Ronnie Lee
Encyclopedia
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
activist. He is known primarily for having founded the Animal Liberation Front
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...
(ALF) in 1976. He also founded the magazine Arkangel
Arkangel (magazine)
Arkangel is a British-based bi-annual animal liberation magazine, first published in the winter of 1989. The magazine, which is sold internationally, covers global aspects of underground and overground animal rights campaigning, and promotes a vegan lifestyle.The magazine was the idea of Ronnie...
in 1989.
Founding the ALF
Lee was a member of the Hunt Saboteurs AssociationHunt Saboteurs Association
The Hunt Saboteurs Association is a worldwide organization using direct action to stop the hunting of animals. HSA activists use a model of leaderless resistance and have been using the same basic tactics since their inception in 1963; the underlying principle being to directly intervene in a...
(HSA) in the 1970s, and formed an offshoot of it, which he called the Band of Mercy. The original Band of Mercy was started by a group of activists in England in 1824 to thwart fox hunting by laying false scents and blowing hunting horns. Lee and another activist, Cliff Goodman, revived the name in 1972, and set about attacking hunters' vehicles. They progressed to attacking pharmaceutical laboratories and seal-hunting
Seal hunting
Seal hunting, or sealing, is the personal or commercial hunting of seals. The hunt is currently practiced in five countries: Canada, where most of the world's seal hunting takes place, Namibia, the Danish region of Greenland, Norway and Russia...
boats, and on November 10, 1973, they set fire to a building in Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes , sometimes abbreviated MK, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, in the south east of England, about north-west of London. It is the administrative centre of the Borough of Milton Keynes...
with the aim of making insurance prohibitive for what they saw as industries that exploit animals, a strategy the ALF continues to pursue.
Bicester
Bicester is a town and civil parish in the Cherwell district of northeastern Oxfordshire in England.This historic market centre is one of the fastest growing towns in Oxfordshire Development has been favoured by its proximity to junction 9 of the M40 motorway linking it to London, Birmingham and...
, which earned them the name the "Bicester Two". Daily demonstrations took place outside the court during their trial, with Lee's local Labour MP, Ivor Clemitson
Ivor Clemitson
Ivor Malcolm Clemitson was a British Labour politician.At the February 1974 general election, Clemitson was elected as Member of Parliament for Luton East. He held his seat at the October 1974 election, but at the 1979 general election, when he lost by 847 votes to the Conservative Graham...
among the demonstrators. They were sentenced to three years in prison, during which Lee went on the movement's first hunger strike
Hunger strike
A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt in others, usually with the objective to achieve a specific goal, such as a policy change. Most hunger strikers will take liquids but not...
to obtain vegan food and clothing. Paroled after 12 months, Lee emerged more militant than before, and organized 30 activists to set up a new liberation campaign. Seeking a campaign named that would "haunt" those who used animals, he chose the Animal Liberation Front.
"Valerie's" story
In Free the Animals (2000), Ingrid NewkirkIngrid Newkirk
Ingrid Newkirk is a British-born animal rights activist and president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , the world's largest animal rights organization...
, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights...
(PETA), tells what purports to be the true story of one of the first ALF activists to set up a cell in the United States, and how she was helped by Lee. The activist, named "Valerie" by Newkirk, flew to London in the early 1980s to seek Lee's help. She made contact with him by making an appointment to interview Kim Stallwood, then the executive director of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection is a British animal protection and advocacy group that campaigns for the abolition of all animal experiments...
(BUAV), and later executive director of PETA. Valerie pretended she was writing an article about animal rights, and asked Stallwood whether he knew how to contact Lee, as she wanted to interview him too. Stallwood told her BUAV allowed Lee's "volunteers" to use an office in the BUAV building, because Lee had just been released from prison. Stallwood made it clear that Lee and the BUAV did not agree on the merits of direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
.
Newkirk describes how Stallwood introduced Valerie to Lee in a nearby pub. Before agreeing to speak to her, Lee asked Valerie to hand over her wallet, the contents of which he checked, take off her jacket, stand up, and lift her shirt over her stomach. When he was satisfied that she was not recording the conversation, he told her he could arrange for her to join an ALF activist training course in the north of England. When they parted, he declined to shake hands with her, because he said he couldn't afford to be seen doing anything that looked as though he was sealing a deal. "What you do is our handshake," he told Valerie. Newkirk describes how the participants in the training course did not know each other's real names, using code names throughout, with Lee being the only person who knew everyone's identity.
Imprisonment
Lee became the ALF's full-time press officer in the 1980s, and was sentenced in connection with this to ten years imprisonment in 1986. While in prison, he founded ArkangelArkangel (magazine)
Arkangel is a British-based bi-annual animal liberation magazine, first published in the winter of 1989. The magazine, which is sold internationally, covers global aspects of underground and overground animal rights campaigning, and promotes a vegan lifestyle.The magazine was the idea of Ronnie...
, the animal liberation magazine. He was released in 1992 after serving six years and eight months.
Beliefs
Lee has written that animal liberation requires widespread, radical changes in the way human beings live.Current activism
Lee is reported to maintain a low profile in England. His participation in the animal liberation movementAnimal liberation movement
The animal-liberation movement, sometimes called the animal-rights movement, animal personhood, or animal-advocacy movement, is a social movement which seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and...
appears limited to making public statements in response to news stories about ALF actions, expressing views that are frequently more militant than those expressed officially by the Animal Liberation Press Office
Animal Liberation Press Office
Animal Liberation Press Offices relay anonymous communiques, photos and videos to the media about direct action undertaken by the Animal Liberation Front , Animal Rights Militia , Animal Liberation Brigade, Justice Department, and other leaderless resistance within the animal liberation movement...
. For example, he issued a statement in 2001 openly condoning an armed assault on an executive of Huntingdon Life Sciences
Huntingdon Life Sciences
Huntingdon Life Sciences is a contract animal-testing company founded in 1952 in England, with facilities in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire; Eye, Suffolk; New Jersey in the U.S., and Japan...
, the subject of an international animal-rights campaign called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty is an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences , Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates...
(SHAC), which ALF activists are believed to be involved in. In 2008 he expressed regret that when active he had sought to the target properties and institutions involved in animal abuse rather than the individuals. He stated that had he had his time again he would now target individuals he perceived as animal abusers, in their own homes as opposed to their places of work. Lee also put in an appearance in disguise in the 2006 documentary about the ALF 'Behind the Mask' where he again expressed radical views about violence towards people he perceived as animal abusers.
In 1996 Lee founded Greyhound action, a group which campaigns to abolish Greyhound racing, under the psudenom Tony Peters.
Vegan advocacy
Ronnie Lee was a guest of Animal Rights Zone (ARZone), appearing as a live guest on the global animal rights social network, which is transcribed on the online site.See also
- Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALFSG)
- Hunt Saboteurs AssociationHunt Saboteurs AssociationThe Hunt Saboteurs Association is a worldwide organization using direct action to stop the hunting of animals. HSA activists use a model of leaderless resistance and have been using the same basic tactics since their inception in 1963; the underlying principle being to directly intervene in a...
(HSA) - Animal testingAnimal testingAnimal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and in vivo testing, is the use of non-human animals in experiments. Worldwide it is estimated that the number of vertebrate animals—from zebrafish to non-human primates—ranges from the tens of millions to more than 100 million...