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The Mistake of Single Issue Militancy and the Need for a Deep Radicalism Instead

2/20/2022

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In February 2022, in the lead-up to his 50th veganniversary, Ronnie Lee (who became vegan in Spring 1972) and Wenda Shehata released a video that looked into some of the history of the vegan and animal protection social movements. Amongst a whole range of issues, Ronnie and Wenda looked at the issue of movement take-off, an interest of sociologists like myself who look at social movement theory, and the concepts of “militancy” and “radicalism.”

Ronnie and Wenda’s discussion can be viewed on the Forward to Animal Liberation Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/110009078121280/videos/470017964600001


Ronnie identifies what he now sees as grave mistake of the modern animal protection movement: the failure to see the potential and thus bring into being widespread grassroots-led vegan education. Remarkably, almost unbelievably, the vegan social movement was not engaged in vegan education until the beginning of the 21st century. In Ronnie’s view, this was at least 25 years too late and, had this move occurred earlier in the history of the movement, the mobilisation for animal liberation would be further advanced now than it is presently. I agree with Ronnie's analysis, as would Gary Francione, who has been an advocate of vegan education as the major MO of the animal movement since the 1990s.

Ronnie notes that when direct action arose in Britain - starting with the Hunt Saboteurs in the 1960s, the Animal Liberation Front in the 1970s, followed by the liberation leagues and SHAC in the 1980s and 1990s, several national groups were already campaigning on single issues such as vivisection, hunting, and intensive (factory) animal farming. With an influx of younger people into the movement, there began a shake-up of these “conservative with a small c” organisations. Some responded to the demands of the younger generation, or were taken over by them. One major change was that largely inactive groups that traditionally merely asked members to send them donations and write to their member of parliament became campaign and protest groups which were staffed by vegans. The vegans who were part of a large increase in veganism Ronnie observed in the 1970s. In addition to the transformation of existing groups, new campaigning groups such as Compassion In World Farming (1967), Animal Aid (1977), PeTA (1980), and Vegetarians International Voice for Animals (VIVA! - 1994) were formed. Ronnie says that, although the animal protection movement was changing, it’s conservative welfarist base remained: “To some extent, it carried on being welfarist but, like, militant welfarist shall we say.” The movement also remained dominated by national groups that keep a fairly firm grip of its financial resources. Indeed, as can be seen, the number of such organisations grew at this time. 

In relation to events such as "World Day for Laboratory Animals" (initially organised by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection or The National Anti-Vivisection Society), which are attended by about 700-800 people in the modern day, these marches attracted 10,000-20,000 in the 1980s, both Ronnie and Wenda remember. Similarly, tens of thousands of people would attend “save the seals” and “save the whales” events in those years. For Ronnie, the fault line in the movement was revealed by the fact that, although “there were vegans in these organisations campaigning on all these different issues, nobody was campaigning for veganism.”

I think this is one of the strangest things for 21st century vegans to try to grapple with. A social movement that had significant and growing numbers of vegans within, nevertheless largely ignoring veganism in terms of its campaigning focus. How does that make sense? In the US, for example, although PeTA began as an animal rights group in 1980, by the early 1990s, its “president” Ingrid Newkirk took up the fight for animal welfare and for “the regulation of atrocities” against animal rights philosopher Tom Regan, and animal rights lawyer Gary Francione who were, respectively, advocating for rights-based animal rights, and veganism as the movement’s moral baseline. In 1993, the Vegan Outreach organisation was founded but, by 2005, its founders were regretting having the word “vegan” in its title. In 2011, co-founder Matt Ball, complained that “vegan” meant reduced donations: “Foundations and rich non-vegans give to groups with similar philosophies and approaches, but they won’t give to “vegan” outreach.” Ronnie’s summary of such times amounts to this: “In some ways the movement became more radical, but in many ways it stayed just the same.”

