Animal Rights Leaflets to Download

It is great to report that rights-based, vegan-oriented abolitionist animal rights education material is now becoming available.

Please follow the following links for genuine animal rights messages.

http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/?p=152
http://www.abolitionistapproach.com/media/pdf/ARAA_Pamphlet.pdf

http://www.animalemancipation.com/
http://veganfreaks.net/animalemancipation.pdf

On Controlling the Atmospheres of Chickens and Hens.

Since the announcement of PeTA’s ‘victory’ to ‘push’ KFC Canada to deliberately deprive chickens of oxygen, much has been said about the huge welfare benefits of the controlled atmosphere killing and controlled atmosphere stunning systems.[1]

It should be noted that there appears to be a fair amount of ambiguity about the phrases ‘controlled atmosphere stunning’ (CAS) and ‘controlled atmosphere killing’ (CAK). Common sense suggests that these terms should mean very different things – and it is clear that when some researchers refer to ‘stunning’, they are referring to a system in which unconscious but live birds are shackled and then cut across the neck (this has led to concerns about quickness of recovery from stunning and period between being stunned and being killed. This is sometimes called the ‘stun-to-stick’ issue). However, other researchers use CAK and CAS interchangeably (for example, some use terms such as ‘stunning/killing systems’ and ‘gas stun/kill’). Some research papers appear to be about CAS, as CAS is explicitly mentioned in the title, but the substantive text may be about CAK.

I decided to look into the welfare claims about CAK – especially as I noticed that PeTA, even in their ‘case for CAK video’, seemed rather keen on not letting their supporters see chickens being stun-killed by taking away their oxygen, even though this was supposed to be the major welfare advance they have been campaigning to bring about for five years. Looking at some of the research, I think I can see why PeTA are reluctant to fully inform their members and sympathisers.[2] They have been careful and somewhat misleading in their claims about CAK. For example [see 1], they claim that asphyxia and anoxia are very different experiences, which is extremely doubtful. The claim that anoxia is “a painless process” is dubious too – anoxia certainly seems associated with pain in human animals.

However, when PeTA state that, “With CAK workers never handle live birds, so there are no chances of abuse”, they are being downright disingenuous or else engaging in wishful thinking. PeTA have themselves documented how workers sadistically treat animal property such as chickens: being trapped inside a transportation crate hardly protects one from all abuses and rights violations – and this is only half of the story in the first place. The chickens and hens have still to be taken from battery cages, cage-free facilities and broiler houses and placed in the transportation crates. They are still subject to rights violations at the farm end of the process [see 3 for one student’s sickening experience in Ireland].

It appears that there is a great deal of academic debate about the welfare benefits of placing chickens in ‘controlled atmospheres’. There seems to be a consensus that there should be welfare benefits compared to the live shackling and neck cutting of chickens but there is dispute and an absence of agreement about the extent and circumstances of these benefits. For example, there is ongoing research and discourse about gas mixtures, length of exposure, ways of stopping chickens regaining consciousness, and how they behave when they are exposed to gases and mixtures. There appears to be particular troubling ‘behavioural responses’ such as ‘gasping’, ‘wing flapping’, ‘vocalising’, ‘headshaking’, ‘loss of posture’ (meaning becoming unstable and struggling to regain balance), and ‘convulsions’ which scientists are trying to eliminate in the use of gas chambers. Some convulsions are thought to occur after some individuals are unconscious. However, Simmonds reports in 2005 that, “birds being killed by anoxia may be subject to these uncontrollable movements [loss of posture and convulsions] while still conscious”. There are further concerns raised because CAS/CAK systems have more moving parts compared with electric bath stunners and it appears breakdowns are expected. Indeed, in Britain in 2007, DEFRA insisted on the use of both audible and visible breakdown signals, including warnings of when gas mixtures and concentrations are incorrect. DEFRA also want checks when birds exit the chambers in case some are still alive and insist that a ‘back-up slaughter method’ is available for such circumstances. They also want a means of visually monitoring the inside of the gas chamber and a way of getting birds and gases out of the chamber in the event of ‘failures’. They also want birds who are taken out of transportation crates before being put into a gas chamber to be ‘handled with care’ and designated workers to take ‘corrective action’ if it is found that live birds are exiting the chamber.

Apart from problems in gassing chickens and hens, researchers are also looking into the gassing of ‘laboratory animals’, turkeys, unwanted pets and pigs (with groups like the RSPCA Australia and FAWC monitoring results – the FAWC have recommended the phasing out of gassing pigs).

According to Dorothy McKeegan[4] there are several common ‘gas methodologies’.
• Anoxia: the replacement of air by argon or nitrogen
• Hypercapnic anoxia: application of a mixture of argon and carbon dioxide (CO2). CO2 has been shown to be painful in human use.
• Hypercapnic hypoxia: use of high levels of CO2 (as much as 80%)
• Hypercapnic hyperoxgenation: combination of high levels of oxygen and CO2
• ‘multiphase systems’: a mixture of some of the above, often to attempt to prevent chickens recovering before they are killed.

The expected welfare benefits have been that chickens will not be shackled until made unconscious by the ‘gas environment’ and McKeegan says, “gas stunning eliminates the possibility that some birds will not be stunned adequately before bleed-out”. As ever, much of this concern is as much to do with economics, carcass damage, as with bird welfare. However, contrary to McKeegan’s studies, other research shows that not all chickens and hens may be stunned properly, resulting in the recommendation of finding ways to create ‘turbulence’ in gas chambers to reduce the number of pockets of air which some birds may find.

McKeegan essentially shows that it is hard to get everything right – it is apparently difficult to avoid some chickens ‘gasping’ and in ‘respiratory distress’, often because they can smell or taste the gases and sometimes they seem to experience facial pain. The research seems to indicate that chickens and hens react to gases in similar ways to humans. These research worries about ‘potentially averse gaseous environments’ have slowed down the implementation of legislation because there is concern that one ‘potentially painful and distressing slaughter method’ may be replacing another.

A great deal of research on gas stunning/killing has been carried out at Bristol University under the leadership of AB Mohan Raj. This work, which began in the late 1980s, has also raised some welfare issues. First, however, what does this research look like? How should we picture it? Mohan Raj describes an experiment in which turkeys are gassed. The researchers have constructed a ‘feeding chamber’ and a ‘roosting chamber’ connected by a descending tunnel with windows so the gassing can be observed. Mohan Raj graded ‘aversive reactions’ to gases as follows.

Grade 1: the bird entered the feeding chamber without pausing but exhibited some gasping and/or head shaking in the tunnel, and was killed by the gas in the feeding chamber;
Grade 2: the bird entered the feeding chamber without pausing but exhibited gasping, vocalisation and head shaking in the tunnel, and was killed by the gas in the feeding chamber;
Grade 3: the bird did not enter the feeding chamber but paused or turned back in the tunnel without exhibiting gasping, vocalisation or head shaking, and was killed by the gas in the tunnel;
Grade 4: the bird did not enter the feeding chamber but paused or turned back in the tunnel or re-entered the tunnel exhibiting gasping, vocalisation or head shaking, and was killed by the gas in the tunnel;
Grade 5: the bird did not enter the feeding chamber but after each attempt returned to the roosting chamber after its initial exposure to the gas in the tunnel, exhibiting gasping, vocalisation and head shaking.

Nice work huh?

Back to gassing chickens, Mohan Raj (and N.G. Gregory) stunned 320 ‘broiler chickens’ in one experiment for 2 minutes each. They found a number of survivors, between 8 and 28 out of 100; and in one experiment none of the birds had lost consciousness after 2 minutes and the test had to be stopped. They found survivors by measuring time to eye opening after gassing and by pinching the birds’ combs to see if they could get a response. The researchers recommended “that care should be taken to ensure that there is sufficient turbulence within the stunning chamber to avoid air pockets being trapped between the birds”.

In another experiment, Mohan Raj and Gregory measured ‘convulsive episodes’ and time to ‘sustained eye closure’ and found that hens took longer to gas than ‘broilers’. The same experimenters also discovered that bleeding is higher in electrically stunned birds compared to gassed ones. This means that the whole killing system in slaughterhouses needs to be slowed down when gassed chickens are ‘bled-out’ otherwise they will still be bleeding when entering scalding tanks to loosen feathers. This appears to be at the centre of Simmonds’ concerns about ensuring CAS/CAK systems are ‘suitable for a commercial environment’, noting, for example, that the ‘gas killing’ of chickens was not even thought a possibility in Britain until the 1980s due to line speeds. Since then, the FAWC has insisted that the research be done.

It should be pointed out, of course, that all or at least the vast majority of the results I have cited come from tests in carefully controlled experimental conditions and not in commercial settings where time and speed means money. Mohan Raj at Bristol seems to have been busy trying to discover which system will function best ‘under commercial conditions’. There is also an apparent further problem of damaged wing bones during gassing operations, presumably due to the reported wing flapping. Mohan Raj, Gregory and Wilkins suggest that electric stunning created bleeding and bone fractures in chickens but wing bone damage was ‘significantly higher’ in chickens subjected to gas chambers.

Clearly there is no consensus as yet to the best way to gas chickens and other animals and chickens have not been mass gassed ‘under commercial conditions’ as yet. It may be far too early for groups such as PeTA to claim that gassed chickens merely ‘go to sleep’ even with the use of argon alone and notwithstanding that argon alone appears to create other welfare issues. How long will it be before we see a shocking video expose of the very system PeTA pushed for? About as long as it took before we saw the rights violations taking place in ‘RSPCA-approved’ systems of animal use I reckon.

[1] http://www.peta.org/cak/

[2] Please note that I am not claiming to have reviewed all the available literature on CAK/CAS. I merely report on initial findings; a dipping of the toe into the subject.

[3] “ I spent one night working in a chicken farm in westmeath when i was in college. Our job was to move the chickens from the warehouse they were fed in, onto crates driven in and out of the warehouse on forklifts, and then loaded on to trucks. I seen chickens kicked around like footballs, their necks snapped by workers when closing the drawers of crates, and forklifts driving over them & bursting them like balloons etc. I remember vomiting 2 or 3 times during the night.. no idea how people do this for a living”. http://www.indymedia.ie/article/83640#comments

[4] McKeegan, D.E.F. (2004) ‘Sensory Perception: chemoreception’ in G.C. Perry (ed.) Welfare of the Laying Hen: Poultry Science Symposium 27. Wallingford, Oxfordshire: CABI.

