd wake up, we would do activism until we fell asleep and then we'd wake up and we'd do it again until we got dragged out of our beds and thrown into prison. So I, I don't think there's anything I could have changed. I think were I to do the same again, there's certainly lessons I'd learn and a huge one is building those networks with other movements. I think that's absolutely vital.

Tom: And seeing that kind of how this is all connected, how the systems of oppression all stem from the same place, they all stem from the same mindset, they all stem from late stage capitalism, essentially, and also the victims. There's so much connection there. Like, you know that the bombs being dropped in Gaza have been tested on animals and they're being dropped on wildlife and they're destroying vegan food systems. Like there's so, like everything is so connected. And so I think building those networks would have helped us a lot. I think there's areas where we kind of focused on direct action, where actually maybe we could have focused some energy at least on a political solution. Because I kind of feel that animal testing is actually realistically now going to end through political will. And we need to create that political will through pressure.

Tom: But actually looking back, there was moments where we could have actually, you know, maybe pushed for judicial reviews on not just the animal testing side, but also how we're being treated. That maybe would have helped. And also like taking control of our narrative. Like we've done it now, like, you know, we've published our book, we’re hopefully getting a documentary series made and, you know, we were kind of, I'm here explaining what we actually did and who were. So we're kind of taking control of our narrative now. But we should have done that at the time and suddenly, you know, it was something we discussed a lot and something we wanted to do, but we never quite got around to it in time to do it.

Tom: But if you go into, you know, a pharmaceutical company or even, you know, if you go to a supermarket and pick up a leaflet about, you know, a company that makes food, you're not going to see like, how the food's made. You're just going to see the, like, the delicious, like end product. And, and the same. You enter like GlaxoSmithKline, a pharmaceutical company, and they're not going to show you pictures of like dogs being tested on or monkeys or mice or whoever else in their advertising literature. They're just going to show all these like, you know, kids happy that they've had their new drugs or whatever they want to sell. And you know, I wouldn't want to be that disingenuous, but I feel that we allowed other people to take our narrative and spin it for us.

Tom: And I would say that was a huge mistake. So that would definitely be advice I'd give is control of your narrative and tell the public what you want your voice to be.

Amy: Yeah, yeah, I think that's really important. And how long did you actually serve, Tom? And then how was it coming out? And you know, trying to. I guess as you said, this was kind of all you knew day in, day out, like activism was your journey. Like coming out of prison, realising that has, you know, has been destroyed. Like, how do you maintain optimism and enthusiasm to keep fighting?

Tom: Yeah, it was a strange one. So I received a five year prison sentence. It was actually relatively low amongst some of them. One of my friends got 11 years.

Amy: Why was that? What were the- sorry to interrupt. What were the kind of differences, I guess, in all of the different sentencing?

Tom: Heather, Greg and Natasha co-founded SHAC, so they got the higher sentences. Heather pleaded not guilty and got 11. Greg and Natasha pleaded guilty. And unfortunately, slightly misguided attempt to try and help everyone, that actually ended up backfiring considerably. But yeah, they tried to help us all and they got 9 years because of their guilty plea. They got a third off. And then other people got 8 years for. They were accused of doing like researching and stuff, even though it was all absolutely legitimate research into company addresses and things. But there has to be a computer guide, isn't there? And then other people got 6 years for actually doing direct action. Those of us kind of involved, I guess, like middle management. We kind of got 4 or 5 years.

James: So how many people overall in the UK got prison sentences?

Tom: I hope I get this right, but I think there was 16 of us and we got a total of 80 years.

James: Wow. And then in the UK it was. Sorry, in the US it was also like 10 or so, or a bit less?

Tom: In the US, the SHAC 7 was actually 6 people. And SHAC itself in the USA was prosecuted and convicted. I think Kevin got five years, but I hope I'm not wrong with that. And the others got slightly less.

Amy: And so how did it feel coming out and, you know, having that?

Tom: It was weird and it continues to be a little bit weird. So, as I said, they kind of set out to eradicate the movement and that obviously happened. I was part of the initial phase of that and by the time I came out of prison, there was, aside from really hunt sabotage and the badger cull activism, there wasn't a movement left. The movement I knew when I'd gone to prison and I grew up in was completely gone. And it was just a very strange thing because the evidence against us was things like we did like street collections with council licences to raise money and somehow that was a part of our crime. And we did peaceful protests that had been arranged with the police and somehow that was part of this conspiracy.

Tom: And so, like all forms of activism, like nothing felt safe anymore, even if at hand, there was nothing to join. And so, like, you know, a lot of my friends have been to prison previously and I've been put to prison previously and, you know, generally for doing something, oh, you did this specific crime, you go to prison, you come out and then you just kind of like slot somewhere back into the movement, either just to what you're doing before or you kind of find a little safe space, you can kind of get your confidence back. But in this instance, there was nothing to drop back into. And if we wanted there to be something, we would then have to start a new campaign.

