What's wrong with animal rights.

The Pro-Test demo in Oxford was a triumph this Saturday. Yet talking to someone who has to work daily in the Psychology building there I can't see it as more than the end of the beginning. She not only has to listen to abuse being screamed from the street, but must face extremists taking her photograph as she enters (a highly aggressive tactic given what has happened and been threatened to those with even marginal connections to the place). The police advised her not to march.

What I wanted to say was that it is important to take these vicious fools very seriously. Hearing several people in the march saying, 'no one took them seriously' I am reminded how Islamist terror has crept from a fringe annoyance to a great enemy of peace and security while people looked the other way. That will seem an odd connection, extreme and faintly absurd. Consider, however, how these few terrorists are already having a serious impact. Colin Blakemore's place on the New Years Honours list was taken away because the government lacked the courage to reward work involving animal experiments even when it is of the first importance. (Labour is deeply compromised on this issue, because its base has a strong inclination toward animal rights, being fond of squashy, emotionally pleasing positions over those that require tough thinking and hard decisions and being equally drawn to revolutionary doctrines that suggest humanity has been deep in contingent wickedness for its whole long history and they know how to lift it onto a new plane of virtue. I'd like to say the resurgent Conservatives offer a vision of good sense, but David Cameron, courting the new establishment, has also sent out indications that he has sympathy with animal rights positions.) Blakemore's daughter has opened parcels sent to him from the terrorists stuffed with HIV-infected needles. The least that brave man deserved is the support of a government whose democratically-legitimated policies include tightly-controlled, welfare-driven animal research. The Darley Oaks guinea pig farm closed after a long and horrible camapign, in the hope of getting back the remains of their grandmother, though whether that happened I do not know. Valuable research is being threatened. A ridiculous and unenforceable law against hunting has been brought in, threatening large and important sectors of the rural economy. British life is being curtailed and hemmed in by thugs. Nor can it be said to be a peculiar British problem born of our over-solicitious relationship with animals. The arrival of PETA in the UK was a watershed for this country in this battle, to my mind. PETA is a peaceful campaign group, but their views are strong and uncompromising and their use of celebrities to support their message gave them powerful leverage: they are part of the acceptable face to an unacceptable goal. More recently, the New York stock exchange withdrew the listing for Huntingdon Life Sciences at the last moment because of animal rights threats. America is facing a growing problem with this movement, and related ecoterror groups just as in Britain. The threat is present and growing and has real consequences.If the campaign in Oxford succeeds, an important research lab will not be built. Not only will Britain suffer economically and as a base for research, but proposed labs everywhere will be drawn to reconsider their plans. Research to cure cancers and vaccinate against AIDS will not be done. Humanity begins to draw back from material achievement into a world of stasis and moral cowardice, too frightened of its own capacities to put them to work. And a campaign that succeeds on one front will only be emboldened, just as the hunting ban has drawn the terrorists attention to game shooting and fishing. The end they seek is nothing less than the severing of all human relationships with animals, from those raised for food, for riding, for use as guide and sniffer dogs, to pets. And as Winston Churchill said, appeasement is the process of feeding the crocodile in the hope that it will eat you last. Go to www.greatbefore.com to read about Ross Clark's vision of life in the hands of luddites and reactionary zealots.