Other sources used.
Mohan Raj, A.B. & Gregory, N.G. (1990) ‘Effect of rate of induction of carbon dioxide anaesthesia on the time of onset of unconsciousness and convulsions’. Research in Veterinary Science, 49(3): 360-363.
Mohan Raj, A.B. & Gregory, N.G. (1991) ‘Efficiency of bleeding of broilers after gaseous or electrical stunning’. The Veterinary Record, 128(6): 127-128.
Mohan Raj, A.B., Gregory, N.G. & Wilkins, L.J. (1992) ‘Survival rate and carcass downgrading after the stunning of broilers with carbon dioxide-argon mixtures’. The Veterinary Record, 130(15): 325-328.
Mohan Raj, A.B. (1996) ‘Aversive reactions of turkeys to argon, carbon dioxide and a mixture of carbon dioxide and argon’. The Veterinary Record, 138(24): 592-593.
Lambooij, E., Gerritzen, M.A., Engel, B., Hillebrand, S.J.W., Lankhaar, J. and Pieterse, C. (1999) ‘Behavioural responses during exposure of broiler chickens to different gas mixtures’. Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 62(3-3): 255-265.
http://www.csrees.usda.gov/nea/animals/pdfs/mohan_pres.pdf
‘Welfare and other aspects of controlled atmosphere stunning’, N. Simmonds. 2005: http://www.animalscience.com/uploads/additionalFiles/QualityOfPoultryMeat/172.pdf
http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/welfare/pdf/poultrywelfare.pdf

What ‘divisive’ means in the animal protection movement.

I have grown used to hearing accusations that Gary Francione’s animal rights position, in particular, is ‘divisive’.[1] As an animal rights advocate, Francione claims that nonhuman animals who are sentient are rights bearers. He is opposed to them being used by humans and regards their use by humans as rights violations.

This seems to be a pretty standard way of expressing oneself if one takes a rights-based view of things. However, as I have pointed out before,[2] this is not the language of the present animal protection movement and, as far as I can tell, has never been the language of the animal movement. The majority in the current post-1970s movement have rarely framed their fundamental case for nonhuman animals in rights-based language, favouring - for a variety of philosophical and ‘practical’ reasons - to make orthodox cruelty claims and claims about ‘unnecessary suffering’, the cornerstone concept in traditional animal welfarism.

Given this, how odd is it that a social movement that, by and large, studiously avoids and often opposes rights-based philosophy and rights-based claims-making nevertheless deliberately calls itself – insists on calling itself - the “animal rights movement”? How odd is that – but more to the point – how divisive is it? And how insulting to those who actually take animal rights theory and practice seriously and who want to make rights-based philosophy the fundamental base of their campaigning about human-nonhuman relations.

In the same year (1975) that Peter Singer’s influential text, Animal Liberation, was published, animal rightist Tom Regan began to write about human-nonhuman relations. His initial thoughts coalesced into his 1983 book, The Case for Animal Rights. Since at least the early 1980s, then, some animal advocates have wanted to seriously make rights-based claims about human-nonhuman relations. This minority of advocates have wanted to say that they regard many nonhuman animals as right-holders and want to assert that what routinely and systematically happens to these animals at the hands (and knives and forks) of humans are rights violations.

In the language of the Vegan Society’s Donald Watson, they have a passion to “ripen up” the public to serious animal rights claims.[3] Animal rightists want people to begin to consider whether eating that steak or wearing that fur or leather garment is a rights violation rather than simply “being cruel” to animals.

As said, many animal advocates reject and oppose animal rights philosophy and claims-making. They don’t care about rights and they apparently don’t care that some others do. I have never, ever, understood, in these circumstances, why they will not at least have the decency to call themselves something other than “animal rights” when they know there are other animal advocates who make rights-based philosophy the foundational basis of their animal advocacy. Perhaps for the sake of some weird adherence to a snappy name or label they do not really support they will run roughshod over the aspirations of others, or else they think moral rights are “nonsense on stilts” and wish the idea no good at all.

In truth, what’s going on when people call Gary Francione ‘divisive’ is that they are complaining because he will not endorse or engage in mainstream animal welfare campaigning. This indicates an ignorance of Francione’s writing which critiques such campaigns and sets out a programme to undermine the property status of nonhuman animals and establish veganism as the moral base of an animal rights movement.

How could Francione – or any Francione-inspired animal advocate – endorse the type of campaigns that are currently prevalent in the animal movement? Such campaigning involves a switch from battery cages to ‘enriched’ battery cages, encourages free-range systems that in no sense deserve the name, and urges animal user industries to ‘humanely’ gas millions of chickens in gas chambers. Do such campaigns even begin to challenge the property status of animals? Do such campaigns suggest a commitment to veganism? Do they in any sense seem to deserve the title ‘animal rights campaigns’?


[1] This is a common theme as articulated by animal advocates such as Norm Phelps: http://www.veganoutreach.org/articles/normphelps.html//url However, academic commentators sympathetic to animal welfarism do the same, for example Robert Garner in his Animal Rights: The Changing Debate (Macmillan 1996) and Gary Francione’s stalker, Dr. Sztybel: http://sztybel.tripod.com/blog.html

[2] http://human-nonhuman.blogspot.com/2007/12/google-it.html

[3] Utilitarian animal welfarist Peter Singer apparently recognised this ‘ripening up’ idea of Watson, acknowledging that new ideas are likely to sound strange to the ear when first encountered. He comments on page one of Animal Liberation that ‘“Animal Liberation” may sound more like a parody of other liberation movements than a serious objective’.

A Sociology of Compromise.

A Late 1990s Snapshot of the British Animal Protection Movement. This small-scale investigation of the British animal movement at the end of the 20th century was written before the hunt 'bans' in England, Scotland and Wales, when Hillgrove cat breeding 'farm' was still operating, and before the SHAC campaign became the focus of grassroots campaigners' attention. It was also before the birth of the animal rights movement (2006) which followed two false starts. The first in the 1980s when Tom Regan presented his case for animal rights. His efforts were effectively neutered by corporate welfarism. The second, in the early to mid-1990s, when Gary Francione's books began to appear. His efforts were silenced also by the power elite in the US animal movement. The emergence and spread of the internet means that can no longer happen. This account has been revised slightly in 2008.

I offer it now because it says important things about the complexities and contradictions of being an animal advocate.

* Bibliography below
** Endnotes below
*** Methodological notes below


A SOCIOLOGY OF COMPROMISE.

This paper is a response to observations and criticisms of modern social movement research. Empirically, it answers the suggestion made by Rucht (1990) and takes an in-depth look at an individual social movement, the modern British ‘animal protection movement’,[1] investigating the subjective understandings of its members and strategists (Goldberg, 1991; Jasper and Poulsen, 1995).

Theoretically, it adopts and elaborates both Klandermans’ (1992) and Miller’s (1993) perspectives suggesting that critical theories should be used more prominently to inform the study of social movements. This study, in total, provides a snapshot of a particular social movement at a particular time: it is a critically-informed complementary to the studies carried out on the animal movement in the United States of America (Groves, 1995; Jasper and Poulsen, 1995).

Introduction

Focusing on social constructionist research, Miller and Holstein (1993: 14) argue that, in order to fully appreciate how social action is mediated by capitalist and gendered social relationships and institutions, social theories profit from the injection of feminist-critical theoretical perspectives. Writing in a similar vein about the potential benefits of including social constructionist perspectives in social movement theorising, Klandermans expresses surprise that ‘the idea never really caught on’ (1992: 78). Pulling these strands together, I argue in this paper that critical perspectives [2] should indeed be a far more prominent feature of social movement research than has hitherto been the case.

Given its insights into politics, the mass media, and social life in general, this paper claims that critical theory provides crucial and appropriate ways with which to investigate the sociology of social movements, and in particular when describing the political, social and cultural environments in which social movements operate in modern capitalist patriarchies. For example, the theoretical concerns of both the ‘first and second generation’ of Frankfurt School scholars, from Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse to Habermas, directly engage some of the most central issues related to social movement activity and the study of them. For example, considering the six themes Habermas identifies within the early work of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, half of them are clearly connected with major strands in social movement theorising:

the forms of integration in postliberal societies; family socialisation and ego development; mass media and mass culture; the social psychology behind the cessation of protest; the theory of art and; the critique of positivism and science (Habermas, cited in Outhwaite, 1994: 103).

However, a review of social movement research and theory (below) reveals that the field has rarely embraced critical theoretical perspectives (but see Harris, 1995). Moreover, social movement research has tended not to embrace critical theory even in an interdisciplinary sense, much less utilised its analytical strengths as a central core of the paradigm. The first section of this paper concludes that this is exactly what should occur. The substantial part of this dissertation is a detailed investigation of the British animal protection movement and responds to Rucht’s observation that,

a systematic analysis of the strategies and actions of individual movements within the New Social Movements has not yet been made. It would be very interesting to find out when and why various forms of action were introduced, or when and why they were adopted and altered by other movements (1990: 168).[3]

The conclusion of the first section is drawn upon in order to inform the rest of the paper, assessing the British animal protection movement, its campaigning styles, and the attitude of some of its members and activists from within a critical theoretical standpoint whenever appropriate. When Rucht (1990) refers to ‘new social movements’ he means modern protest movements who do not generally advocate the absolute necessity of widespread social revolution to achieve their aims. Therefore, ‘new’ or modern social movements, such as the British animal movement, are those who, by and large, devise their campaigning tactics and strategies within the established order (Kuechler and Dalton, 1990: 288).

Rucht is interested in the relationships between social movements and their ‘countermovements’. Investigations of such relationships shows them to be important considerations in social movement mobilisation (Mottl, 1980; Lo, 1982; Zald and Useem, 1987; Yates 2007), as are the wider political, cultural and social factors which influence social movement strategising (Brand, 1990; Kuechler and Dalton, 1990; Boggs, 1995).

The sample of animal advocates interviewed for this paper frequently regard their complex intra-movement relationships and the various tactical implications of campaigning within the existing sociopolitical arena to important considerations while their relationships with countermovements have grown more important due to the growth in access to the internet, resulting in more British campaigners being aware of their opponents’ views. US research on animal advocates points toward the important and primacy of a ‘public educator’ role, meaning many animal advocates are constantly wary of factors which could potentially damage the claimed ‘rationality’ of their arguments (Groves, 1995). This is particularly true in the case of advocates who use rights-based theories to inform their core claims about human-nonhuman relations. Therefore, some activists are found to be far more likely to cite the mass media’s representation of their movement as a greater factor of significance in terms of their tactical orientations and their evaluations of campaigning successes and failures than how countermovements view them (see Eyerman and Jamison, 1991: 99-101; Goldberg, 1991: 218-19).

