Information about Animal Rights Militia

The Animal Rights Militia (ARM) is a name used by animal-rights activists willing to engage in direct action that might endanger human life.

Direct action

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ARM first emerged in the UK in the 1980s as animal-rights activists shifted their focus away from demonstrations and more on direct action, including violence, intimidation, and the destruction of property. In 1982, letter bombs were sent to Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, signed by the Animal Rights Militia. The group was not heard of for four years afterwards, and animal liberation supporter Peter Singer remarked in his essay "The Animal Liberation Movement" that the group may not really exist. ^[1]

In 1986, ARM claimed responsibility for sending letter bombs to individuals involved in vivisection, and in 1994, ARM activists set fire to stores on the Isle of Wight, causing $6 million worth of damage. Barry Horne was subsequently jailed for 18 years for the arson attacks, dying in jail in 2001 during a hunger strike. Robin Webb, who runs the Animal Liberation Press Office in the UK, narrowly avoided being charged with conspiracy. ^[2]

ARM came to widespread public attention in the UK again in December 1998, during one of Horne's earlier hunger strikes, which lasted 68 days — carried out in protest at the British government's refusal to order a commission of inquiry into animal testing — when it threatened to assassinate a number of individuals involved in vivisection should Horne die.

Those threatened were Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the Medical Research Council; Clive Page of King’s College, London, a professor of pulmonary pharmacology and chair of the animal science group of the British Biosciences Federation; Mark Matfield of the Research Defence Society; and Christopher Brown, the owner of Hillgrove Farm in Oxfordshire, who was breeding kittens for laboratories.

Webb has implied that ARM and ALF activists, as well as activists from another violent group, the Justice Department, may be the same people. He has said: "If someone wishes to act as the Animal Rights Militia or the Justice Department? Simply put, the third policy of the ALF [to take all reasonable precautions not to endanger life] no longer applies." ^[3]

Professor Paul Wilkinson, former director of the University of St Andrews Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, has said that "a cluster of small groups such as the so-called Justice Department of the Animal Liberation Front, and the Animal Rights Militia, have crossed the threshold from extra-parliamentary protest and demonstrations to what can only be described as acts of terrorism." ^[4]

Gladys Hammond

ARM claimed responsibility ^[5] for removing from a grave the body of the mother-in-law of Christopher Hall, part-owner of Darley Oaks Farm, which bred guinea pigs for Huntingdon Life Sciences, and which had been the target of an animal-rights campaign called Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs. Gladys Hammond's body was removed in October 2004 from a churchyard in Yoxall, Staffordshire and found buried in woodland on May 2, 2006. ^[6]

On May 12, 2006, The Guardian reported that four individuals had been jailed for their involvement in the incident, which the paper described as "a six-year hate campaign" that included letter bombs, vandalism, and grave robbing. The judge described the group's actions as "subjecting wholly innocent citizens to a campaign of terror." The campaign included hate mail signed Animal Rights Militia and Animal Liberation Front. ^[7] Those convicted were Jon Ablewhite, 36, John Smith, 39, and Kerry Whitburn, 36, who were handed down 12-year sentences and Josephine Mayo, 38, sentenced to four years ^[7]

Savlon 'Contamination'

On August 30 2007 ITN News reported that the ARM claim to have deliberately contaminated 250 tubes of Novartis's widely-used antiseptic Savlon in stores in the north of England including Superdrug and Boots The Chemist ^[8].

Although the ARM are known for their poisoning hoaxes ^[9] Superdrug, Boots and Tesco are all reported as having temporarily withdrawn the product from sale on police advice.

Notes

External links

• Animal Rights Militia Fact Sheet from the Animal Liberation Front