Tom: And obviously, coming out of this huge conspiracy case, years in prison and we, you know, I was under heavy police surveillance when I was released from prison, so I couldn't, like, really realistically. Oh, I could, but I'd clearly just get rounded up and thrown into another conspiracy case, so. So there was kind of nothing to join. And it was a very strange feeling because that's who I am. Like, I. I don't. I don't know what I am without that, really. And, yeah, that's why I started tattooing, because I wasn't allowed to talk to any other vegans or any other activists, any of my friends. I was under heavy police surveillance. So I thought, you know, I'll kind of get a job and hopefully at some point how kind of ease off and I can kind of find out who I am again.

Tom: So I started tattooing and then it took a very long time to kind of find my way back in. Eventually I kind of joined my local Huntsab group for a while and kind of got back into sabbing. And then I think, really, when it was when Reagan Russell was killed in America protesting the pig abattoir, I think that had quite a big impact on me and my partner at the time and really kind of drove us to start getting more involved again. I feel like now I'm kind of getting- at least getting back to where I should be. And, yeah, everything kind of makes a lot more sense now. But it was. It was really hard because, yeah, like. Like I say that's literally who I am and I couldn't be me. And it was very strange.

James: And so there was conditions that you guys couldn't talk to them for, like, quite a long time. I don't know if this is ongoing. What was the situation with those conditions?

Tom: When- I mean, I feel like they very deliberately gave us the worst that they could give us in every situation. And so when you're arrested and you're on either police bail or court bail, they can put conditions on you then. And then when you're in prison. Weirdly, we didn't have many conditions in prison, but you have to kind of jump through hoops or they made us, or tried to make us jump through hoops to try and please our probation, because otherwise they can then sanction you on your licence and then they sanctioned us on our licence anyway, whether, you know, those of us who did and those of us who didn't do what they said.

James: What do you mean by a licence in that case?

Tom: So in the UK, you're kind of released halfway through your sentence, so the second half of your prison sentence, you serve in the community, and then they can kind of put whatever conditions they feel necessary. So. So the bail conditions, I- so I was on bail for three and a half years. The last year they had electronic tags fitted with curfews. But we also, you know, through those three and a half years or sadly, when we were charged, we got really, you know, weren't allowed to talk to other activists, we weren’t allowed to talk to anyone on our case, we weren't allowed to organise protests, weren't allowed to attend protests. And then, yeah, then we had the electronic tag. Then I had two years in prison and then I was released- two weeks before I was released from prison.

Tom: So I'd been planning my release day for, like, two years. Two weeks before I was released, they told me that I was having to go into a bail hostel, which is basically where they put sex offenders. And.

James: Wow.

Tom: But they were like, oh, don't worry, no one's there for more than like, three or four months. And so I was put in this bail hostel and I was there for three months. I was there for four months and they were right. Everyone else was coming and going, but I ended up being in there for seven months. And then basically, me and the bail hostel, because the bail hostel were like, why are you. Like, you shouldn't be here in the first place. Why have you been- we've never had anyone here for seven months and they basically tricked my probation officer into releasing me from the bail hostel. He wouldn't have let me out for the two years, I don't think. Yeah. And even then, yeah, I wasn't allowed to use the internet.

Tom: I wasn't allowed to talk to my brother for all of that seven months after my release, they tried to prevent me talking to my partner at the time. They. Yeah, they. They wouldn't let me get a job unless the government approved it and that would obviously take months and then the job would be gone. And, yeah, no talking to activists, no talking to vegans, obviously, no activism. So, yeah, so it was. That was worse than prison, I think licence was worse than prison because in prison I felt like I had freedom.

Amy: Yeah. It's like impossible, like, trying to apply for a job, but you're like, you're not exactly an attractive entity at that point. Like having to get government approval to say that, yes, this person who has now been to prison, which, you know, a lot of employers wouldn't look on favourably.

Tom: That's it. I don't know if you remember there was that case in London where there was that guy that was released on licence for terror offences and he ended up stabbing two people in London and then got attacked with a narwhal tusk. I don't know if you remember that story.

James: What? That sounds like an insane story.

Tom: It is but he was- his threat level when he was released in prison was the same that we had and he had literally gone to prison for terrorism and then went on to murder people and. Yeah, so we had the highest threat level you can have, basically. And so we were treated as if we were terrorist suspects.

James: Wow, yeah, I think, again, a question that I've had lots of ex-prisoner friends who've been put on curfews, and I was also put on a curfew briefly, although no electronic tag, which is a bit easier. But, yeah, I think some of that stuff, not being able to associate with, like, often your closest friends, and until you come out of prison, you're just almost totally isolated and alone and these are, like your best friends because it's all you did. So. Yeah, that must be so tough.

Tom: Yeah. For eight years, really, as well, because it's three and a half years on licence, two years in prison, two and a half years out is. Yeah, eight years, really, I can. And then nearly another 10 afterwards where I was trying to find out what the movement is and, you know, and then watching a new movement build and kind of working out where I fit into them.

James: Well, we're glad you're back involved.

Amy: Yeah, absolutely.

James: To change topic, like, a tiny bit. I'm curious to talk a bit more about some of the things from SHAC, at least from the outside, I think, what are some of the things that made it really successful. And I think one of those is basically just being, you know, having a really clear target SHAC. And I'm, like, staying very focused on that. And I guess. To what extent do you think that, like, really clear focus was quite like, you kind of said, maybe it would have been good to have a bit more autonomy in the local groups, but actually probably does provide, like, a general sense of direction. Like, this is the one big campaign. We're all feeling quite excited about it. We know quite a lot about it. Like, do you think having that kind of one quite clear target is a useful thing for at least, yeah, a campaign like that?