In the light of these initial points, the focus turns to how they are reflected in:

* The structure of the animal protection movement: the interplay between the specialist national ‘animal organisations’ who tend to concentrate on single animal abuse issues such as animal experimentation (vivisection) or forms of hunting, and the more generalised local campaign groups;

* The tensions created by the concepts of ‘animal welfare’, ‘animal rights’ and ‘animal liberation’: what members of the animal movement mean when they use these apparently interlinked and often overlapping terms, and how these meanings have encroached on their...

* Campaigning strategies: when specific campaigning goals and tactics threaten the integrity of a movement’s overall social critique (Gelb, 1990; Rochon, 1990); and

* Campaigning environments: the constraints and limitations placed on social movement mobilisations by the general sociopolitical climate (Brand, 1990; Boggs, 1995).

By interviewing current and former members of the British animal protection movement, this dissertation investigates the movement largely as seen from ‘inside’ by some of its activists. This ‘insiders’ perspective responds to the argument - implicit in Rucht (1990) - that some recent social movement theories have lost sight of the ‘matter’ of movements, namely the people in them (Goldberg, 1991: 11). This sort of point has led Jasper and Poulsen (1995: 509) to call for ways of analysing the ‘mental life of social movements’ but without the pejorative psychology that limited early or ‘classical’ social movement theorising.

As will be seen, this study ~ an individualistic examination of a single social movement ~ incorporating the points just made about the ‘insider’s’ view ~ results in a far messier picture of a social movement than the portraits commonly presented - in abstract form - in most social movement theorising. Not surprisingly, and precisely to avoid such messy pictures, much social movement research shifts to the abstract and, faced with the ‘complexity of empirical reality’, social scientists frequently resort to the guiding or heuristic device of the Weberian ‘ideal-type’ (Rigby, 1974a: 178). While ideal-typical representations have undoubtedly proved their worth, the individualistic approach of a study such as this one serves to highlight and underline the complex and continuous constructionism involved in social movement mobilizations. Furthermore, it reminds social movement theorists that ‘actual existing movements’ tend to be more complex and more fraught with contradictory tensions than any abstracted type. On the other hand, studies like this can furnish only a ‘snap-shot’ of a given movement at a given historical moment. It is, of course, when the empirical and the abstracted accounts are taken together over time that the fullest picture emerges.

This particular critically-informed snap-shot suggests that explaining and understanding the modern animal protection movement amounts to a sociology of compromise. That is to say, that in advanced Western capitalist patriarchies, the campaigning aspirations of non-revolutionary ‘new’ social movements; their internal tactical orientations and disputes; their membership recruitment and political and cultural influences, are all affected by the mediation of their philosophies and activities by the prevailing political, cultural and social environments in which they operate (Brand, 1990): in particular, they have been effected by the recent resurgence of conservative politics (Boggs, 1995); by the ‘filtering’ of their concerns and activities by powerful mass media interests (Zald, 1992: 338); and, perhaps most significantly, because their reformist appeals are currently formulated by and addressed to a ‘pacified’ population of citizens who collude in their own powerlessness (Marcuse, 1964; 1969; Hall et al, 1978: 243).

‘New’ Social Movements and their political, cultural and social environments: why the British animal protection movement is, by and large, a ‘new’ social movement.

Although the concept ‘new social movements’ - first introduced by West German theorists (Dalton, et al, 1990: 4) - is not universally accepted in social movement research (Tucker, 1991; Plotke, 1995) [4] the majority of social movement theorists tend to agree that modern or ‘new’ social movements can be theoretically separated from the ‘old’ [5] movements by characterising them as non-revolutionary mobilisations mainly orientated to bringing about reforms from within the existing political order (Brand, 1990: 25). Therefore, new movements typically concentrate on conflicts caused by fear, pain, and (physical and symbolic) destruction vs. integrity, recognition, and respect (Offe, 1990); they are seen as network-like forms of organisations who tend to rely on direct action, symbolic protest and lifestyle politics (Bagguley, 1995).

The claims and demands made by new movements are regarded as distinct from the traditional aspirations of old social movements in that they ‘do not crystallize into anything like a historical design, a positive utopia, or a new mode of production’ (Offe, 1990: 234).[6] Writers, including Touraine (1983) and Capra and Spretnak (1984) - focusing on the recent environmental, feminist and peace organisations - say that at the centre of modern movements lies a qualitatively new ‘people’s politics’. But what is ‘new’ in these politics is the almost exclusive concentration on reformism within the prevailing system: ‘It is not a revolutionary attack against the system, but a call for democracies to change and adapt’ (Dalton, et al, 1990: 3).

Touraine (1995) argues that the nineteenth century ‘was characterised by a great increase in power sharing’ (p. 378) which helped to bring about widespread class integration in modern capitalist patriarchal societies; and therefore ‘it is the theme of social integration that has dealt the heaviest blows to the theme of social struggle and [‘old’] social movements’ (p. 375). In recent times, social conflicts have been rendered purely artificial; social actors are submissive generally and ‘only marginals can be aroused to revolt, as Marcuse and, a generation later, Foucault attempted’ (p. 375). Marcuse (1964: 243) maintains that a social situation of ‘pacification' has developed in advanced industrial societies such as modern Britain meaning that any sense of ‘revolutionary’ activity or moves towards total societal transformation are not high on contemporary political, social or cultural agendas: therefore, if new movements can be said to challenge the prevailing order at all, then again they do so only from within. Their activities, ‘no longer contradictory to the status quo’, are a harmless negation, ‘and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet’ (Marcuse, 1964: 14).

These perspectives, despite being rather pessimistic, seem to successfully capture the essence of the new reformist movements such as the modern animal protection movement, if only in general terms. However, since actual social movements are not as black and white as theoretical ideal types, there are elements of the animal protection movement which could be perceived to be both ‘old’ and ‘new’ by these measures. That is, that within its overall reformist structure there is a revolutionary (or at least rebellious) wing (Henshaw, 1989). It is necessary at this point to further differentiate the various mobilisations within the animal protection movement. Garner (1993) uses the term ‘animal protection’ to describe most of the various organisations which have something to say about the relationships between human beings and other animals. However, what they say varies markedly, depending on whether they subscribe to traditional animal welfare, radical welfarism (Peter Singer-inspired animal liberation), or animal rights philosophies. For example, an illustration of a fundamental difference in philosophical approach relates to the ‘property status’ of other animals. In law, ‘persons’ and ‘things’ are major categories. While there exists nonhuman legal ‘persons’ in the shape of corporations, animals other than humans are classified as ‘things’ (Midgley, 1985: 52-62; Francione 1995; Yates et al, 2001).

The property status of animals is not a major animal welfare issue. In fact, many animal welfare groups promote the human ownership of other animals. For animal rights campaigners, however, the concept of the property status of other animals is a means by which they claim animals are unjustly exploited and discriminated against. Thus, the social and legal changes required to satisfy rights aspirations are far greater than the traditional reforms which traditional animal welfarists seek. Consequently, nonhuman rights discourse ~ built on human rights claims ~ acknowledges that fundamental sociopolitical and attitudinal changes, ending many forms of inequality, rights violations, and discrimination of humans as well as nonhuman animals, may be necessary to bring into existence the world in which they wish to live. Thus, although generally reformist in nature, the animal movement does have its radicals who do often conceive of their struggle in terms of praxis, and who have directly advocated total societal transformation as a necessary means to their ends.[7] Perhaps the most ‘revolutionary’ (in a Marxian or anarchistic sense) opinions found in animal movement discourse have been aired in the pages of magazines such as Arkangel and SG, favoured by those who support both direct action tactics and local group campaigning. For example, a contention often advanced through such publications argues that since animal abuse is seen to take place primarily for financial gain; and since the exploitation of animals (including humans) is deeply embedded within the prevailing oppressive money-driven patriarchal capitalist mode of production, only a (albeit ill-defined) socialist - or an anarchist - future will ensure animal liberation as part of its aims. However, many of even the more militant animal voices appear to ultimately accept the view that the transformations required to successfully liberate animals from human exploitation may possibly be provided by the existing mechanisms of the current political and economic system. Thus, tactical disputes from this viewpoint appear to centre around differing opinions about how best to ‘pressurise’ the prevailing system. Ronnie Lee, the former national press officer of the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group, and a respected voice within the grassroots animal liberation movement, argues that the direct action (meaning ‘economic sabotage’) [8] campaigns for animals have two separate yet linked effects. Firstly, it directly damages the finances of ‘animal abuse interests’: financial gain being one of the primary motivations for the routine and systematic exploitation of animals:

Most animal cruelty is caused by the profit motive. If the profit motive did not exist, the pressure for people to treat animals cruelly would be greatly reduced (Lee, quoted in Windeatt, 1985: 192).

Secondly, it supports the more mainstream conventional campaigns of the animal movement:

I don't think direct action is the opposite of parliamentary change. I think it will help it. Parliament will legislate when there is so much pressure in the country, so much trouble, that it will have to legislate (quoted in Windeatt, 1985: 191-2). [9]

Because animal advocates often conceive of animal farming and vivisection interests as ‘industries’ and ‘businesses’, many believe that they may respond to the pressures of ‘the marketplace’.[10] Thus, they recommend that their supporters make use of the forces of the capitalist market by, for example, reducing or eliminating meat consumption; buying free-range rather than battery eggs; and using ‘cruelty-free’ versions of household products and cosmetics:

The more people buy cruelty-free goods, the more become available. Soya milk is available everywhere now - in every supermarket, and now we have stuff like Cheatin’ Ham, soya ice cream, yoghurt, animal-free sweets and biscuits, as well as wholefoods. People have less and less excuse for buying animal products, and the more that buy cruelty-free, the cheaper it will get (Midlands activist).

