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Dec./Jan.'05 Articles: 4 More Years of Fighting 3rd Party Demise Silver Linings The Balloon Pops The Muddlemarch: 1 The Muddlemarch: 2 Banned in the UK! Quickies
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"God save the Queen
Oh God save history
When there's no future
Anyone who follows the animal rights movement in England knows that the direct action element has become increasingly powerful. By abandoning often futile efforts to influence animal exploiters by appealing to a government they decisively influence, and by taking the fight directly to the animal exploiters themselves, groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), SPEAK (originally named Stop Primate Experiments at Cambridge), and Save the Newchurch Guinea Pigs (SNGP) have developed highly effective campaigns against all facets of the vivisection industry.
The "Terrorist Training Camp"
In the summer of 2004, SHAC was organizing the International Animal Rights Conference 2004. Along with veterans of the English animal liberation movement such as Ronnie Lee, founder of the ALF, SHAC invited key U.S. proponents of direct action—former ALF warrior Rod Coronado, trauma surgeon Dr. Jerry Vlasak, LA activist Pam Ferdin, and yours truly. In the international media, the conference was ludicrously dubbed a "terrorist training camp"; in fact, it was a forum whereby activists from numerous countries shared videotapes and experiences and held workshops on the history and philosophy of the animal rights movement in England and elsewhere.
Pen Pals with David
Dear Professor Best:
The Secretary of State for the Home Department has been made aware that you intend to visit the United Kingdom to attend the International Animal Rights Conference 2004 between 3 and 6 September 2004.
The Secretary of State is aware that you are an academic involved in the animal rights campaign. He has taken note of an article written by you entitled "You Don't Support the ALF Because Why?" In that article you are quoted as confirming your support for the Animal Liberation Front and that you support the destruction of industrial properties engaged in the animal research field. You have said that you do not consider property destruction as violence but even if it is, violence is defensible in certain cases. You have also confirmed your support for the underground direct action tactics of the ALF.
In light of the above, the Secretary of State considers that you provide the intellectual justification for those in the animal rights movement to engage in violent acts in order to further their cause and has indicated that he is minded to exclude you from the United Kingdom on the basis that your presence in this country is not conducive to the public good for reasons of public order.
You are invited to make representations to the Home Secretary on why you should not be excluded. Any representations should be sent directly to this office. These should be submitted to reach this office no later that two weeks from the date of this letter.
Whilst your case is being considered, you should not attempt to enter the United Kingdom.
Yours Sincerely,
On behalf of the Secretary of State
Upon reading the missive—emailed, snail-mailed, and faxed to me—I was stunned. I was possibly being banned from the UK and vilified as an international terrorist for exercising my right to free speech. I was under attack for the crime of compassion toward animals and defending the defenseless. In their hysterical, McCarthyesque mindset, I was deemed a threat to the "public good" and "public order." In case I was snoozing, I was rudely awakened to the reality that I am living in the world of Bush and Blair, a 1984 dystopia of government surveillance and suppression of constitutional rights, a farcical and hypocritical regime that condemns "terrorism" as it kills over 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. The UK government was threatening to annul my right to speak as well the right of their own citizens to hear controversial viewpoints.
Dear Mr. Blunkett and the Home Office:
As a citizen in a leading "democracy" hearing from a government official in another leading "democracy" that I could be banned merely for exercising my rights to free speech, I honestly am shocked beyond belief. My remarks may be controversial, but they are not illegal and do not warrant the harsh action you are contemplating.
I do not deny writing the words you cite; I posted the essay you refer to on my web site for the public, or any government officials such as yourself, to read. I do not disavow my belief in the justice of animal rights or the ALF. I am fully aware of, and completely respect your concerns for public order and the public good, given the intensity of passion of people in England for the animal rights cause. I hope I can persuade you that you have nothing to fear by my presence in your country. Indeed, by diminishing the opportunity for free expression, I fear that you yourselves might injure the public good and public order in England because surely this will inflame the situation there.