Tom: Personally, I kind of feel that, yeah, we. We need more. Like, I don't. Like I said, we. We need a lot of everything. We want more of everything. And, you know, things like outreach are really important. I definitely believe that. But I feel that absolutely what we're missing in the modern movement is firstly, those local autonomous groups and secondly those kind of targeted campaigns. Because I think for me, like, if I was going to protest outside an abattoir, for example, it kind of makes no real sense to me to do that unless I'm trying to close them down. And why aren't we trying to close them down? Like, they're just businesses. If you can close down a multinational laboratory, you can close down your local abattoir. And I strongly believe, like, pretty much any business can be shut down.

Tom: So I think absolutely that's what we need, both on a local level, like, you know, locally, we're trying to close down our local oceanarium and then once that's done, you know, we. We have visions on our local abattoirs as well. And. And also, like, on a national level, we need these national campaigns, places like MBR Acres, we need, like national mobilisation against these places because we can close them down. And I think on multiple levels, I think that's important. Firstly, because you're closing down a centre of oppression. Also, in terms of building a movement, I think it's quite hard to build a movement that's not winning anything, because every if everything's quite kind of abstract and hypothetical and like, oh, yeah, one day we're going to achieve something that we want. I just think it's kind of hard to buy into that.

Tom: Whereas joining a movement where it's like, we've closed this, we closed this. And that was one of the big things with SHAC is like, as I said, we came off the victory against Consort, the victory against Hill Grove, and then we came into SHAC and we were losing. Well, they were losing suppliers, customers, shareholders, you know, multiple a day in many cases. By the end of the SHAC campaign, Huntingdon Life Sciences are being forced to build their own crematorium, launderettes, gas supply lines, they set up their own catering company, they set up their own courier company, as we've discussed, they had banking through the government and insurance through the government. And these kind of victories really inspire people. And I think if we want to build a movement, we need to have those kind of victories.

Tom: So personally, if I was, you know, looking around, what kind of activism, and again, like, I think we need all types of activism against all different issues. Like, I'd hate for everyone to be an liberation activist and for that, because no one's speaking up for the people of Gaza or the planet. But when people are looking around for a movement to join, are they going to join the local movement that just goes and hands out leaflets once a week and doesn't really seem to be achieving anything? Or are they going to join the local group that's closed down, like, four centres of oppression in the last year? Like, for me, it's just really important for morale as well as tactically, like, this is how we win, or this is-

Tom: As members of the public who don't have political sway, who don't have necessarily strong legal backgrounds or whatever else. The most power we can have, I think, is that we can close down businesses. And we've proven that many times. So why don't we.

James: Yeah, I totally agree with that and I've had a very similar thought, I guess, partially, also from my Animal Rebellion experience. I think for the first couple years, we very much didn't have, like, a clear target. We were just kind of, you know, we'll hit DEFRA here, we'll hit McDonald's here, we'll hit ARLA here. It did feel a bit scattered and like you said, I think people did get a bit burnt out just being like, oh, there's no like, hey, there's no continuity. But, yeah, what's the big achievement we have? And I think now AR is- Animal Rising is a bit more focused in terms of that, the university's campaign and the RSPCA and councils and all that stuff. So I think definitely I've seen that shift towards almost like winning things being quite important, basically. Inspiring people.

Tom: I think it- but I also think. I do feel with that, with Animal Rising, actually, those big kind of like showpiece actions, I. I think they're. They're really strong. I think what's missing from it, and this isn't a critique of Animal Rising, it's a critique of our movement, really, is those local groups. Because if Animal Rising went to the grand national, did a big disruption and then moved on, if there was a local group who could then pick up the campaign against the racetrack and close down the racetrack, then actually what Animal Rising have done is, you know, they've got- gathered that media, they've like taken control of a narrative and at the same time they've inspired and initiated potentially the local group to close the place down in the long term. I actually think that's what's missing from this is those local groups.

Tom: If we had those local groups and actually these big action, you know, big action against MBR, then the local group should be there doing a pressure campaign to close down MBR. And again this comes into that kind of the idea of this ecosystem is actually, from my perspective, it's not up to Animal Rising necessarily to be coming in and like taking everything. They don't need to be like setting up the groups, they don't need to be having the winnable pressure campaigns necessarily. If that's what they want to do, absolutely great. But it's up to us as a movement to be taking ownership of that. And I think that's kind of a problem as well as in the movement we have now, we don't really have much in the way of a grassroots movement.

Tom: I know a lot of groups call themselves grassroots, but grassroots pressure is bottom up. It's when the community gets together and takes ownership of an issue. Whereas what we have is the opposite. We have a very well funded movement. It is very top down. So groups like Animal Rising, DXE, We The Free, Save, they're all doing amazing things, but they're all very well funded organisations that are top down organised, which is great, we need that as well, but we don't have that bottom up organising. And I think that's what's missing. And I think if these big national well funded organisations start setting up local chapters and whatever, that's great.