Here, then, this ‘pressure’ on the system is conceptualized in two ways. First, direct action tactics causes ‘trouble’ and may encourage the animal abuse industries themselves to call for reforms which may reduce animal suffering. Second, boycotts of animal produce directly lessen the financial incentive to exploit animals, and they support alternative markets. Some animal advocates will speak the language of ‘societal change’, ‘drastic readjustment’ and ‘challenge’ in revolutionary-sounding ways but, in line with the tactics just outlined, and Bagguley’s (1995) point about lifestyle politics, what they actually mean is some postmodern revolution of the self and even the transformation of shopping habits:

We don’t want a passive membership - you can’t change society that way...animal liberation gives you an enormous insight into the working of society because when people actually grasp the issue, they start to question their own motivations and values. There’s an awful lot at stake in animal lib, a drastic readjustment. People who have just joined the movement on a gut reaction will be a bit scared by that description because you are challenging an awful lot of established views, prejudices and ways of life. We are asking people to rebel basically (Kim Stallwood, campaigns officer of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and Labour Party activist, in Windeatt, 1985: 182).

Here, the rebellion being called for amounts, first and foremost, to individualistic acts of self-liberation from the products of animal exploitation. Since the majority of animal advocates have traditionally been comfortable, white, middle-class, left-leaning liberals (Groves, 1995; Jasper and Poulsen, 1995) the direct advocacy of total social revolution has never been the likely primary stress of the majority of their campaigning, yet successive strategists have accepted that ‘something revolutionary’ must occur to see the end of animal abuse. In Maureen Duffy’s Men and Beasts, which is subtitled ‘an animal rights handbook’, the author declares: ‘What we want and must struggle for is nothing less than the world turned upside down to the point where no animal is killed except in the act of humane euthanasia’ (Duffy, 1984: 137). This short sentence effective sums up much of the internal meanings found in some animal discourse about the aspirations of parts of the animal movement.

Here, the world must be ‘turned upside down’. But how much social revolution or fundamental societal change must there be to fulfil these aspirations? Can these aspirations be met simply by a boycott of animal products, or is more deep-seated structural change necessary? The message one gets from animal campaigners is often confused and contradictory on this. Campaigners in interview believed that it is possible to foresee the liberation of animals within the prevailing political order, yet there was also a feeling that the values of the world would need to be changed in some unclearly-defined ways to see the cessation of nonhuman exploitation and rights violations. Clearly, many animal advocates speak the language of ‘revolution’, but it is rarely elaborated or conceptualised in any full-scale Marxian sense. Similarly, some animal activists make much of the interconnectedness of forms of exploitation (see, for example, Gold, 1988),[11] yet when self-liberation from the products of animal exploitation is advocated, the critique is not always framed within an overall fundamental opposition to exploitative consumerism.[12] Forced to work within prevailing relations of production, animal organisations have been instrumental in creating and/or supporting consumer markets, for example, in relation to ‘cruelty-free’ cosmetics and animal-free foodstuffs.

It may be said, summing up this section, that, in understanding the British animal protection movement, it is important to recognise that, even though radical revolutionary views are largely marginalised in the movement taken as a whole, just as the rhetorical use of ‘rights’ is widespread, rhetorical ‘revolutionary language’ is often commonplace. Seen expressed within general movement discourse are some generally-held perceptions that some form of ‘revolution’ - on the individual level certainly, and possibly on a societal level - is necessary to see the end of the human exploitation of other animals as food, clothing, experimental tools and sport.

On the other hand, as revealed below, many animal activists argue that their movement’s ‘whole transformative agenda’ sometimes needs to be (tactically) ‘shelved’ or ‘toned down’ to facilitate some immediate political or cultural goal such as legislation banning hunting with dogs, or perhaps when ‘educating’ the public not to buy ‘veal’ meat, or furs. From this perspective, for some, revolutionary-sounding language may be seen in a negative light because it may sound extremist, fanatical or unrealistic. In practice, when sometime influential organisations such as the League Against Cruel Sports have stressed one aspect of the overall campaign against animal exploitation or cruelty, their spokespersons have regularly claimed that other kinds of animal abuse are unconnected to the kind which currently concerns them. As ever, despite organisation names and political slogans, rarely is any campaign mounted by any group within the British movement framed in terms of rights violations. The tensions created by some campaigners not wanted to be seen as ‘too radical’ or ‘too extreme’ have resulted in organisational fragmentation in the British animal protection movement, with some organisations being formed specifically to advance a particular limited reform. While this tactical strategy enables individual mobilisations to concentrate on a particular issue (commonly, vivisection, farming, the fur trade, hunting or ‘cruelty’ to particular animal species such as horses, cats and dogs), this ‘decompartmentalisation’ of issues worry some theorists and activists who want to make explicit links between what they regard as ‘modes of exploitation’ (be it exploitation of humans or of other animals).

Both Rochon (1990) and Gelb (1990) found similar strategic dilemmas facing social movement strategists generally. They note that when social movements adopt reformist campaigns the more they run the risk of moving away from their fundamental social critiques. Consequently, when the more ‘revolutionary’ of social movement participants conceive of the solution to their concerns in terms of widespread societal transformation, or if they remain committed to a principled future vision, any deviation from their fundamental aspirations are risky and may lead to a range of tactical and philosophical conflicts between themselves and subsequent members who join movements when they see them focus on particular reform campaigns. In this way, individual members of the same movement, even the same social movement organisation (SMO), are apparently not necessarily committed to the same programme of action, nor even do they necessarily share the same perception of ‘the problem(s)’ they face as a group.

This is exactly what has occurred periodically in the British animal protection movement, understood by some to be a product of the specialism in its organisational structure and the style of the campaigns it has engaged in, the result of the competing philosophical views about the appropriate treatment of nonhuman animals, or how media coverage of ‘animal campaign’ effects the image and perception of the movement (see Francione [1996] for a similar US analysis of such points). Such concerns may be overlaid by considerations of how particular political and social environments, not least policing policies in the ‘decent’ parts of the world engaged in a ‘war against terrorism’, influence social movements’ tactical orientations, and impact on their resources and effectiveness. Brand (1990) investigates these sociopolitical environments using the Zeitgeist concept to illustrate ‘social mood’, ‘cultural climate’ and ‘the specific configuration of world-views, thoughts and emotions, fears and hopes, beliefs and utopias, feeling of crisis or security, of pessimism or optimism’ which prevails at any given time (p. 28). He says that typical sequences of basic societal moods can be seen in virtually all Western democracies:

from the conservative 1950s with their emphasis on private and material values, to the technocratic reform enthusiasm, the optimistic cultural-revolutionary thrust and moral radicalism of the 1960s, changing to the sobering 1970s which saw a growing crisis-consciousness and the spread of pessimistic anti-modern moods, finally given way to the neo-conservative, ‘postmodern’ Zeitgeist of the 1980s (pp. 29-30).

Since Brand’s perspective appears to be significant in the overall understanding of modern social movement mobilisation, it is worthwhile describing his schema in some detail. Within it Brand charts the social changes which have effected social movements over the years. He argues that the 1950s and early 1960s witnessed times of relatively stable economic growth, with increased access to mass consumer goods such as televisions, refrigerators, washing machines and cars. Supermarkets sprang up everywhere and advertising became a prime growth sector. White-collar jobs increased with the emphasis on science and technology. The rise of the ‘affluent society’ appeared to herald the ‘end of ideology’ and the breaking down of class divisions. Brand argues that, politically, anti-communism and the cold war reinforced domestic complacency, whether in Eisenhower’s America, the West Germany of Adenauer or in Britain’s ‘Butskellism’ (p. 30). What Brand calls the ‘shadowy side of the ‘Affluent society’’ came to the fore in the 1960s as the petit-bourgeois value consensus broke up under the strain of the failure to eradicate widespread poverty, continuing racial and minority-group discrimination, and the decay of the inner cities.

Established power structures were questioned when these ‘scandals’ were measured against the propagated ideals of Western democracy. A new social critique questioned Western militarism in foreign countries caused generational division between the young and the old, intensified by ‘the rise of a new hedonism and life-style orientated towards self-fulfilment, sexual freedom and spontaneity’ (p. 31). Brand is all doom and gloom about the ‘mood darkened’ 1970s: the failure of 1960s radicalism led to recrimination and division in the New Left, with some groups resorting to ‘terrorist tactics’. More broadly, however, the impulses of the 1960s which were based on wide macro analyses of societal ills and solutions resurfaced in the 1970s but this time in modern and particularistic social movements focused more on single issue politics and individualistic recourse to various forms of therapy (p. 31). These factors, Brand claims, helps explain why the oil crisis of 1973, discussion of population growth, and the increased awareness of ecological or environmental issues all became social movement interests rather than being addressed within the broader concerns of party politics. Indeed, such issues came together under the banner of the Green Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s rather than being seriously reflected within the established political parties. However, ironically, Brand observes that much of the fundamental social critique of the social movements had lost its impetus by the 1980s precisely because mainstream political parties had taken up many of their concerns. This sort of development can be assessed in one of two ways. For example, by saying that the issues of environmental protection, disarmament, women’s equality, self-help and decentralisation have ‘won’ for themselves a permanent slot on the mainstream political agenda (p. 23) or, more negatively, that the prevailing political structure has marginalised, deradicalised and disarmed these concerns by ‘partially institutionalising’ them (p. 32).

Brand characterises the 1980s generally as the era of ‘anything goes’ and ‘Yuppiedom’. The unconcealed hunt for money and status stands side by side with continuing poverty and mass unemployment as neo-conservatism grips the political climate and the Left loses even more ground. Trade unionism is attacked while patriotism is orchestrated within a nostalgic realignment with Victorian moral values (p. 33). The prevailing political and cultural climate of the 1980s deprived social movement of much support and many underwent a period of internal disintegration. However, even if social movements must change their character, they do not disappear entirely (p. 33), and modern social movements have shown a tendency to adapt to their situation as it develops, responding to their operational environment (Kuechler and Dalton, 1990: 288). This then is a brief picture of the sociopolitical landscape over the past thirty or forty years. If the accuracy of this sketch is not questioned - and it does find support in other analyses such as Hall, et al, (1978) and Boggs (1995) - then the post-1970s animal movement was born in the general ‘fallout’ from the radical movements of the 1960s. Therefore, in the best traditions of critical theorising, these political landscapes should be continually borne in mind when developing an understanding of both social movement theory and the tactical and philosophical developments in social movements themselves. Today’s social movement participants often feel disempowered and limited by ‘contextual factors’ such as the late-1970s rise of the New Right and the legislation they brought forward against various forms of protest and demonstration (Boggs, 1995: 347-48; and see Hallsworth (1996) for a British perspective on such legislation). Having discussed some of the general points which have influenced both social movement activity and social movement research, it is now time to turn to the particular theoretical perspectives which have informed the field, largely following the pattern outlined above by Brand.