However, Ronnie adds: “Probably ‘militant' is more accurate than ‘radical' because militant describes a form of action, [whereas] radical is more about philosophy.” Radical means getting to the root of the problem and clearly, until very recently, and often due to the movement’s corporate nature and the number of wages they thought they must finance, prime movers in the animal movement were absolutely resistant to making veganism the moral baseline of the movement. They often put about the idea that veganism was “a scare word.” Ironically, it was a scare word for them - they thought their incomes would drop if they used it, so they favoured words such “veg,” “veggie,” and even “veg*n” instead - however, it turns out it isn’t much of a scare word from the general public’s point of view, or for the manufacturers of plant-based foods and products. It appears that even the national groups in the movement are no longer petrified of the dread 'V' word. For example, VIVA! (Vegetarians International Voice for Animals) now declares itself, “The Vegan Charity." 

The status of The Vegan Society has always remained something of a puzzle in this story. Ronnie and Wenda noted that it wasn’t seen as a campaigning organisation - it wasn’t (and isn’t) an “on the street” group like Animal Aid, for example. I doubt that most of the large influx of vegans in the 1970s onwards ever bothered to join The Vegan Society. I have never been a member despite being vegan since 1979. I also doubt that their membership has risen massively even in the wave of vegan popularity currently being seen. As far as I can tell, the only engagement modern-day vegans have with The Vegan Society occurs when they quote (and often misquote) the official definition of veganism.


The Two Garys.

At least as far back as the publication of his 1996 book, Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement, Gary Francione has argued that the promotion of veganism should be the central plank of the activities of the animal advocacy movement. History will likely remember him as very influential in moving the animal movement (finally) to adopt veganism as its moral baseline. However, he will still argue that the movement has failed to do that and, instead, promotes veganism as merely one option that will reduce animal suffering among other things like reducing the consumption of animal bodies and their secretions, and taking part in things like “Meatless Mondays.” For him, as for many vegans, being vegan is a moral imperative if one adopts the philosophies of veganism and animal rights. Francione will also say that there is no animal rights movement in reality, just an animal welfare movement bearing its name. He may point out that, for example, national groups like Mercy for Animals and Animal Equality spend millions of dollars per annum on animal welfare “cage-free” campaigning instead of vegan campaigns (see the Open Philanthropy Project grant database). Gary Francione has left the movement but is still active in what he calls a “counter-movement” known as Animal Rights: The Abolitionist Approach.


Many people relatively new to the vegan movement will tell you with a straight face that Gary Yourofsky started the vegan movement and has created more vegans than every other vegan activist combined. That may or may not be amusing to Ronnie, since Yourofsky was two years old when Ronnie became a vegan activist (he was 9 years old when I became vegan). Although veganism wasn’t promoted to the public in those early years, it certainly got around the activist communities, which is why Ronnie claims that there was a big increase in the numbers of vegans in the 1970s. By the 1980s, I’d say the majority of animal “militants” were vegan (although some will have been vegetarian for sure). Yourofsky’s first impact was the launch of his website in 1996 but that ended up in a financial disaster forcing him to resign. PeTA stepped in and offered him a paid job as their "national lecturer," and so the college lecture tours he became famous for began. By 2010, he had given the same talk hundreds of times so he was good at it. His talk at Georgia Technical College in the Summer of 2010 was filmed and was subsequently heavily promoted within the animal movement. 

A year later, in 2011, I was part of the Animal Rights Zone team that asked Gary Yourofsky whether he was prepared to retract talk of his extreme violence fantasies, part of which involves regularly wishing for humans to be viciously sexually assaulted until they were disabled for life. Yourofsky replied in something of a rant, saying he “adores” his violence essays, while defending his drugs use, and attacking “animal rights people:” Yourofsky has said that he hates humans, apparently including himself. “Most animal rights people LOVE their families and worship humankind,” he said. By this token alone, and despite repeated claims in the modern movement that he has made more vegans than anyone else, ever, Gary Yourofsky clearly does not understand vegan philosophy very well. While he hates humans, and calls us all “parasites,” the pioneers of the vegan social movement remained optimistic about humanity believing that the widespread adoption of a vegan mindset would mark their moral evolution, leading to a less-violent humanity. Social movements are, after all, made up of human beings. Yourofsky has since bailed out of the vegan movement and “retired,” leaving the other animals to their fate after a mere 21 year’s involvement.