Tom: But then what we see and what we have seen is that when the local chapter, either the local organiser goes on to do something else or they fall out with the national or international organisers or the issue that they were specifically interested in has moved on from- to something else. Then those groups just kind of fizzle and disband. And also you see high turnover. You know, doing outreach again is so important, but it's a type of activism, it's not activism. And if you're doing that same thing week after week, you will burn out. Like 99% of people will burn out. Whether they're doing hunt subbing, whether they're doing outreach, whether they're doing protests, direct action, if you're doing the same thing week after week after week, you will burn out.

Tom: And so kind of having these local groups that are doing the outreach but are also doing the hunt sabotage and also doing the protest and also doing the direct action, then you can just kind of find your place in it and be like, actually, you know what guys, this week I don't I just don't feel that, I'm going to do this instead. Right, then you kind of. You will be more sustained, you will have a community around you and it will outlive the national organisations and their specific strategies or their specific campaigns in the moment. So, yeah, so I think that's really why they're so important and it's so overt to me that they're currently missing in the movement.

Amy: Seems like a good segue into your thoughts on what you're going to do now. I know you have an idea for this gap to fill, this kind of grassroots network, this kind of local city level of animal rights groups. Can you tell us more about your idea?

Tom: Yeah. So essentially I've been working with Nicola on our local group, essentially, almost not as an experiment, but because we know what we can see coming out of a local group, essentially, and the power that it can hold and the power it can give to the people involved in it. And so Dorset Animal Action. It was actually the local group that I first joined like, 25 years ago, and it's, you know, been defunct for a very long time, so we've kind of resurrected it. But what we've done is really reimagine how the local group network can be because the movement we have now, it does have these local chapters of these national organisations which bring so much to our movement. And so what we've done is really given everyone who's active locally a buy in to show, like, how this will benefit everyone.

Tom: If we all work together, we all benefit because, you know, we have a vision down here of having, like a thousand active people endorse it. And we genuinely believe that's realistic and attainable. And if we have that means that every single We The Free outreach is going to have hundreds of people. Every single sab is going to have hundreds of people, Every single protest is going to have hundreds of people. And that's just a huge win for everyone. And so we've, you know, we've sold this vision and everyone's really excited by it. We started with it with a local meeting and I think what was really interesting is kind of going around the room and everyone introducing themselves and what they're doing.

Tom: And it was just very clear that everyone really thought that they were part of something quite small, that they're just kind of banging their heads against the wall, just doing their best and, like, why isn't everyone helping? And then went around the room and we suddenly realised in quite a small geographic area, we have a Save chapter. We have We The Free chapters. We have National Animal Rights Day that had like 170 people. We have three different hunt saboteur groups, we have hunt monitors, we have sanctuaries, we have various people doing their own outreaches. We have people organising regular, like transport to MVR Acres. So we had a lot happening, but no one was kind of talking about it to each other.

Tom: Everyone's very siloed and everyone, you know, they follow the certain Instagram accounts or whatever and then none of us were, including me, but none of us are aware of the totality of what was happening. So now we've kind of brought everyone under one roof, so we're not asking anyone to change what they're doing. Like, We The Free, like, are still We The Free. And if you just want to do We The Free, that's absolutely great. The sabs are still sabs. And if they just want to, you know, just want to sab, that's great. But we now have everyone in these kind of WhatsApp communities where people can kind of keep everyone updated. And if you're interested in seeing what other people are doing, it's very easy just to kind of tap into that.

Tom: And then you have the general chat and have the kind of campaign updates, areas and stuff so people can see what's happening. And what it's done is, I think the Save chapter, after the first meeting, had 24 people sign up to it, new people sign up to it. The hunt sabs have seen a lot of people sign up to it because we've started trying to deliberately create this culture of autonomy and self determination. We've seen new pressure campaigns starting organically, locally.

Amy: Great.

Tom: And that's very exciting. And so the oceanarium campaign was actually started by some of the people that came to those first meetings and now it's grown into big campaign. They often have more than 10 people, often they have maybe like 20 people protesting outside the oceanarium. We need 2,000 signatures, I think, for the council to discuss whether to renew or revoke the licence. I think we've got over a thousand signatures already just in a couple of months. And yeah, we have regular protests now in support of the MBR suppliers campaign, which is, you know, like pressure campaign in some way similar to what SHAC was. They again, they have maybe like up to 20 people protesting outside there every single week on top of the oceanarium stuff, on top of the sabbing, on top of the We The Free stuff.

Tom: And everyone now has this energy because we all kind of Feel like we're part of something bigger. So whatever we're choosing to do, whatever our place is within it, we all kind of feel like there's this kind of ecosystem around us that supports us and lifts us. And, you know, if there's a victory for the hunt sabs, then everyone's celebrating. If there's a victory for We The Free or the MBR campaign or whatever, everyone's celebrating and it's incredibly powerful and it's really helping build our local movement. We're seeing activists who are already active doing new things and, you know, people who've never used a megaphone before using a megaphone and people like putting up- flyer posting and, you know, people are set up a vegan chess like club.

Tom: And there's all kind of different things happening across the kind of whole spectrum, but everyone's interconnected in it, which is really empowering. And so, yeah, so as that's growing, we're now helping some friends launch a sister group in Southampton, like the next city along and over in Hampshire. And so that- I think their first meeting is a week today. And so that hopefully we're going to see that, you know, a replication of our success over there. And. But with them taking ownership of it and, you know, it's not about us going and telling them how to run their local group. It's about us, you know, if they need the tools, we're there to give it. We can give trainings or whatever, but we're there to support them.

