Whatever happened to animal rights activists?

[Memoryhole]

When I was a student, long, long ago, the most common single issue group seemed to be the animal rights activists. I remember demonstrations, releasing animals from farms and labs (often with dreadful consequences on the local wildlife). Threats made against academics and I seem to remember one awful case of a body being dug up as a protest for animal testing.

has all of this gone away now, overtaken by the pro trans groups. Righteous anger now being channeled for different issues?

Of course it’s not gone away. Surely you heard about the Animals Rising activists cleared of burglary recently in Liverpool, for rescuing beagles?

There are loads

To a large degree, they (we?) won.

The laws about animal welfare are much better. Veal crates were banned in the 1990s, battery hen cages were outlawed 14 years ago, most cosmetics aren't tested on animals, and fur farms were banned in 2000.

There's a huge rise in plant based diets, and the laws about transporting live animals on long journeys changed. Fox hunting was banned.

Those are most of the prominent campaigns I remember from my idealistic youth, anyway.

There's a long way to go but the progress that's been made is pretty impressive when you look back.

These days you get a man openly admitting to clubbing a fox to death - an unspeakable act of animal cruelty, but there’s no sign of him getting cancelled any time soon. Strange times we live in.

I was one of these people back in the late eighties/ early nineties although the most criminal thing I ever got involved in was being threated with being arrested in John lewis fur department doing a sit in !
Endless standing on stalls in the city centre in freezing weather handing out anti-vivisection leaflets, marches to big drug companies, hunt sabatoeuring, begging my dad to let me re-home two white rabbits rescued from a vivisection lab ( he said NO ! ). I agree good progress has been made and agree you rarely hear anything these days.

They stopped vivisection on animals and started doing it to kids instead. People care more about animals than children I guess. Sick times. 😕

Looking at some of the Palestine Action interventions, they felt straight out of the animal rights groups - so I suspect they have gone there.

Do furries count?

That utter weirdo with the pink and blue bunches appears to have been doing his level best to singlehandedly kill off the vegan animal rights movement. Their campaigning was mostly women in bondage gear and porny T shirts, which I suppose is why he was hanging round them.

Lots of sabbers in my area. I appreciate that their remit is not as broad.

They are out there but overshadowed by other activists.

I'm not sure this is an adequate explanation, a lot of those laws do not exist in North America, for example, but animal rights groups there also don't seem to be prominent in the way they were.

Veganism is kind of big at the moment but often seems to be less directly focused on animal rights compared to what it was, it seems to be at least partly fuelled by a more general trend to restrictive diets.

I would say there is definitely a significant element of it having fallen out of fashion, rather like the Free Tibet people.

Of course the most fashionable causes for youngsters will not be the ones their parents were involved in. It's protest 101 surely.