Of the "two Garys," I'm sure that movement historians will regard Francione's as the much more significant contribution.



How We Got to Where We Are!

Social movement theorists often talk about movement cycles, waves, and stages. In terms of the latter, social movements may emerge, grow, professionalise, and die (they may die because they’ve done their job, by the way!) It can be a rocky road for social movements, and there are certainly likely to be highs and lows in their journeys. In Bill Moyer’s social movement action plan, there are eight movement stages including “take-off” which, as the name suggests, can be dramatic and, for some, an overnight phenomenon. The stage before “take-off” will intrigue those who know the history of the vegan social movement, since it is called “ripening conditions,” echoing something Donald Watson wrote in November 1944 in the very first Vegan Society newsletter. Moyer’s theory dates to 1987. He writes: 


“The ’take-off’ of a new social movement requires preconditions that build up over many years. These condition include broad historical developments, a growing discontented population of victims and allies, and a budding autonomous grassroots opposition, all of which encourage discontent with the present conditions, raise expectations that they can change, and provide the means to do it.”

Of course, not all of that “fits” exactly with any actual social movement, not least the vegan movement, but the broad outline seems pretty solid. It further appears evident to me that the preconditions that Moyer speaks of, related to the present-day vegan movement, rely on the fault line Ronnie Lee identifies having being rectified. In other words, the recent growth of the vegan movement has depended on the groundwork for decades before but, in particular, the widespread, if delayed, establishment of veganism as the moral baseline of the animal advocacy movement. From all of this, we should not get the idea that the present surge in the movement is a product of the recent “influencers” in the movement, including Yourofsky, but owes its origins to the late 1960s onwards. Rather than creating the present “vegan wave,” those who came into the movement in the last 10 years are riding the wave that “built up over many years.” Ironically, as suggested above, some of the main conservative resisters of the move to establish veganism as the movement’s moral baseline, those in the national groups, have finally (by and large) abandoned their “veg,” “veggie,” and “veg*n” claims-making in favour of talking directly and openly about veganism. 

It would not make any sense to the current generation of vegan activists to talk about anything else other than the need for veganism. Wenda and Ronnie reiterate that had the rather obvious fact of the vegan movement focusing on veganism as its campaign been much earlier, then things would be better for other animals than they are now. The movement “missed a trick,” says Ronnie, “of tackling the oppression of other animals at the most fundamental level;” while Wenda says that, sadly, we must regard what actually happened within the vegan movement as a tactical and philosophical “oversight."

Technology.

The advance of technology has undoubtedly been part of the story of the advance of veganism. Before the internet, for example, much of the movement’s literature was 4-time-a-year magazines or the more regular zines, often simply photocopied. The Cranky Vegan - Jake Conroy - notes that, for many modern-day vegan advocates, if it’s not on an high quality video, it may as well not exist. One example of that is an old VHS recording from 1988 of a Tom Regan’s speech at an anti-vivisection rally in North America (see https://youtu.be/oruKMOR7krw). At the time, the video was regarded as the “best animal rights speech ever given,” but its quality is admittedly poor. At the same time, the speech is incredibly rousing and can make the audience really feel that they are attending the rally. As a consequence of its low quality, the speech is not well known in the animal movement, and I do not think because it should be regarded as totally out of date.


Perhaps the advent of smart phone technology, resulting in thousands of high-quality video now available, hinders recent members of the movement from researching the movement’s history, to the extent that they are interested in doing so. Consequently, I have noticed that many recent activists unfortunately hold a rather distorted view of the vegan movement’s development and some really do believe that it began in the 1990s!


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VIDEO: Vegans: Activists?, Just Plant Eaters?, Just "For the Animals?"

7/30/2019

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It was a great pleasure for me to recently rejoin Aaron Yarmel for another conversation about veganism, the definition/meaning of veganism, and animal activism.

​This video was a three way with Ronnie Lee, famously the best known of the co-founders of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in the 1970s and long-time spokesperson for the ALF, and long-time animal liberation prisoner.