Tom: We'll help them on their events, they'll help us in our events, but they will focus on whatever issues they feel alive for them. And, you know, and then the plan is to kind of help spread this across the country nationally and, you know, rebuild those 300 groups and then keep going. And so literally every town and city has a thriving autonomous animal rights group.

James: Very cool. It's an exciting vision. I'm glad it's already going so well. And there's already plans to do a second one. I'm curious. Yeah. About the 300 groups you did mention before. So they weren't SHAC specific groups. They were these kind of general groups. Right? So they were kind of doing arrangements?

Tom: Yeah.

James: Okay, cool.

Tom: Yeah. There wasn't a SHAC chapter like anywhere, like, so we had the, like I said the coordinators, but then all the local groups, like if, like, you know, if Animal Aid wanted to do a specific outreach, then it'd be the same local groups doing that as doing SHAC stuff and doing Aviva thing and also doing, you know, protesting their local greyhound track or whatever they would do like whatever activism again, whatever felt live to them. The issue was obviously things became very focused on the animal testing and that kind of was a big part of it. So I think it's important. This is why- one of the reasons I think it's important for these groups to find what is life. And so for us, the oceanarium was a very obvious thing.

Tom: Not so much in terms of the scale of the oppression, but in terms of the symbolic nature of it and the fact that it's right there on, in the busiest part of Bournemouth, that thousands of tourists are seeing it and going there and just normalising this idea that other animals exist for our entertainment or for our use.

Amy: Yeah.

Tom: And so it's kind of bigger than that. And then when people come and say we've had We The Free come out and to join the oceanarium protest, doing a three minute movie challenge that is focused on aquatic life or marine life. And so we can kind of talk to people about the fishes in there, but we can then also mention the fact, isn't it strange they have fishes on their menu as well, Isn't that strange? And then we can kind of bring in the idea of animal agriculture and other issues as well. So that's one of the things that's quite exciting about it is that it does kind of bring everyone together across the movement. Whatever you know, whether you're more focused on wildlife, whether you're more focused on farmed animals being tested on, everyone kind of is interconnecting and seeing those interconnectedness.

Tom: But also it means that if there is a clamp down on campaigning against animal agriculture, then that wouldn't really impact people protesting the local sea life centre. Yeah. So there's a lot of great things about it. But I think it's very important for people to be focused on what's live to them and what their community can get behind. Because really we want to build a mass movement. I think that's an important thing we should be doing. And the mass movement comes from the public around us. And so if we can bring the public in, if we can find the issues locally, then engage the local public, that's how we create this recruitment funnel and these gateways into our movement.

Amy: Yeah. You spoke about that scale of oppression and I wonder how you feel maybe personally about- so it's important for these groups to be focusing on whatever moves them, obviously, if that's going to get them to be active in some way and then perhaps enter a funnel where they are exposed to different movements, different opportunities that they otherwise wouldn't. So obviously that's important, something that's like, visible to them, something that's local to them. But how do you balance this autonomy with people choosing to do what inspires them versus kind of influencing to also be thinking about scale and doing the most good for the animals that are suffering on the biggest scale?

Tom: Well, I mean this is where the kind of autonomous network is what it is, because there is no overarching strategy to it. And so you still have the big organisations focused on these issues, you still have Save and We The Free and they're as focused on animal agriculture or whatever issue is important to them. But the local groups, for me, that's not necessarily their responsibility. Their responsibility is to build a local community and local community organising and they will then come behind these national groups. But like for me, when I first became involved, my first step into animal rights was hunt sabotage. You know, I sabotaged regularly. I went out sabbing regularly. I was in the back of a van with people that were eating vegan food and talking about these issues.

Tom: And then I went on a protest against animal testing and my friend's 6 year old daughter basically just schooled me on why I wasn't vegan and convinced me to go vegan, you know, if you can't win a six year old, you're probably wrong, right? So I went vegan because I went sabbing and went on anti-vivisection process. I think my experience is, and I think if we think through our own history or talk to other people about, you know, that their journey into veganism or combating animal agriculture, most of us, if we become activists, will become vegan. But becoming vegan doesn't necessarily mean we're going to become active. So for me it's way more important to recruit people into activism than into veganism. And so I think to do that you build this community.

Tom: And I think a big part of that is for us, you know, the oceanarium, what we're finding is so many local people, you're getting these people coming up. I say kids because everyone's a kid to me now. But like you get people in their teens or early 20s coming up and like that oceanarium that they've been walking past that every day all of their lives, like, why does this exist? And now that's, oh my God, there's people like doing something and then that's the. And then it's like, oh wait, that company supplies MBR Acres. Oh wait, like we have these chicken farms, these abattoirs, like that, then it kind of goes that way. And I think if these local groups are focused on these local targets in a way that is effective.