I support the ALF, but I do not advocate violence in the sense of causing physical harm to another human being. Because they attack the property of animal exploiters, and never the exploiters themselves, I consider the ALF to be a non-violent organization. Just to be clear, I am not a member of the ALF. I am a philosophy professor who writes about, and often expresses support for, social justice and liberation movements.
It is true that I have provided an "intellectual justification" for the ALF, but then again so does any modern democratic constitution or bill of rights, so did J.S. Mill, Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., along with anyone who promoted concepts such as rights or justice that can be used on behalf of the ALF. Moreover, the ALF and other direct activists hardly need or await my justifications to act, so I don't quite see how my words have inflammatory potential.
I have never incited violence against anyone. I believe that both the US and UK allow their citizens a great deal of latitude in the exercise of free speech, including defending organizations that use property destruction as a tactic to win justice for animals. As long as my speech does not incite others to violence where there is an immediate possibility of such violence, I believe it is arbitrary, unwarranted, and discriminatory to ban me from England. I clearly did not cross this line in the essay you cite, nor have I anywhere else.
In this threatened ban, you are heading down a dangerous slippery slope. Would you also ban Professor Peter Singer, for his defense of euthanasia and infanticide, also illegal acts? Would you ban Professor Tom Regan, another leading US animal rights philosopher and activist who wrote an essay in one of my books entitled "How to Argue for Violence"? Where do you stop after barring me from your country?
I urge England not to make the same mistakes made by my own government. In the dark times of the USA Patriot Act, the Bush administration has gutted the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the name of fighting "terrorism." After 9-11, the US government detained thousands of foreigners as terrorist suspects. Except a precious few, they remain in prison without rights to legal council or a hearing of the charges brought against them. This dragnet netted only one suspected terrorist, by pure luck. Similarly, the provisions introduced under the UK's Anti-Terrorism Crime and Security Act 2001 have done little to make Britain safe from terrorist attack and much to infringe on the civil liberties of those living in the UK.
It is frightening to see England follow the same path of the US in the surveillance of activists and repression of civil liberties in the name of domestic security. The recent involvement of the FBI in Britain's domestic "security" affairs is hardly reassuring, as their specialty in the US has been to suppress democracy and disrupt political organizations.
England has a long and distinguished history of democracy that must not be extinguished. From the Diggers to the suffragettes to the animal liberation movement, struggles in England have advanced democracy, rights, and moral evolution for our species as a whole. Facing a second prison sentence in the Bastille for his satires of the government, Voltaire sought shelter in England in 1726-1729. He subsequently described to the world how much more free, liberal, and advanced England was than his native France. In the 1840s, Karl Marx was expelled from several European countries for advocating free speech, workers' democracy, and, indeed, global revolution, but he found a safe haven in England.
Such examples of the progressive heritage of England could be multiplied many times over. I urge you to grant Dr. Jerry Vlasak, Pamelyn Ferdin, and me safe passage into your country to attend the International Animal Rights Conference 2004. This is a peaceful and entirely legal gathering. It is this ban that you are proposing, not my words, that is "not conducive to the public good."
If you do not respect our right to free speech, or the right of your own people to hear free speech, your words stand a far greater chance than my own of offending the public good by damaging democracy. This will have a chilling effect on free speech far greater than in my own case, for when academics and others learn they may be banished from international travel for exercising their right to free speech, they may well practice self-censorship. You may not like my free speech but it poses no credible threat to you that warrants harsh retaliations such as a ban.
Most Sincerely,
Dr. Steven Best
The Aftermath
Upon considering our appeals, the Home Office banned Jerry and Pamelyn as dangerous agent provocateurs, but curiously granted me free passage into England. I had mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, I was proud to represent the militant face of animal rights in the US and delighted to be among some great activists in the UK. On the other hand, I was somewhat embarrassed for not being militant enough to be considered a threat!
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