This is Aaron's description of the event on YouTube:

In this interview with Roger Yates and Ronnie Lee, we explore these questions and more: What is veganism? Is it a diet, a set of philosophical commitments, a commitment to activism, or something else? Is Paul Bashir correct that veganism is, and has always been, *only* about animals? What can we learn from the founders of the vegan movement, and what misconceptions do modern activists have about the history of veganism? What does it mean to be an activist, and what do different definitions mean for differently abled activists? Do activists expose themselves to too much trauma? How can activists do a better job reaching ordinary people who are new to veganism? What do real Animal Liberation Front activists think about the portrayal of the ALF in the movie, Okja?

Here's the video and (below) the individual vlogs Ronnie and I made with Aaron.

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A Smart Backlash Requires an Even Smarter Response

1/31/2018

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Social movement theorists may talk about “movement cycles,” “peaks and troughs,” and movement “ups and downs.”
 
We might sum up all of that with the phrase, “what goes around comes around.” The recent relatively intense mass media coverage of veganism of late made me think about this, especially in the light of historical events in the 1980s and 1990s.
 
As a long term vegan interested in social movement theory, I’m interested when I see patterns repeating themselves. It is quite possible that, currently, we are seeing the beginnings of a repeat cycle. If we are, then we need to learn how to improve our claims-making in the light of negative characterisations of vegan animal advocacy.
 
The 1980s saw a huge peak in animal advocacy and interest in the “animal issue.” British groups like Animal Aid, founded in 1977, were young and energetic and, in North America, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA) emerged in 1980 as a brash, fresh, champion of other animals. This was a time when the whole notion of animal rights – meaning the moral rights of other sentient beings – was taken more seriously than it is today and often articulated as rights-based animal rights. PeTA was a radical grassroots group in the early years before it became the toxic racist, sexist, and ableist welfare corporation that it is now. Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights was fresh off the presses and things were really buzzing. At one point in England, a journalist (who was ideologically opposed to animal advocacy) estimated that the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) were carrying out around six actions per night. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection had been recently radicalised and that meant that lots of grassroots campaigners throughout Britain could get access to campaigning funds and materials.

 
Every new generation of social movement participants is tempted to try to reinvent the wheel and, as Jake Conroy notes in the recent video about activism in the 1990s, recent 21st century claims about the “first ever open rescue” in the USA, and the “largest animal rights march ever,” ignore the history of the animal movement. In the latter case of claims about a march in Israel, a 1990 “March for Animals” in Washington attracted a crowd estimated to be between 25,000 (lowest estimate) and 70,000 people. The organisers claimed 55,000, many more than the recent Israeli march.
 
I was a press officer at the time when mass media coverage of animal advocacy changed in the 1980s. It became darker! Just as we were getting used to being called things like “animal freedom fighters,” and “rescuers,” we probably weren’t quite prepared for the “terrorist turn” in mass media claims-making about animal activists. The increase in negative press wasn’t helped by the fact that the Animal Liberation Front literally ran out of safe homes for liberated other animals. This led to an increase in the incidence of what in those days was called “economic sabotage.” Other factors, such as a Mars Bar poisoning hoax, and the development of incendiary devices based on firelighters, which the press invariably called “fire bombs,” added to the burden of those doing media interviews.
 
Given this history, then, it seems to me to be a smart move by embattled 21st century animal farmers, and the animal user industries in general, to attempt to re-establish a link between animal advocacy and terrorism. I want modern-day advocates to be better prepared for a backlash than we were.
 
The animal user industries surely wish to ride on the wave of the current moral panic about terrorism. For example, some farmers have recently claimed to have received “death threats” from “militant vegans.” I notice reports on social media that farmers have been asked to verify these threats and have failed to do so. There will be dirty tricks, to be sure, if this is the beginning of something of a user industry backlash.

 
After all, as an example, Mr. Alan Newberry-Street, the Director of the “British Hunting Exhibition” – a mobile bloodsports display supported by the British Field Sports Society and the Masters of Fox Hounds Association, was jailed in the past for planting a nail bomb under his own vehicle in a bid to discredit the animal movement. At his trial he asked for other similar offences to be taken into consideration (TIC’d, a legal device to clear police books).
 