Tom: That is a, you know, a pressure campaign kind of mindset. Not just that we're going to be spectators, but that we're going to close these places down. Once you start closing down, you know, when we close down the oceanarium, they're going to have to find somewhere else. And for us, the way we think in the moment, that probably will be like the two abattoirs, we have in Dorset. But, you know, maybe it'll be somewhere else or maybe, you know, as our move, as our local movement grows, maybe someone will just start those campaigns anyway. The point of this isn't just to run for years and years and years doing the same thing. The idea is you're trying to close these places down and then move on to something else. And when you move on to that something else, that could be anything.

Tom: Like, for me, like my biggest motivation has always been animal testing. And I think that's really just because it's what the focus was when I first became involved. And so it's so kind of ingrained in me. But also it's not about the scale, it's about the severity. And while being violently murdered is being violently murdered in the food industry, the animals exploited and depressed in the food industry, generally their lives are fairly short and they're killed when it's convenient to do so for production. Whereas in animal research, often animals live in laboratories for- they can live there for decades, being tortured like the worst Saw movie, that's their life every single day for years and years and years. I couldn't begin to fathom what that must be. And so that kind of burns at myself.

Tom: So I think different people have different things that maybe are important to them. And I think if you try and force people or push people or pressure people to campaign against an issue that isn't necessarily the issue they most want to be focused on, then you're just kind of. You're not strengthening their activism. You're kind of doing the opposite. So I think it is important that people have that autonomy to kind of choose. And I think generally at this point in time, most people would choose animal agriculture. But I think it's good that not everyone is focused on that.

James: What you said before also is relevant here in that people like winning, and it's often easier to win against a relatively small local target than taking on some giant factory farms. So I think that also makes sense to maybe focus on smaller things than bigger things. But I guess other consideration there is just time and how much energy people have, right?

James: So you can only do so much at any one time. So it's like if some other, whatever national group is like, hey, please do this, you're actually just like, oh, no, I can't do that. I'm just so busy focused on this campaign. I guess that's the only reason why it becomes then complicated. But overall, agree that essentially you do want to build a movement by finding what resonates and also, winning.

Tom: Yeah. And also, like you say, it's easier to pick a small local target rather than a big company or whatever, but actually, like, these big companies are often made up of lots of local branches or whatever it might be. So if you have like, you know, a big national factory farm franchise or chain, then actually each local group can be focused on closing down their local farm. And if you have three or four of them happening at the same time and all those places close, then you put the whole company out of business. So it can have a much bigger effect. But for me, it all just starts on that ‘think global act local’ thing.

James: Is the model for the. Or I guess one of the models in your mind for the local groups to also, for example, for the oceanarium, also be focused on secondary targeting, because that seems like something that was quite useful for SHAC in all of its successes, but actually is probably a bit less prevalent nowadays.

Tom: Yeah. So for our local campaign, I'm not actually that involved in the local oceanarium campaign. That's something that's quite amazing was there's so much happening locally, I can't actually be involved in all of it, which is very exciting. But what they want to do, so they're focused on the council, which in some ways is a secondary target because the council gives them a licence. If they don't give them a licence, they can't operate. But their next step, I think they're going to be starting to focus on some of the local hotels that do deals and discounts and special offers around. Around the oceanarium. So I think that's the next step. So, yeah, second targeting is definitely a big thing for them.

Tom: There's also a campaign that's being, I think it's been about three months now against MBR Acres, the beagle supplier up in Cambridgeshire, the MBR suppliers group on Facebook, and they are literally just focusing on the secondary targeting of MBR and their suppliers. And I think in the last three months, 23 companies have stopped working with MBR Acres because of this page and the activism people are doing. And all of that is very like the fluffiest of fluffy activism, it’ss literally just plight emails, plight phone calls. And I think because we now live in a social media age, one of the two benefits of social media is you didn't no longer need to run into a company with a VHS and demand someone watches it.

Tom: You can, you can just put a company logo over a picture of a, you know, an oppressed animal and say, you know, this company is killing animals and for particularly like dogs in the case of MBR Acres, which the British public claim to have affection for and these companies don't want that association. It's very easy to kind of break that association. So I think social media is something that is actually a huge benefit and probably may have helped us a lot and makes it a lot easier to be very fluffy. So, yes, secondary targeting is happening still and certainly in our local group structure. That's what we want locally and we're sure other local groups will feel the same.

Amy: I'm interested to know where you take the results of the SHAC campaign now. Obviously there's a lot of people that were involved, prison sentences, huge, you know, miscarriages of justice, where there's been challenges throughout the process. You're working with, there's a SHAC justice campaign. Do you want to talk a bit about what that is looking to achieve and maybe why you feel like that's important for the individuals that were involved?

Tom: The SHAC justice campaign is essentially to try and get our convictions overturned because we strongly believe that there was a miscarriage of justice. Essentially the evidence used to convict us, we have fairly recently discovered- we kind of knew, but we've recently gathered new evidence that proves that the evidence used to convict us was essentially planted by a state agent who has been paid to seemingly do this, to set us up. So, yeah, so we want justice. We will be lodging appeals and working through that. We also have a documentary in the very early stages that I don't know how much I'm allowed to talk about at this point, but. Yeah, so hopefully that will be helpful for that as well. In many ways, you know, it is about the, you know, us seeking justice and, you know, like righting a wrong.

Tom: But it's also more maybe about demonstrating to the government that you can't just do this, although you can, but if you do, we won't just let it slide. And.