Social movement theories.

The Classical Tradition of the 1940s and 1950s.

Goldberg (1991: 4) explains that, for a generation of theorists, writing in the 1940s and 1950s, the dark shadows of Nazism and the cold war had cast a pall over all forms of collective behaviour and thus classical theorists tended to portray social movements as symptoms of social pathology. Like rising crime and suicide rates, the existence of social movements was interpreted as society’s ‘red flags of distress’, with movements seen as housing the emotional, the fanatical, and the violent. These notions developed alongside the so-called ‘riff-raff’ theories of protest and rioting (Waddington, 1994: 2), when social movement activity was thought to appeal to those segments of the population most eager to embrace ‘contrived symbols’ and ‘simplistic ideologies’ (Goldberg, 1991: 4). Fromm (1941: 131-32) argues from a psychoanalytical standpoint that allegiances to mass movements were attempts to escape from freedom. He claims that modern life has exacerbated feelings in individuals of their own insignificance; lost in cities and in the mechanisation of life, all they can do is fall into step like soldiers or be as workers on endless production lines. These people - Fromm likens them to pawns and Nesbit (1953: 198) dismisses them as ‘mere particles of social dust’ – desperately grasp for the ‘psychic haven’ of social movements (Fromm 1941: 19-23; 1955: 237).[13] Theoretically, much of the early social movement work can be regarded as functionalist orientations viewing collective activity as the result of strains in the social system (Parsons, 1964). Thematically and politically, these traditional paradigms betray a conservative pluralist view of advanced industrial social systems which, by and large, are seen to adequately meet the needs of all groups who - by keeping to the rules of the game - can legitimately achieve societal influence and/or integration. Therefore, the acceptance that governments impartially mediates between competing petitioners and decides in favour of ‘the public good’, are important factors in understanding how social movements became seen in classical theories as ‘improper mobilisations’, as deviant, unruly, erratic, and external to the established (and fair) power channels (Goldberg, 1991: 6). And, when emotions were initially theorised in social movement research, they were also seen as irrational and impulsive outbursts (Groves, 1995: 435).

Many of these perspectives are still employed when modern movements and their countermovements describe one another’s adherents. For example, in the field of animal advocacy, pro-hunting organisations such as the Master of Foxhounds Association and the British Field Sports Society often characterise anti-hunt mobilisations, particularly the Hunt Saboteurs Association, as ‘riff-raff’ or ‘rent-a-mob’ organisations, and as irrational and impulsive individuals. And, of course, when social movement activists break the law, be they suffragettes or animal liberation raiders, they are accused first and foremost by their opponents of displaying a disgraceful disregard of pursuing their concerns via the ‘proper’ and ‘democratic’ channels.

The 1960s: And now for something completely different.

Although many social movement writers continued to employ Parsonian analysis of normative orientations and social control in tandem with Chicago school analyses of forms of collective behaviour (Zald, 1992: 330), traditional paradigms were challenged and transformed in the widespread changes that began in the 1950s and culminated in the radicalism of the 1960s.[14] Beginning with Thompson (1966; and see Sewell, 1980) work began toward a more sophisticated analysis of collective behaviour; one which recognized group behaviour as collective political struggle rather than individualistic irrationality (Shefner, 1995: 597). And, accordingly, the early classical theorists’ atomised and irrational social movement individuals were found to be thin on the ground by new researchers who declared that ‘social movement participants are at least as rational as those who study them’ (Schwartz, in Ferree, 1992: 30). In this new light, protestors were angry, yes; perhaps even bitter, but now theorised as reacting to ‘real grievances’ rather than as individual pathological victims; therefore, ‘unconscious psychic drives offered less explanation of their motivation than real grievances and legitimate programmes of change’ (Goldberg, 1991: 7).[15]

Resource mobilisation.

The development of resource mobilisation (RM) perspectives have been traced back to Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action, which, published in 1965, elaborated on his ‘rational choice theory’ with a focus on individual self interest (Mueller, 1992: 3; Zald, 1992: 332); and to when the full analytical weaknesses of the classical research paradigms became apparent during the rise of the civil rights, antiwar, women’s and black movements (Mayer, 1995: 172-73). This analytical shift led to the substantial formulation of ‘the theory of resource mobilisation’ (McCarthy and Zald, 1973; Oberschall, 1973; Shorter and Tilly, 1974; Gamson, 1975; Useem, 1975; Zald and McCarthy, 1979). According to RM theory, social movements, like other organisations, collect, trade, utilise (and waste) resources in their activities. These resources may be members, money, votes, information, trust, jobs, guns, and image(s) (Goldberg, 1991: 7-8). RM theorists moved much of the attention of social movement investigators towards the rationality of social movement organisations who:

weigh the rewards and sanctions, costs and benefits, that alternative courses of action represent for them (Oberschall, 1973: 29).

Recent contributions to the resource mobilisation field have returned to a welcome emphasis on individual social movement members and, again in a further rejection of classical theory, these individuals are theorised largely as rational actors who calculate the benefits and costs of social movement membership and activism (Groves, 1995: 436). In RM analysis, social movements are no longer seen to reduce their members to mindless individuals. Furthermore, individual members no longer necessarily depend on a charismatic leader who has the ability to hold them captive in their ‘social deviancy’. With the focus now firmly on the group and on the resources that shape its efforts, numerous theoretical perspectives related to the resource mobilisation paradigm have developed.[16] However, given its stress on organisational rationality, resource mobilisation perspectives are often criticised for concentrating on the form of social movements rather than on their content (Mueller, 1992) and for sometimes recasting movement participants as ‘ultrarationalistic actors devoid of feeling’ (Benford and Hunt, 1995: 103).[17]

Frame alignment.

Following many of the principles in Zald and McCarthy’s (1980) ‘organizational theories’, the ‘frame’ or ‘frame alignment’ theories focus more precisely on individual subjectivity within movements (Snow and Benford, 1988; Snow, et al, 1980; 1986). Within ‘frame’ theory, a frame has been defined as:

an interpretive schemata that simplifies and condenses the ‘world out there’ by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of action within one’s present and past environment (Snow and Benford, 1992: 137).

A little more clearly, Goffman (1974: 21) explains that frames allow people to locate, perceive, recognise, and label events and things in their world. The concept of frame alignment have been theorised in two ways in social movement research. The first looks at how movements attempt to align their frames to already existing societal frames; whilst the second investigates how movements attempt to alter societal frames to fit theirs (Klandermans, 1992). Unsurprisingly, in terms of which of these two strategies is the ‘easiest’, the former fits the bill. Thus, social movement strategists make great efforts to align their frames - their ‘politicized interpretations of events’ (Snow, et al, 1986) - with the existing frames of potential recruits so that they may come together and act in the world as they mutually understand it.

In terms of common claims-making in the British animal protection movement, this sort of perspective goes a long way in terms of explaining why the language of animal welfarism is so prevalent. Animal advocates often argue that the public - their public audience - understands welfarist notions of 'caring' for animals and being 'kind' to them. On the other hand, many suggest that the same public 'is not ready' for the idea of animal rights. Despite the apparent widespread support for the principles of human rights, animal advocates believe that rights-talk involves using new and strange frames that people are not comfortable with. Better, then, to frame claims in welfarist terms about not 'being cruel' and not causing ‘unnecessary suffering’. It is also probably the case that most animal advocates are themselves not versed in making claims about nonhuman animals being rights bearers or saying that what routinely happens to animals are rights violations. The result has been that rights in animal rights are used rhetorically and, following Singer, used as political shorthand. The advocates in this study who did not like to be thought of as animal welfarists because that raised in them a vision of a RSPCA collection tended to use ‘rights’ as a label, or used terms such as ‘animal liberation’ and ‘animal liberationist’ instead.

In social constructionist theorising, collective representations emanating from social problems claims-making become candidate structures for making sense of objects or events (Holstein and Miller, 1993: 134). Obviously, if social movements can then link their perspectives to the widely held beliefs or concerns that already prevail in society, the easier it is to gain support (Snow and Benford, 1992). With its roots in cognitive psychology, the impact of frame alignment perspectives on the study of social movements has been, according to Valocchi (1996), the integration of the importance of culture into resource mobilisation theories, thus enabling theorists to better analyse how movement leaders and participants identify grievances, devise strategies, and formulate demands (p. 116). As shown in the present study, these factors become central constituents in the conflicts that arise between animal movement organisations and personnel. One concept developed within the frame alignment perspective is that of ‘political opportunity structures’ (Amenta, et al, 1994; Tarrow, 1994). Here, for a modern movement to be successful, the political external conditions must be ‘right’. This means that, as movements concentrate on campaigning within the prevailing system, the system itself needs to be ‘open’ and ‘democratic’. Movements require access to mass communication facilities; political elites must be supportive, non-hostile or a least neutral to a movement’s aspirations; and some sympathetic allies need to be available within the political power structure.

This is precisely the sort of social movement perspective which will benefit from an explicit infusion of critical analysis which asks to what extent can the prevailing order be regarded as open and democratic; which looks at the inequality of access to the increasingly important social agencies such as the mass media; and seeks to identify the ways and means in which political power is sought, given and conceptualised in advanced industrial society. The point can be illustrated in relation to campaigning against blood sports in the animal protection movement. The political opportunities structures concept helps explain why a political reform organisation such as the League Against Cruel Sports has framed their opposition to hunting in very precise and particular ways. This organisation, subscribing to the belief that ‘to achieve success those involved in political action and lobbying must, from the outset, accept the limitations imposed on them by attempting political action’ (Hollands, 1985: 173),[18] focused its attention on the subset of ‘bloodsports’ from within all the diverse concerns open to the animal protection movement in general. Furthermore, it differentiates within this subset, campaigning against deer, fox, mink and hare hunting and hare coursing. The LACS secured political support for limited, highly specific, legislative action to abolish ‘hunting with dogs’ after the 1979 election of the ‘New’ Labour Government (LACS, 1997). However, political opportunities always to the fore, they declared ‘no official policy on angling’ (LACS spokesperson on The Moral Maze, BBC Radio 4, 10: 7: 97) or shooting. As described below in a section devoted to the LACS, this particularistic campaigning, entirely logical within the political opportunities structures concept, focused on ‘rectifiable abuse’ (Benton and Redfearn, 1996: 51) is sometimes regarded by some campaigners as a detraction from the overall ‘rationality’ in the philosophy of animal rights or animal liberation.