If this move to re-establish a link between vegans and violence is smart, then our reaction to it has to be equally smart, and preferably smarter. For example, we’ve recently witnessed on national radio the hyping up of the “angry vegan” stereotype. Playing up to that stereotype, as happened sadly, is naïve and counterproductive. Any explanation as to why vegans may be angry would be best done in a calm manner! Also, be warned - just as in the 1980s, when some British national animal groups joined in with calling activists “terrorists,” 21st century advocates need to seriously guard against this happening again. Indeed, there is some evidence that this has already begun. Grassroots campaigners need to know that the paid staff in the movement will, generally speaking, not defend them if it appears that negative labels have been successfully attached to their activities by the mass media in particular, however justified and merited such activities appear to be in the activists’ eyes.

 
For my own part, and returning to Tom Regan and, of course, rights-based animal rights, I appeal to the crop of new vegan spokespersons to 1). diversify – there are too many male voices and 2). read some rights-based philosophy in order to better tackle the characterisation of the vegan cause as welfare based, and better able to deal with appeals to “we have the best welfare standards in world,” which all representatives of users industries say, wherever in the world they happen to be located. Welfare standards are not relevant to the rights-based case for animal rights. Rights violations are not cleaned up by the regulation of atrocities.
 
A good place to start familiarising oneself with rights based animal rights would be this short video by Tom Regan.

 

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Crying Freedom

7/1/2016

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Have you ever seen the film, The Emotional Life of Farm Animals? If not, just follow the link! The film is a bit twee in places but worthy of a viewing for sure. I saw it several years ago in Dublin, along with about 25 other people. There was a lively discussion afterwards - about the meaning of “free range,” vegetarianism, and veganism - and whether or not it would be ethical to eat eggs laid by rescued hens living at an animal sanctuary. Such topics still get discussed on social media to this day of course.

One scene in the film brought back strong memories of my time in Liverpool in the 1980s. This was a time when my kids were young, when I was involved in all sorts of activism - and involved in what might best be described as “this and that.” The film shows a cow who had escaped from a slaughterhouse and who ended up at an animal sanctuary. What was remarkable about the animals in the film was the difference in an individual’s demeanour as they were filmed arriving somewhere shortly after being saved from some dreadful ordeal. They would look deflated, somewhat defeated, and generally down and depressed, and yet, when we see them six months later, when they have slowly come to understand that not every human in the world is going to try to exploit and abuse them, they appear altogether different.

Cows, for example, on feedlots and other places of exploitation, as seen in the film, are in the main huddled, crowded, perhaps jumpy, and pretty obviously scared. Once at a sanctuary, after extended periods of careful attention to their needs and desires, they seem calm, peaceful, and serene - and for the first time in their lives they appear to be confident in themselves. It is quite a transformation and a wonder to see.


The film threw me back in two senses. First, I had witnessed the sight of other animals experiencing their first hours of relative freedom and non-exploitation. During the time when I was the Northern spokesperson for the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Groups, I met with activists who took me, hooded, to one of their “safe houses” somewhere in Merseyside, therefore in a manner in which I did not know where I was.

I was led into a basement which itself led out into a walled garden. I was present when newly rescued rabbits arrived after being “stolen” from a farm that supplied the fur and vivisection businesses (after all, rabbit persons are items of property, don’tcha know?) They were removed from the boxes in which they were liberated and placed on the grass in the garden. This was the very first time in their entire lives that they had contact with the ground – the actual earth - until then, they had “lived” in wire cages suspended in the air.

When they were placed on the ground, these small animals pressed their bellies down and then, as they grew more confident, reached out with their arms, their paws expanding and contracting as they felt and experienced the earth beneath them. It is no exaggeration to say that this was a magical moment which I will never forget. In the eyes of these baby rabbits was a look that can only be described as pure joy.

Returning to the scene in the film of the cow escaping from the abattoir, this reminded me of a time when a pregnant cow broke free from a slaughterhouse in Berkenhead, Merseyside, England, and became something of a celebrity in that weird way that they do. Many members of speciesist societies, and especially the tabloid press, seem to revel in stories of “brave food animals” who escape slaughter. A tacky British tabloid newspaper made much of the story over a few days and then, we learnt, proposed to sell the cow back to the very farmer who had initially taken her to the house of slaughter.