Amy: Sure.

Tom: And to show you know, because. Because we do see history repeating and we're seeing the same things happening with groups like Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil. And I just think it's very important for them to know that we don't shut up and we don't go away. And yeah, they can kind of throw this stuff at us and they might have a short term success against us, but in the long term we will come back and we will win and we will keep fighting. So that's really a big part of it. And also, you know, it's another way of us demonstrating to other movements and to our own movement. The government don't get to choose the end, essentially. They don't get to choose when we stop. We choose when we stop and we won't stop.

Tom: Yeah, so that's a big part of it for us. I think also in terms of the legacy of SHAC itself, I think a big part of the reason that they came so hard against us was because they were inspiring other campaigns, not just animal rights groups, but also environmentalists and human rights organisations. And Palestine Action, by their own admission, are heavily inspired by the SHAC model. You know, I think Richard Barnard, when he wrote an endorsement for my book, basically said that without SHAC there'd be no Palestine action. And that's kind of huge for me to know that we have a legacy like that, you know, that everything the state threw at us, like, yes, it shut us up for a little while, but actually like Palestine Action have come in so much louder than we ever were.

Amy: Yeah.

Tom: So I think those kind of wins are huge for me and the fact that people are seeing the potential in this model and the potential of their own power is very inspiring.

Amy: I'm glad to hear there's a documentary in the making. I feel like when I first learned about the SHAC campaign, it just, yeah, it's set up perfectly for some Channel 4 exposé documentary. I read in the SHAC justice website that actually it was Keir Starmer at the time who was a Director of Public Prosecution, obviously now Prime Minister. Do you feel like that will make any difference? Are you able to like shame him like more now that he's in office, or will it not really matter?

Tom: I hope so. I'm not sure. I'm not sure where we're at because our current MP is very supportive and he's a Labour MP, so I feel like I'm quite happy throwing Keir Starmer under the bus. I'm not sure how much it's wise to do it at this point. Just in case there's any meetings lined up or anything. But, yeah, I feel like he definitely did us a big disservice. And we have letters for him saying that this undercover agent doesn't appear in our evidence. So there's no, you know, nothing to be concerned around that. And now we literally have audio recordings of him making the blackmail threat that was used to send us to prison. Yeah, so. So he has done us a massive disservice, Keir Starmer. I'm not. I'm not a fan.

James: I don't blame you.

Tom: But if he wants to meet me and convince me otherwise, that'd be great.

James: Maybe I'll ask my controversial question anyway just to see if it goes anywhere. And if not, whatever. In this conversation. Yeah, you've been super open minded to different theories of change and approaches and ways of campaigning and activism within the animal advocacy movement, which I think is useful and I think what ideally everyone should have. But I think sadly this is not always the case amongst the board. And at least in my experience, what I've seen more often than not is the grassroots groups criticise, often a bit more abolitionist-y, and often criticise the larger NGOs that work on welfare campaigns and I think almost less so in the other direction. I don't see the Humane Leagues of the world often being rude or shitting on crisis groups.

James: Do you have a theory or an idea why it kind of goes one way mostly and less so the other way?

Tom: My experience is the opposite. When I was active in the late 90s, early 2000s, the large British national organisations were more than happy to throw us under the bus. And if you dig through newspaper articles, you'll find many quotes from those big organisations. Absolutely throwing us under the bus and calling us extremists and whatever else. So, yeah, and saying, you know, were a blight to the- to whatever they were doing and whatever else. I think generally I try not to critique different forms of change. I appreciate we all have different ways of doing things. I think it only really you with the welfare rights issues. I should actually say I probably don't really even identify as being animal rights activist because I feel that kind of infers that someone has to decide what these rights are and ultimately that's going to be us.

Tom: And that seems kind of problematic. So I always think of myself as an animal liberationist. But I think in the rights welfare debate, for me the only real issue comes when the welfare issues undermine the fight for the rights. So as an example, there's a primate laboratory in the Netherlands called BPRC and there was a SHAC style pressure campaign to close them down and they basically drove them to bankruptcy. And one of the large Dutch welfare organisations gave them a lot of money on the condition it would be used to give the primates larger cages.

James: Wow.

Tom: And so the welfare campaign is keeping the primate laboratory open. And for me that's when welfare is an issue, when it actively undermines the rights based approach. I think actually more objectively, a lot of large welfare demands are actually small rights demands and could easily be reframed around that kind of messaging. So actually I think a lot of the critique of it actually has been applied to organisations like the Animal Liberation Front and actions I've taken before where taking animals from a factory farm, for example, it's like, well, that's not going to close it down, so what's the point? And it's the same argument, like, oh, you know, like better conditions, like doesn't close it down, so what's the point? It's like, well, the point is the individual and we need to be focused on the individual and the industry. I think that's very important.

Tom: I think that kind of- our empathy should apply. And I know it's hard for us to get our head around the numbers, like it's impossible for us to get head around the numbers involved and we can't think about every single individual because our heads would explode. But we should still have that focus that, you know, we can walk into a chicken farm and save a life. That's huge. Like we're saving a life. And I know there's tens of thousands more right behind her, but we saved a life. And so I actually kind of think, you know, that there's situations where higher welfare is probably, you know, a positive thing while we're trying to get to the end goal that I think we all share of total liberation. But yeah, I don't think I'm too harsh on welfare stuff.