The social construction of protest.

Many of the themes discussed thus far will be familiar to social constructionist theorists whose perspectives, as mentioned at the outset, ‘never really caught on in social movement literature’ (Klandermans, 1992: 78). However, the years after Klandermans first pointed out this anomaly in 1986 have seen some work elaboratong a social constructionist approach within the paradigm. Following Spector and Kitsuse (1987, first published in 1973), Klandermans himself has developed his own perspective on the social construction of protest incorporating the concept of ‘multi-organisational fields’. This section briefly looks at some of the main strands of this perspective and other general social constructionist themes which bear particular relevance to the present study. Klandermans (1992) argues that, even before any organisational response to a controversy, public discourse on issues divides opinion within society. People then tend to group together when they share many attitudes and principles about a subject in question. Some groups agree with a certain proposition, others oppose it, and others still remain indifferent. Thus a ‘multi-organisational field’ can eventually arise from the various positions taken. What influences individuals in their adoption of a position is persuasive communication (and presumably non-persuasive communication in the case of the indifferent ‘issue by-standers’). Klandermans, fairly commonsensically, claims that attitudes are influenced and shaped by group leaders, mass and specialized media and by various spokespersons (p. 97).

If sufficient numbers come together from the onset of a given controversy - enough to immediately fulfil a movement’s goals - then there is no need for groups to attempt to reach beyond their initial resources.[19] To date, there has never been any issue in the orbit of animal protectionism which has benefited from sufficient support to very quickly fulfil a particular goal, not even with regard to the early Victorian bans on bullbaiting (which took 35 years of campaigning to abolish - Duffy, 1984: 111), cockfighting and the protection of horses, cattle, sheep and dogs (Hollands, 1985: 168).[20] When, in the multi-organisational field, social movements and their countermovements stand in opposition to each other, and an ‘us-them’ dynamic may develop, becoming another feature of the social construction of protest (Klandermans, 1992: 97). This often results in opposing movements demonising each other as ‘evil incarnate’ (Mansbridge, 1986: 179). In discourse about nonhuman animals, spokespersons might, in fairly soft terms, evoke the frames ‘innocents’ and ‘non-innocents’ to differentiate between nonhuman victims and ‘animal abusers’. The militant animal liberation newsletter, SG, on the other hand, leaves little to the imagination and simply calls anyone involved in the exploitation of nonhuman animals ‘scum’ (Henshaw, 1989).

In a similar vein, the medical historian and antivivisectionist Hans Ruesch, deliberately challenges and attempts to denigrate the status of those who use animals in biomedical research. For example, in his classic scientific antivivisection book Slaughter of the Innocent (again, note the ‘innocent’ frame), Ruesch castigates animal experimenters as ‘monkey head jugglers’ and labelled Claude Bernard ‘the principle apostle of vivisection’, in answer to the Encyclopedia Britannica calling him ‘a genius’ (Ruesch, 1979: 358). Such slurs, as when hunt saboteurs and hunt stewards are called ‘rent-a-mob’, are (slightly childish) tactics in the multi-organisational battles which occur as groups struggle to construct meaning and promote their version of issues and events in the hope that the any ‘sectors of indifference’ will shrink as individuals take up and support one view over others (Klandermans, 1992: 97). Therefore, when social problems are constructed, claims are made and framed in relation to the ‘ownership’ (Gusfield, 1989) of the ‘problem’ or issue in a hierarchy of credibility. Such issues may be fought over by a great variety of different interests:

protest groups or moral crusaders who make demands and complaints; the officials or agencies to whom the complaints are directed; members of the media who publicise and disseminate news about such activities (as well as participate in them); commission of inquiry; legislative bodies and executive or administrative agencies that respond to claims-making constituents...and sometimes, social scientists who contribute to the definition and development of social problems (Spector and Kitsuse, 1987: 79).

A critical social constructionism and social movement research?

Social constructionist perspectives have been attacked for their lack of critical analysis (Hester and Eglin, 1992: 51-2; Rafter, 1992), although some work has attempted to address this question (see Miller and Holstein, 1993). Much of this valid criticism can equally be directed at the majority of social movement theorising (and see Benford and Hunt, 1995). In a chapter on deposits of power, Stan Cohen neatly sums up much of how social constructionist (and social movement) theorists have traditionally described the motivations, aspirations and perspectives of social claims-makers:

(1)the notion of progress is always presented in the sense that things can obviously be better;
(2)organisations which try to implement each new good idea start with (and then generate more of) their own demands;
(3)whatever these demands, we will tell stories (ideologies) to justify and rationalise what we are doing;
(4)these ideologies will justify action in such a way as to give a privileged position to their tellers and to safeguard their interests;
(5)these stories and interests exist and must be located in a particular social structure or political economy (Cohen, 1985: 89, emphasis added).

In point five, Cohen identifies a missing critical component when related to the majority of social constructionist and social movement research, arguing that stories and interests must be conceptualised in relation to structural and political economic constraints. As such, Cohen’s approach is an elaboration of Brand’s (1990), discussed above. As previously mentioned, Miller and Holstein, adopting a similar political viewpoint in a review of social constructionist theory, point out that critical-feminist theorists will conceptualise understandings and orientations as social constructions that take place:

within gendered and/or capitalist social institutions and relationships. Thus, contemporary criticisms [of social constructionist theory] are not organised as outright rejections of the constructionist perspective, but as attempts to relocate social constructionists’ concerns and studies within perspectives that the critics argue are more comprehensive (1993: 14).

Comack (1895) and Carlen (1976) also point to the lack of a structural analysis as a failing in the constructionist paradigm. Comack states that social constructionism or labelling theory ‘lacks any in-depth analysis of broad structural - i.e. political, economic, and class - variables’ (Comack, 1985: 71). Similarly, although in unnecessarily difficult language, Carlen declares that ‘the normative assumptions that the phenomenological dream of ontological pluralism and egalitarianism is, in a capitalist society, socially transcended by a material reality of social inequality and coercion’ (Carlen, 1976: 98).

However, it is not necessary to follow Comack’s hard-line Marxist stance to make the point. For example, it is possible to utilise Pareto’s albeit dated observation in his ‘circle of elites’ theory that concentrations of power in the hands of the few can be seen as an inevitable fact of history and social life. Thus, according to Whitley (1976), power and influence is not evenly distributed throughout society. It revolves around and is mainly distributed between Pareto’s ‘lions and foxes’; that is, it ends up being concentrated in the hands of a relatively few powerful social actors. The work of Worsley (1976) is similarly useful. He maintains that power does not exist ‘in itself’; again, rather it flows between people, and all people have some of it. This initially sounds similar to a Foucauldian conception of power, however Worsley concludes: ‘But some people have overwhelming and decisive power. Power is not randomly distributed, but institutionalised’ (p. 373). Foucault himself rejects many traditional formulations of societal power, such as the tendency of treating of power always as a negative and repressive force, and he argues that power mechanisms can create resistance and struggles - such as social movement activity itself (Plotke, 1995: 116) - bringing about new forms of knowledge (Smart, 1989: 7). But Foucault also acknowledges that power is located in the dominant discourses of the day, and thus he accepted at least in part that the greatest amount of power is concentrated with those who utilise those discourses best: those who are ‘artful’ in their use (Miller, 1993: 165).[21]

Thinking of social movement activity, this immediately raises questions relating to the power in setting agendas; and the power relations within discourse settings. As Ibarra and Kitsuse (1993) point out, ‘settings structure the ways in which claims can be formulated, delivered and conceived’ (p. 49) and, as Marcuse states, ‘the established universe of discourse bears throughout the marks of the specific modes of domination, organisation, and manipulation to which the members of a society are subjected’ (1964: 193). Some of these perspectives will appeal more than others no doubt, but they all lead toward the conclusion, to paraphrase Steven Box’s (1989) Power, Crime and Mystification thesis, that ‘the more powerful one is, the best deal one gets’. Therefore, the above arguments, and Miller and Holstein’s (1993) advocacy of the inclusion of critical theoretical perspectives in social constructionist theorising, further strengthens the argument for the incorporation of those ‘more comprehensive’ critical theories in social movement research. A useful first step is to recognise as a problematic the frequent implications of equality in much social movement theory. The impression often given is that of new social movements, their opponents, and other claims-makers, playing a dialectical role with equal access to important institutions such as the mass media, the law and to government corridors; notions which do not stand up well to empirical scrutiny. Thus, much modern social movement research continues to be framed within a structural consensus view of society.

As with the proposed radical input into social constructionism, a more critical analysis in social movement theory would seek to ask overtly political questions of such views. For example, when Ferree (1992: 44) looks at the rational choice and resource mobilisation theories with regard to their political context, he concludes that theory should explicitly acknowledge that there may be structural constraints on choices, just as there are political contexts within which social movements operate. Therefore, resource mobilisation theorists are quite mistaken if they conceptualise the struggles between social movements and countermovements as contests between equal parties with equal access to the necessary or desired resources needed for successful mobilisation. Similarly, frame alignment theorists should explicitly acknowledge these inequalities when they investigate how social movement strategists identify grievances, devise strategies and formulate demands. These points can be explored by looking at examples from campaigning for nonhuman protection. For example, both Hans Ruesch and Tony Page are prominent scientific anti-vivisectionist critics of modern medical practice and take the line that animal experimentation is misleading and invalid due to species differences. In other words, they claim that nonhuman test results cannot be meaningfully extrapolated to the human being. Their grievances are predicated on frames such as ‘poor science’ and ‘unnecessary suffering’ of both human beings and other animals. These factors represent the starting point of their claims-making about ‘the problem’ of animal experimentation. Their strategy is to expose these arguments, ‘educating’ the public and the polity about their point of view, while ‘alternative methods’ organisations such as FRAME (the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments), the Dr. Hadwen Trust and the Lord Dowding Foundation have sponsored non-animal methods designed to replace existing vivisection practices. Ruesch’s and Page’s demands are that the medical regulatory bodies should take heed of the ‘overwhelming evidence’, as they see it, of the futility of animal experimentation and, therefore, end the cruel and unscientific practice for the sake of human health as much as animal welfare. Over many years, in several scientific antivivisection books, their grievances have been identified; and their strategies and demands have been formulated. However, they claim that for all this time they have never been given the same hearing as the powerful advocates of the vivisectionist’s method whose multinational multimillion pound resources and political influences vastly outweigh theirs (Ruesch, 1979; 1982; Page, 1997).
Vivisection experiments, they claim, are not carried out in dusty laboratories by eager but penniless researchers: on the contrary, experimentation on nonhuman ‘models’ is a huge and profitable industry in its own right with vested interests to protect, largely unrelated to arguments about the validity of testing methods. Furthermore, with his characteristic rudeness, Ruesch argues that anyone can ‘cut animals up’ and therefore perform vivisection experiments, whereas genuine technical competence is required to utilise the far more sophisticated (and more valid) alternative methods such as computer modelling. Consequently, he suggests that the ‘real’ defence of animal experimentation is not based on scientific credibility but on the most basic of financial considerations: ‘to renege the vivisectionist method in medical research would mean putting tens of thousands of honest torturers out of work’ (Ruesch, 1979: 391). Moreover, he complains that the vivisection industry can manufacture positive pro-animal experimentation media coverage with ease with yet another announcement that a ‘cure’ for this or that (usually various forms of cancer, but now frequently AIDS) is ‘just around the corner’: all that is needed is just a little more time and a lot more money. Furthermore, the vivisection industry’s influence extends into the polity and the worldwide regulatory bodies such as the Committee on the Safety of Medicines and the US Food and Drugs Administration, largely following the political and legal fallout from the global thalidomide tragedy.[22]