At this point, the Freshfield Animal Rescue Centre contacted the paper and demanded to be given “legal custody” of the cow, and this arrangement was eventually agreed to (well, as you know, cow persons are also items of property).

I was living in Dungeon Lane, Speke, Liverpool, at the time and a few animal activists were renting three connected cottages for next to nothing near what is now John Lennon International Airport. We made one of the cottages into stables for the cow and she and her child lived there after the newspaper gave her up. What reminded me of the Liverpool experience in the film was, once again, the transformation in an animal who knew nothing but that of being bullied and exploited to one who comes to realise that some humans mean her no harm.


A Vision of No Harm.
 
John Bryant’s 1982 book, Fettered Kingdoms, made a big impression on me in my third year as an ethical vegan, and I remember being particularly struck by the author’s vision of other animals, such as foxes and deers, perhaps joining humans for a few steps on a pleasant walk in the countryside, before they would go on their separate ways. They would voluntarily join us on a brief walk because they had lost their fear of the previously aggressive and violent apes who they used to encounter, and now see us vegans as posing no deliberate threat to them…


…how cool and wonderful would that be?

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On the Moral Baseline of Our Movement

9/20/2015

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In this ARZone podcast interview, the one-and-only Ronnie Lee outlines his involvement in a new public education initiative, EVE (Encouraging Vegan Education). EVE is a grassroots mobilisation concentrated on forging change on a cultural level. As Ronnie explains, if "ordinary people" continue to exploit and use other animals in the ways that they do, and if they continue to hold the speciesist attitudes towards them that they currently hold, then little will change. If such people do not change, things for other animals remain the same.

As mentioned in the interview, Ronnie Lee will always be remembered within the animal advocacy movement as the co-founder in the 1970s of the direct action phenomenon, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). However, Ronnie suggests that the ALF could only ever have hoped to play a small role in the liberation of other animals from human tyranny due to the cell-structure of the “organisation,” which tended to keep things small-scale, and – were the ALF to have become a mass movement as he (and I) once thought it would – the state would have crushed it just has they have recently cracked down on the activities and activists of SHAC.

Apart from what Ronnie said about the ALF and its role, what he said about veganism being the moral baseline of the animal rights movement caught my attention, and it is those remarks that are the basis of this blog entry. 

In the show notes, Ronnie is described as speaking about “the long history of veganism within the animal protection movement.” When Ronnie talks about “the long history of veganism within the animal protection movement,” he’s referring to the fact that, even from the 1970s, at least in Britain, there was a steady increase in members of the animal movement becoming dietary vegans as individuals, although few of them “campaigned for veganism,” and fewer still in any consistent sense, or in a sense that veganism was at that time integral to campaigning or campaign claims.

It seems to me, then, it is wrong to suggest that veganism had been established as the movement’s moral baseline earlier than it has been, although I think the 1970s and 1980s can be said to have marked the time of its initial inception. It needed a determined effort to “push” veganism centre stage, as it were and, as Ronnie states very clearly in his interview, it certainly wasn’t central in those days.

Before we try to locate when this baseline position for veganism emerged, and the extent to which it has been established within the animal movement, what exactly does it mean to say that “veganism is the moral baseline”? There seems to be some dispute or confusion as to what we should regard this phrase to mean within a social movement context, so this is my attempt to articulate its meaning.

A fairly standard definition of the word “baseline” indicates that it is, “an imaginary line or standard” and “standard of value.” The word is synonymous with words such as “criterion” and “touchstone.” It seems to me that we can take “veganism as the moral baseline in the animal rights movement” to mean the value placed on veganism as an integral part of what standing for animal rights means (it is hard to stand for someone while deliberately exploiting them) and, in terms of movement claims-making, appeals to the philosophy of veganism would be central in all that is done and claimed for and about other animals.