Tom: I just, it bothers me when resources that are put into that could actually achieve rights demand. But where that's not the case and where there is a case of just kind of a stopgap of making things a little bit better then sure.

James: Yeah. I mean, I don't know. The monkey case in Netherlands, that sounds particularly egregious. I don't know anything about that happening in the farmed animal world and I hope it doesn't. I mean, I agree that it's useful in the near term to have wins. It's like, okay, we're not going to end, we're not going to close our factory farms overnight. But it's like, yes, like getting rid of the worst, most egregious things, driving prices up, these- and like this kind of momentum, it's like, okay, great, we're making improvements. It’s very exciting. Yeah. That's why I'm generally changing my mind on it and also feel sad when people are shitting on each other, because I think that's something we need less of, is just less shitting on each other. More focus on the opponents, so to speak.

Tom: Morally, it makes me very uncomfortable. Like, strategically, the way that we operate as a movement generally is actually sensible and the way that we're going to win. But morally, when people come very hard on, on nonviolence and things like that, I think it makes me a little uncomfortable because it comes from such a place of such profound privilege, because it doesn't matter to us. It doesn't matter to us what happens to them at the end of the day, but we know what we'd want done for us. And so, yeah, so I think that's why I'm an advocate for people doing what they need to do.

Amy: I'd like to know a piece of news or information or something that you have either experienced or heard of that you're grateful for or excited about recently.

Tom: I think the biggest thing I'm most excited about recently is the amount of unity I'm seeing within our movement and beyond our movement. It's something very new, sadly. I think our history has been played with groups and individuals kind of in-fighting and, you know, we still get way too much of that. But I've been involved in, you know, various meetings and various initiatives where I'm seeing people from across the spectrum of our movement aligning in a very positive way. And people seeing this idea, what we discussed earlier about, you know, the ecosystem and how we all have a part to play in it, but actually seeing people starting to put that into practise and recognising what individually they have to bring to the table, but also what everyone else has to bring to the table, and that's something really positive.

Tom: And as we discussed, the welfare stuff with them, you know, not going both ways. Like, my experience, I would never have been invited into, you know, a discussion on strategy with a lot of the big NGOs, like 20 years ago, but now I am. And my views haven't particularly changed, my actions haven't particularly changed, but the feeling of kind of unity has. And being part of that is really empowering. And also then beyond that, seeing what Defend Our Juries are doing is. Is really empowering. So. So that's making me excited.

James: Very cool. And besides your own book, or maybe including your own book, what are some recommendations you'd have for people who want to learn more about - could be SHAC, could be campaigning, could be animal rights activism. Anything you think is relevant.

Tom: Yeah, my book is obviously the first recommendation. Then the documentary based on my book. I actually kind of think in terms of media consumption. I'm not going to recommend anything specific because there's so much out there, but I actually think it's good to read beyond our movement. I think most people active in our movement understand the atrocities that are happening or at least have a grasp on some of it. I think it's worth reading about people like Fred Hampton and Sophie Shaw and people who have actually achieved and done incredible things or just led incredible lives.

Tom: And also, maybe this is slightly left field, but to read and learn, you watch documentaries about bank robbers and people who've done like, jewellery heists and kind of see what people are willing to risk for money and greed and then ask yourself why we're not willing to risk the same for justice and life. Then I would also say, beyond books and, and podcasts and blogs and everything else, I would say to people just to go and see what's happening, like either join a save vigil or go hunt subbing, or just go to your local farm and with a camera or without a camera and just see what's happening. See it for yourself. See, see these people that are suffering and how they're suffering and connect with them and look them in the eyes and then.

Tom: Yeah, then try and look yourself in the eyes again without doing something to save them.

Amy: Powerful. Thanks, Tom. And how can people get more involved? So say there's people who think that they could contribute to, like a local chapter. Obviously, we're a global podcast, so maybe there's people internationally as well, where perhaps the animal rights movement is less established in their region. Is there something that you would recommend or anywhere people could get in touch to find out more about this idea of localised groups?

Tom: So we are in the process of setting up an organisation that my kind of base building will be a part of. But we haven't got. Yeah, we haven't got a name yet, so I can't really help with that specifically. But in terms of people setting up, local groups, the whole point is these are autonomous and local and up to the individuals to kind of take ownership of. If people want to reach out to me, they absolutely can do at Tattoo_Tom on Instagram. I'm very happy to give advice or any trainings or whatever people might need to help set up a local group.

Tom: But really the first step, I think, is just to announce and arrange a meeting locally, just a public meeting for people to come and talk to people who are active locally, even if it's not the type of activism you want to be involved in, and sell them your vision of a local group that is a recruitment funnel that will benefit them and get people together and talking and kind of grow it from there.

James: Nice. Well, we can wrap it up there and yeah, we'll link everything in the show notes, so website, your Instagram, email and the book, of course, which I highly recommend reading, which I will start probably today, which is exciting. Just in time. It'll be good. But yeah, otherwise, thanks so much for coming on the podcast Tom and chatting to us. We really appreciate all the work you've been doing for decades.

Tom: Thank you. Thank you for having me.