Anti-bloodsports campaigners have also complained over the years of the lack of ‘a level playing field’ in their attempts to abolish hunting, as a former animal activist from Newport, South Wales told me:

we have won all the arguments about hunting and all the opinion polls show big support for bans on fox and deer hunting and especially hare coursing. And yet the House of Lords go and block legislation on hare coursing that got through the Commons in the nineteen seventies: so much for democracy. Farmers and hunters have a lot of influence in parliament, and never mind what might be right, or what we want, or what the public wants even; they will serve their interests first.

Another activist, this time from North Wales, made similar points about inequalities of resources in relation to the pro-hunting rally in Hyde Park in July 1997, deploring, for example, that the press made much of the huge turnout of foxhunt supporters:

the Daily Telegraph emphasised the supposed significance of the estimated 110,000 people who turned up, but I heard a radio report that said that many landowners gave these people time off to attend the rally, not to mention laying on buses, trains and even a plane to get them there. The rally organisers also said that the rally as a one-off event as far as they were concerned, but you can attend an animal rights event every day of the week if you want to. Any comparisons in numbers are false; all they measure is differences in money, not commitment.

Vegan writer on diet and health, John Robbins (1987, parts 2 & 3 passim), makes the claim that the meat and dairy industries have for years used their political muscle and large advertising budgets to ‘impede the growing medical understanding regarding diet and...disease’ (p. 242). He argues that ‘there are powerful interests today who are profiting from the web of repression about modern farming. It is to their advantage that we [do] not know too much, or be too interested in what goes on in factory farms and slaughterhouses’ (p. 125). In another example, Schleifer (1985) claims that American meat producers were sufficiently influential enough to succeed in changing the wording in a government report on nutrition from the financially damaging recommendation to ‘decrease consumption of meat’ to the more equivocal ‘choose meats, poultry and fish which will reduce saturated fat intake’ (p. 67). At the same time, McDonald’s multinational hamburger chain, one of the major producers of children’s TV commercials, tell children that hamburgers grow in ‘hamburger patches’, while Mayer’s Meats have children in their commercials signing, ‘Oh, I wish I was an Oscar Mayer wiener, for that is what I’d really like to be’ (p. 66; and see Robbins, 1987: 129). Animal advocates compare these multimillion pound advertising campaigns of the animal abuse industries with the limited attempts by animal groups to put their messages over.[23] They also make the point that large corporations will use their huge financial resources to sue organisations and/or individuals who oppose their business interests. Although this back-fired with regard to McDonald’s libel action against two London Greenpeace activists (McLibel Support Campaign, 1997), the trend continued as British Petroleum have recently threatened Greenpeace International with court action.

Social Movements and the Media

Most activists spoken to for this project frequently referred to media coverage as probably the most important influence on the perceived success or otherwise of their campaigns. Furthermore, some of the general structural conflict in the animal protection movement can be traced to how activists constantly attempt to ‘second guess’ what ‘the media’ will make of this or that campaign or tactic; and how mass media coverage impacts on their claims-making and public image. These concerns will be detailed below: for now the paper turns to the general research on social movements and the media that is pertinent to the present study, stressing the need for a critically-informed study of the media.

Goldberg (1991; chap 10) charts the changing relationships between the media and social movements who become involved in what he calls a high-risk ‘media dance’ (p. 226). He says that in the nineteenth century journalistic attention was focused on the coverage of politics, diplomacy, war, crime, and social events. During this period, protests movements were not particularly regarded as ‘news’, so they responded by buying their own printing presses in order to put their messages out before the public. However, what is regarded as ‘news’ changes, the result being that from the early years of the twentieth century the interests of social movements and the media gradually becoming more and more ‘entwined’ (pp. 225-26). Many studies have pointed to the political and cultural ‘power’ of the mass media (e.g. Cohen & Young, 1973; Glasgow Media Group, 1976, 1980; Beharrell & Philo, 1977; McQuail, 1987; Box, 1989). Such studies show that media coverage does not merely happen - rather it is carefully constructed (Aldridge, 1995); it is a socially manufactured product (Glasgow Media Group, 1976, 1980; Hall, et al, 1978; Golding and Elliott, 1979), with a ‘certain natural bias’ towards the status quo and the creation of the appearance of consensus (Briggs, 1961: 366). This ‘natural bias’, according to Garnham (1973), is a ‘continuing reality’ (p. 25). With humorous irony, Hood argues that, in practice, this continuing reality ‘...is the expression of a middle-class consensus politics, which continues that tradition of impartiality on the side of the establishment’ (Hood, 1975: 418).

Gamson, one of the principal investigators the relationship between the media and social movements, acknowledges many of the points above, and notes:

much of what adherents of a movement see, hear, and read is beyond the control of any movement organisation (Gamson, 1992: 71).

Moreover, Zald (1992), acknowledging inequalities in terms of media access, argues that social movement theorists should be wary of the assumption that activists and authorities are simply able to ‘play to the media’. Unlike their predecessors, new social movements cannot provide themselves with adequate alternatives to the modern mass media and so they have no choice but to reach the public and/or the polity via the existing information outlets - but ‘media messages’ are controlled not by social movements, but by the ‘media communication industries’ (Molotch, 1979; Gitlin, 1980) who ‘filter’ the activities of movements (Zald, 1992: 338).[24] Of course, attention has turned to whether the emergence and spread of the World Wide Web and media such as Indymedia provides an adequate alternative to mass media outlets.

Therefore, social movement strategists accept that media discourse is central in framing the issues that come to public attention, and appreciate that the media has become an important site in which ‘various groups, institutions, and ideologies struggle over the definition and construction of social reality’ (Gurevitch and Levy, quoted in Gamson, 1992). Active social movement strategists are well aware, contrary to the implication in much social movement theorising, that equality of access to the media, especially the less regulated press, is a myth. As journalist Will Hutton points out, there is:

the growing conviction that an honest hearing in the press is the exception rather than the rule unless what is being said chimes with the transient preoccupations of editors and proprietors (Hutton, 1996: 9).

It may be added that editorial and proprietorial interests - commercial or otherwise, and not necessarily transient - can also influence who gets a hearing and who does not. Miliband provides a subtle rejoinder to the above and argues that media interests or biases can effect coverage, not only by blocking access, but by dismissing and downgrading what does eventually appear:

The mass media cannot assure complete conservative attunement - nothing can. But they can and do contribute to the fostering of a climate of conformity - not by total suppression of dissent, but by the presentation of news which falls outside the consensus as curious heresies, or even more effectively, by treating them as irrelevant eccentricities which serious people may dismiss as of no consequence (1969: 238).

As Miliband suggests here, the media are neither ‘mass manipulators’ nor ‘giving the public what it wants’ (Cohen & Taylor, 1973). The latter is the media’s favoured image rather than its reality. Their ability to affect the social construction of consensus invests them with a relatively powerful ability to declare who is ‘normal’, who is ‘abnormal’ and ‘deviant’, and those who present problems to the prevailing value system are ‘presented as inhabiting a territory beyond the boundaries of society’ (p. 341).

Hall, et al, (1978: 58; and see Beckett, 1996: 72-73) follow Becker’s concept of a ‘hierarchy of credibility’ and claim that those in powerful or high status societal positions are the most likely to be listened to and given space to expound their views on the media - for contemporary evidence of this one need look no further than those who most regularly feature as newspaper columnists and/or contributors to Radio 4’s ‘intellectual output’: Start the Week, Any Questions, and TV’s Question Time, The Midnight Hour, et al. This argument may be challenged by pointing out that audiences are not ‘dopes’ (cultural or otherwise) and they should not be seen as readily available to be led by the nose by the media. People will seriously question the views that are presented to them, thoroughly interrogating the quality and integrity of the messages they receive; and will ‘read between the lines’. Therefore, if the public take against a particular viewpoint, merely repeating it again and again, mantra-like, will only have the effect of reinforcing their opposition to it.[25] However, to accept this criticism assumes that all, most, or many media consumers are constantly alert to the possibilities that what they hear and see requires a careful and critical evaluation.

Ideally, this would be the case, and as such would resemble what Habermas has called an ‘ideal speech situation’; that is, a situation ‘characterised by equality and reciprocity of participation, is an immanent goal of communication, and makes possible a critique of inequalities of social power which is not simply based on personal value-commitments’ (Dews, 1991, citing Habermas’ The Theory of Communicative Action). However, the sociological research cited above suggests that Habermas’ aspirations neither accurately describes how media products are currently manufactured, nor how they are presently reacted to; and while it is not being argued that media messages necessarily have crude instrumental effects, it is suggested that they act pervasively in the longer term as institutional channels of ‘social knowledge’ because ‘most people, reading the newspaper or watching a TV news broadcast, expect that they will obtain a picture of what significant events are occurring in the world, of ‘what’s happening’’ (Bilton, et al, 1981: 548). Thus, while it may be a valid observation when the majority of people declare that they ‘do not believe everything written in the papers’, some media are believed; and many people seemingly accept the propagated notion that TV and radio coverage in particular is basically neutral, and therefore the question is once again transformed into one of access and control:

There is...a matrix of social power according to which society classes, collective actors and other social categories have the greater chance in shaping and reshaping political reality, and of opening and closing the political agenda. Access to and control over the means of production, the means of organisation and the means of communication are unevenly distributed within the social structure (Offe, 1982: 82).