In my presentation at the International Animal Rights Conference in Luxembourg in September 2012, I suggested that we might think that it is within the rights-based section of the animal movement that the moral baseline idea for veganism makes the most sense. That is to say, if one believes that other animals are rightholders, and that what humans do to them routinely and systematically are rights violations, then being vegan yourself, and integrating the advocacy of the philosophy of veganism into one’s campaigning activities, seems logical and necessary - and precisely because it would seem odd and contradictory to stand for the rights of those one is violating.

So, leaving that last point rather hanging, when was veganism established as the moral baseline of the animal (rights) movement - and why does it matter?

Credit where it is due, I have always accepted and acknowledged the crucial role law professor Gary Francione has played in bringing about the concentration of veganism in the animal movement. I think that grassroots campaigners, without vegetarian and flesh-consuming subscribers to consider as financial supporters, and with no reliance on any politician who may think of vegans as "crazies," have taken to the vegan moral baseline in its fullest sense. Moreover, if veganism can be said to have been developing to any extent as the moral baseline “before Francione,” then it would have been in the grassroots part of the movement - and the grassroots of most social movements have traditionally been regarded as that movement’s backbone and heartbeat.

However, I would claim that Francione, more than most, worked to bring veganism to be seen as an integral part, and an integral logic, of the animal advocacy movement from the 1990s onwards. He has been critical of the “vegetarian first,” and “vegetarianism as the gateway to veganism” arguments, while fully accepting that people may not be able to “turn vegan” overnight or "all at once." There is a lot of acceptance of inevitable incrementalism within Francione’s position on human relations with other sentient beings which is often ignored or downplayed.

The substantive “push” towards establishing veganism as the moral baseline began in the 1990s - in the sense of being absolutely integral to campaigning and to claims-making – and that indicates why it is important to acknowledge its recent origins and not attempt to do what Ronnie and Ms. Bailey did in Ronnie’s podcast: imply that philosophical veganism has been central within the animal movement for much longer than it has been. Ronnie is perfectly correct to suggest that many and probably most of those early campaigners he rubbed shoulders with were vegans as individuals - but he’s also right to acknowledge that they did not campaign for veganism in the senses that we see it campaigned for now. This means, I suggest, that veganism was not the moral baseline back then – far from it: that move, that flowering, that flourishing, has been in very recent years.

The idea is so new that the amount of references to veganism on Facebook alone makes it easy to forget how new it is. Moreover, even now, not all sections of the animal advocacy movement embrace the idea, or are ever likely to, not even all in the grassroots movement; and certainly not in the national corporations who continue to have good business reasons to fudge the issue with use of terms like “veg,” “veggie,” and “veg*n.” Thankfully, the latter term, which I have always hated, seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years.

As late as 1996, Gary Francione, the person I am suggesting was instrumental in establishing veganism as the movement’s moral baseline, was still self-identifying as a vegetarian, and there is no mention of veganism in his 2000 book, Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or The Dog? Q&As taken from the book are still featured on Francione’s web site and mention vegetarianism rather than veganism. 

THAT’S HOW NEW AND RECENT THIS “VEGANISM AS THE MORAL BASELINE” IDEA IS!

By 1996, many campaigners Ronnie knew – and many campaigners people like Kim Stallwood, myself, and my sister Lynne knew – were self-identifying vegans, and had been so for 10, 15, or 20 years – but that fact does not mean that veganism was regarded as the movement's moral baseline in the 1970s or 1980s. Those early campaigners were within a movement that did not campaign for veganism, and did not include veganism within its routine claims-making until many years later.

If I am right about this, we could and should recognise the newness of veganism being our moral baseline, central to everything we do, and we should take heart that this incredibly new thing has really taken off in the last few years. Now, we are in the position to much more reliably test out how the idea of veganism “plays” within the public imagination. We need to keep going with our new idea and, as Ronnie Lee says, continue to encourage vegan education. We do not need, for whatever reason, to imagine that veganism was the moral baseline of the movement for longer than it actually has been. Moreover, the recent trend to slide away from veganism as some so-called "strategists" in the vegetarian movement suggest, should be rigorously resisted.

LISTEN TO THE RONNIE LEE PODCAST HERE.

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    Roger Yates

    Dr. Roger Yates is a rights advocate and sociologist

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