Two
legs good, four legs equal?
This
article was written by Penny
Wark and was published in the Times Newspaper on 7 May 2002.
It is 180 years since
the first animal welfare law. Now we are promised a Bill of Rights for pets.
Penny Wark traces the history of our changing attitudes, while Roger Scruton
remains sceptical.
You might think that
those who campaign on behalf of animals would welcome the Government's attempts
to enhance their protection with a Bill of Rights for animals.
This is not quite true,
however. While campaigners approve of the principle, they are also inclined
to be cynical: this is just politics at work, they say. They have seen it all
before. Those who have studied the 200 years in which numerous human beings
have chivvied and philosophised and even planted bombs to improve the lot of
animals are aware that legislation does not always lead to improvement. It is
widely believed that the Government has banned the testing of cosmetics on animals,
for example; in fact, it has merely pledged not to renew licences for this procedure.
Similarly, there is still no law to prevent live calves from being exported.
So campaigners suspect
that the legislation being promoted by the Environment Minister Elliot Morley
- to guarantee pets a minimum quality of life - will again protect the status
quo of the economy by failing to outlaw factory-farming procedures and vivisection.
"We need a cultural
revolution in the way that we relate to animals, and Morley's exercise is not
about that," says Andrew Tyler, the director of Animal Aid. "It's
putting a sheen on the status quo, but doesn't get to the core."
What cannot be disputed
is that during the past 30 years the animal rights movement has been impossible
to ignore. Broad-based, pragmatic and well organised, it is no longer seen as
the preserve of the batty, the well-meaning or the terrorist. Almost 6 per cent
- and probably much more - of the UK population no longer eats meat; militant
activists are a tiny minority of those who support animal welfare.
So how has the animal
rights movement achieved such mainstream approval? The answers lie not in a
sentimental attachment to animals but in social and political history, and in
our relationships with each other.
In the late 18th and
early 19th centuries the rise of organised political discussion led to debate
- in political, religious and philosophical circles - on the protection of those
unable to speak for themselves. The first legislation to protect animals from
cruelty was passed in 1822; the SPCA (later the RSPCA) was founded two years
later to improve "moral temper and consequently social happiness".
As the century progressed,
concern for animals was associated with the formation of the classes; by acting
benevolently towards animals, the middle classes dissociated themselves from
the rabble, and from the uncaring upper class. But it was not until after the
Second World War that the movement gathered wide momentum. Hilda Kean, the author
of Animal Rights (Reaktion Books, Pounds 9.95) associates its rise with increasing
politicisation and the collapse of orthodox and fixed ways of thinking. Where
people had once been concerned merely about stopping cruelty to animals, now
- understanding that human beings were capable of destroying the world - they
were intent on preserving it and living together in peace.
"In the 1970s you
had the founding of women's liberation and gay rights, you had the anti-nuclear
movement, environmental concerns. People were looking at the world in political
terms rather than just through the prism of class," she says. "You'd
had the student uprising in 1968 and people were asking 'What sort of future
do we want for our children?' Campaigning around animals isn't always about
animals, it's often about cultural and political ideas."
She cites the effective
campaign against the vivisection laboratory run by Huntingdon Life Sciences
in which shareholders have been targeted: "It is not dissimilar to the
dynamic behind anti-globalisation protests. Animal rights are part of a concern
about much broader issues."
There was also a moral
debate. In 1964, Ruth Harrison's book Animal Machines catalogued the suffering
inflicted on animals by industrialised agriculture.
Nine years later, the
philosopher Professor Peter Singer, now at Princeton University, introduced
the notion of "speciesism" in his seminal book, Animal Liberation.
Speciesists regard human beings as more valuable than members of other species,
a form of prejudice akin to racism. Singer argued that animals' interests are
equal to those of human beings and raised moral objections to the way in which
they are caged and killed for people to eat them. A moral act, he believes,
is one that satisfies the most interests, and that includes the interests of
animals.
Clearly his arguments
gave moral justification to many people concerned about animals' rights. "Before
the student protests in the 1960s, the animal rights movement was very conservative,
focused on man beats dog rather than the systematic cruelties of factory farming
or animal research," he says. "People weren't aware of it, and there
was a general view that animals didn't matter, that humans were more worthy.
"Then students
woke up to various forms of oppression, and for many people it seemed that animals
were the most exploited and powerless beings around. It was also an issue that
could be addressed in various ways, by doing something about the way we live,
what we eat. A lot of people started to think that there was more to life than
how much they earned. People were more inclined to look at ethical issues. It
became a matter of conscience.
"You need a certain
amount of economic security before you can be concerned about how you treat
animals, and that affluence did exist."
This is why the animal
rights movement is concentrated in Europe, the United States and Australia,
rather than in countries that still have a poor record on human rights. It is
also significant that the past 30 years has been a time of change in human relationships.
The old order in which relationships lasted for life has been replaced by one
in which relationships are often transitory, giving people the time and emotional
energy to invest in causes outside their own homes. This view is too close to
sentiment for Singer's taste, but the notion that the animal rights movement
is linked to our tendency to invest more thought in all our relationships is
gaining currency.
"There has been
a breakdown in the sense of belonging, and that forces people to think in an
autonomous way about their relationships with each other," says Andrew
Tyler of Animal Aid. "We didn't hold up Peter Singer's book and go into
battle. Moral perception is part of a practical movement that is to do with
how we live our lives and make our purchases."
While Singer does not
support militant action, it is no coincidence that as he was writing his treatise
about the commercial exploitation of animals, the extreme animal rights movement
was emerging. In 1972 the Band of Mercy was formed as an expansion of the hunt
saboteurs movement; in 1976 it became the Animal Liberation Front, which has
no card-carrying members but is used as a banner under which numerous criminal,
and terrorist, acts have been carried out in the name of enhancing the lot of
animals.
"Direct action
happened because people looked back at history and realised that only people
who had gone outside the law - in campaigning for the abolition of slavery,
and the suffragettes - had made a difference," says Robin Webb, the ALF's
spokesman. "They also saw that the law had failed time and time again."
In America two Harvard
professors are now campaigning for the progressive extension of legal rights
to animals, starting with primates. The British bill will not go this far.
"The law still
sees animals as property, which means that they are expendable objects,"
says Tyler. "We need legislation that will challenge extreme abuses. People
with consciences recognise that it's wrong to rape and pillage and make war,
but what isn't recognised is that society rewards the exploitation of animals.
To take a pig, fatten it in a pen, put it in a truck, take it to the slaughterhouse,
hang it by the back leg and cut its throat is primitive and grotesque.
"It's a profound
emotional and cultural disfigurement to do this, to pretend it doesn't go on,
and to pretend we have healthy relationships with each other. We can't have
a healthy human culture until we make peace with the
animal world."
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