Given that the mass media is based on a particular set of priorities: stories of drama, conflict, emotion, human interest (Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988); and that there is little or no influence over how the media uses the information it receives (Molotch, 1979; Gitlin, 1980) ~ along with the question of access and control just discussed ~ Rochon’s (1990) investigation of the ‘cost’ social movements pay for media attention should be examined. For example, looking at the peace movement, Rochon puts its failure to mobilise the full compliment of its potential support down to ‘the way it was portrayed in the mass media’ (p. 108). Therefore, movements’ protests may be covered, but with no real elaboration of their substantive arguments:

Demonstrations are described as large or small, well-behaved or unruly, a cross-section of the populace or composed of fringe elements. But the issues that brought the protestors together are presented in terms of one-line slogans, if at all...Size, novelty, and militancy are the chief elements of newsworthiness (p. 108).[26]

Again, Rochon stresses that the media’s ‘exacting criteria’ becomes the chief determinant of coverage (p. 108). Media coverage, predicated as we have seen on variables such as size, novelty and militancy, helps to explain why events such as the presentation of petitions are generally not regarded as newsworthy unless they are large, or connected with some other, more media-attracting, aspect, such as being presented by a celebrity. For example, the ‘farm animal’ welfare group, Compassion in World Farming, have attempted to satisfy some of the demands of the media by having their parliamentary petitions delivered by such luminaries as Joanna Lumley and the late Spike Milligan.

The tactical dilemma facing campaign group strategists who wish to present their view to the public via the mass media is intriguing. As noted, Rochon claims that the presentation of petitions and legal, peaceful, demonstrations are not particularly interesting to the media, yet a 5-nation study of ‘unconventional political action’ by Barnes et al (1979) found that the circulation of petitions and legal demonstrations were the very activities which achieved the most public approval (85% and 67% respectively). This compares to product boycotts (37%) and rent strikes, occupying buildings, blocking traffic, unofficial strikes, painting slogans, personal violence and damaging property which all achieved approval ratings below 20% (Barnes, et al, 1979: 544-46). These data, although somewhat dated, suggest that the activities that the mass media find most newsworthy are those with the least public support, while those forms of actions most favoured by the public are those least likely to interest the media. Gaining mass media attention is fraught with problems and risks, as the sexist exploits of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the activities of Fathers for Justice suggest.

Social movement organisations in general attempt to gain some measure of control in their media relationships by appointing or employing staff to specifically deal with the media (Eyerman and Jamison, 1991). Eyerman and Jamison claim that this influx of professional skills is made necessary by the needs and interests - the ‘cognitive praxis’ - of social movements (p. 100), who must reach out and communicate with a large and ‘faceless’ mass via the media and through the skills of their ‘movement communicator’ (p. 101). However, the animal protection movement tend to resolve these needs, not by employing professionals, but by appointing people who are committed to the animal rights philosophy and then subsequently training them in the skills they require. For example, staff working for the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection have at times been required to be at least vegetarian and preferably vegan while on the organisation’s premises, and to be opposed to all animal experiments (one of their 1980s campaign slogans).

The media and the British animal protection movement

Over the years, in the field of animal campaigning, activists and advocates have been labelled in the mass media as everything from ‘animal lovers’ and ‘animal freedom fighters’ to ‘animal nutters’ and (increasingly) ‘animal terrorists’. Coverage of ‘animal issues’ often has a dismissive air about it. Campaigners may be portrayed as slightly dotty and strange, perhaps caring more about nonhuman animals than human beings - eccentric characters who bang on about animals in a world full of human suffering. Animal advocates have expressed concern about how media coverage has affected their public image and thus their all-important aspiration to educate people about animal exploitation (Groves, 1995). Their general impressions appear to be based on beliefs that media coverage continues to fluctuate from positive to negative and, as Gamson (1992) points out, in ways that are wholly out of their control, despite employing or appointing press officers and spokespersons to deal with the media.

A small number of grassroots activists in this study spoke of their frustration with the common tactical separation of the various concerns of the overall ‘animal rights’ campaign into its ‘component parts’, the latter being a notion they were critical of. Some advocate that, even when specific campaigns are focused on a particular single issue or about, say, a particular establishment, they should nevertheless be framed and presented to the media within the explication of the overall philosophy of animal liberation, based on frames (often found in book titles) such as ‘the extended circle’ of compassion and/or animal rights; and beliefs that animal activism is intrinsically connected to global human concerns such as ‘Third World’ starvation and environmentalism (Gold, 1988). An activist from the South of England said:

We make a big mistake by splitting issues up. Vivisection, factory farming, bloodsports, fur trade are all the same thing: animal exploitation. We make a big mistake not to approach all of these as one thing. It means that people can go on the [media] and take part in a programme about one of these issues, but they can go on there and appear as animal rights campaigners against all animal exploitation.

It was those interviewees with direct experience of the media, usually as spokespersons for a particular local or national group or campaign, who appeared to have the most cynical view of Goldberg’s ‘media dance’. For example, talking about the difficulty in presenting the general animal liberation message on typical TV shows, a former local animal group representative said:

I mainly got on those regional ‘Kilroy-type’ programmes which are usually debating one particular issue, such as banning hunting or the rights and wrongs of battery farming. You end up sat among a group of farmers and hunters and you know for a fact that you will get one chance - two if you’re lucky - to say your piece. However much you might want to, its no good doing a Peter Singer [philosopher author of Animal Liberation] and trying to give a full-blown lecture on the philosophical niceties of animal rights in general. For a start, you never have the time and you would get cut off by the presenter or shouted down by the hunters. Instead you are forced to deliver your virtually pre-prepared sound bite on the particular subject of the show.

It is also those animal activists who have had direct experience of organising campaigns who place their connections with the mass media in the context of Offe’s matrix of power relationships in which they feel like ‘small fry’ in the struggle to win and influence media coverage. For example, some activists believe their campaigns have suffered due to the closeness of their local media to the very interests they are fighting against, such as commercial animal agriculture.

An organiser for the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) in North Wales until 1991 claims that his local papers were never much interesting in the sabs’ side of the hunting debate. He says that the Welsh group eventually gave up on the media, leaving the task of liaison with the press ~ if it happened at all ~ to the bigger city groups in England. His local rural papers, he still believes almost ten years later, are ‘in the pockets of farmers’ and no matter what information the sabs supplied them with in the past, ‘they wrote what they wanted anyway’. This informant spoke of a time in 1988 when the Welsh group took two full minibuses (about 30 people) to join with the Manchester and Liverpool HSA groups’ attempt to ‘sab’ the Sir Watkin William Wynns Hunt in the Cheshire borders. If a hunt cannot be located at their ‘meet’, when hunters congregate before starting the actual pursuit (and when the stereotypical handing around of the stirrup cup takes place), it can be extremely difficult to subsequently detect them even though the general area of hunting on any particular day is known to the saboteurs. On this particular occasion, none of the three groups found the hunt at any time during the hunting day (11am to dusk). Nevertheless, local radio stations reported that evening that hunt saboteurs had been involved in ‘violent clashes’ with the hunt and the police. This informant claims this case illustrates that ‘animal abusers’ can effectively plant stories in the media to discredit their opponents.

More generally, respondents said that they remember a good deal of what was widely regarded in the movement as ‘positive media coverage’ in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This was a period of intense interest in the burgeoning new animal liberation movement; a key event being the showing of Victor Schonfeld’s powerful documentary The Animals Film in the first week of Channel 4 broadcasting (Beardsworth & Keil, 1992). A London-based campaigner, an activist in those early years, told me how media coverage changed over time:

One of the biggest demos I first went on was at Life Science Research in Essex. The place got smashed up and some animals were liberated - and this was a daytime demo. The press coverage was really brilliant. The tabloids were really good too: ‘Animal Freedom Fighters’ on the front pages, that kind of thing. Mind you, one of the stories - Daily Star I think - was next to a picture of Suzi Quatro’s bum, the ‘rear of the year’ apparently! Within two years, when the NALL and SEALL [Northern and South Eastern Animal Liberation Leagues] were doing the same things, we had become ‘nutters’, ‘vandals’ and ‘animal terrorists’. And, of course, when the [Animal Liberation Front] started concentrating on damage instead of rescuing, these names stuck.

A former activist for the Essex Hunt Saboteurs, locates a shift in animal rights media coverage from mainly ‘positive’ to ‘negative’ in the mid-1980s:

We once took reporters to do the Essex [Hunt]. A woman reporter and a photographer who only looked about fourteen, shaking like a leaf. Anyway, the hunt thought they were sabs and abused them accordingly. The two-page spread they did was wonderful - we photocopied it and handed it around to the hunt, including the Master. After that they were far less violent towards us. Later on, it was hard to get good press coverage, except maybe Boxing Day when the League [Against Cruel Sports] did their once-a-year demo. And then it was often as not the ‘sabs roll marbles under horses’ type stuff.

An activist in the Manchester area, reflecting on the perceived increase in negative press coverage, sees ‘bad press’ as an important factor in the conflicts that arose between the various national animal organisations:

Avoiding bad press is very difficult sometimes - and whoever said that any press is good press was wrong. The animal liberation campaign was at its strongest when it appeared to be unified. The ‘moderate’ groups would be happy to find boxes of documents on their doorsteps which came from illegal raids and, in the most part, they didn’t slag off the raiders. Things went sour once the press started calling us ‘terrorists’ - let’s face it, it’s a hell of a label for moderate groups to be linked with. And so some national groups also started calling us terrorists. I suppose with hindsight it was a tactical thing for them: you know [Animal Aid] had their membership to think of and the LACS had to keep the MPs happy.

As related above, some activists claim that ‘animal abuse interests’ are able to adversely affect the media coverage of the animal movement (for a North American view on this, see Guither 1998; Regan 2004). Some also advance the opinion that their poor media image has been the result of a concerted campaign b