Animal Rights “Activists” or “Terrorists”?

Posted on October 10, 2010

The BBC does generally try hard to be balanced – but their leanings often leak through onto the screen regardless, due the the impossibility of any human truly leaving their bias at the door. There’s a great example in the media at the moment, reporting the jailing of five members of the odious group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).

Nicole Vosper, Sarah Whitehead, Thomas Harris, Nicola Tapping and Jason Mullan have been sentenced to up to six years in jail for a sustained international campaign against people and businesses involved in animal testing at Huntingdon Life Sciences. They attacked houses, destroyed property, posted blood and semen purporting to be infected with HIV to people and sent hoax bombs to their offices and homes. This is par for the course as far as SHAC are concerned – they’ve been ruining people’s lives for several years now.

I can think of a good word to describe them: terrorists. They sought to force people to change their way of life by inspiring terror.

Strangely, the BBC doesn’t use that term – they are “animal rights activists”. If an Islamist or White Supremacist group did this they would rightly be given their proper name – not “religious activists” or “racial activists”. So why do SHAC not get the same treatment – does terror in the name of fluffy bunnies get you off the hook?


Categories: Opinion

10 Responses

  1. Nic:

    I think if a member of a white supremacist group, or islamist tortured and abused people on a daily basis then someone would have something to say about it. You say fluffy bunny with sarcasm, like it is an irrelevant object. Do you know anything about rabbits, or any animal for that matter? They are all sentient beings like us (look up sentient) and it is common knowledge that experiments on animals do not give us accurate results in the fight for disease in humans. I do not condone what those 6 did to people, but when you have people like you who continually trivialising the pain animals go through in the name of research, is it any wonder extreme measures have to be sort. Their terror is over, it isn’t over for the ‘fluffy bunnies’.

    26.10.2010 11:01 Reply

    • Cody:


      Far from being “common knowledge”, this is antiscientific propaganda which anybody with the most rudimentary semblance of common sense and medical knowledge can see right through.

      If people like “Nic” had their way, people with diabetes, AIDs, cancer ET AL would be left to die and suffer in order to spare the lives of lab rats and fruit flies.

      22.01.2011 18:10 Reply

  2. Michael St George:

    Mark, I enjoy CBW, and visit it most days,, but if you genuinely think the BBC “does generally try hard to be balanced”, I’m afraid you just haven’t been paying attention. The BBC has a visceral and atavistic leftist-liberal default setting, which shines through the vast majority of its current affairs coverage, especially (and most egregiously) on subjects like the US, the EU, and climate change.

    The Beeb hardly ever refers to Islamist terrorists as “terrorists” – it’s almost always “militants” or “activists”. The same goes for most terror groups that espouse views of which the BBC either approves outright or which it does not find particulary uncongenial.

    And please remember that many people will find the sentences handed out to the SHAC terrorists on the lenient side for what they did – only one got six years (you can guarantee she’ll be out inside two), and one even got a suspended sentence with community service for Heaven’s sake.

    26.10.2010 11:06 Reply

    • Thomas:

      “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.” …

      01.11.2010 00:04 Reply

  3. Nick:

    These people are a complete disgrace. Anyone who would harm, torment and threaten a fellow human for the sake of another species needs some serious psychiatric help. Their sheer passion and the extremes they take it to shows a serious mental imbalance, and deserves to be treated as such. SHAC members should be sectioned under the Mental Health Act

    26.10.2010 16:50 Reply

  4. Cristina Mcdougal:

    I agree with everything you just said Nic..

    26.10.2010 17:32 Reply

  5. Luca Valerio:

    I too agree with Nic. The sarcastic tone used in this pointless article serves no useful purpose. Trivialising animal cruelty is just the sort of thing that drives people to such extreme measures, whether it’s right or not. SHAC took extreme measures and are an absolute disgrace, but I don’t understand where the issue with the BBC comes into this. The articles on SHAC do mention terror.

    28.10.2010 09:17 Reply

    • Cody:


      Oh, please. This is apologism of the most pathetic sort. Animal Rights terrorists resort to violence because they are sollipistic extremists who make the active decision to attack other human beings to push forward a nonissue, not because of articles that are too sarcastic for your tastes.

      22.01.2011 18:17 Reply

  6. Vegan Animal Activist:

    ACTIVIST, they are doing this because no one else is doing anything.
    They never hurted anybody, now those who they are fighting against are animal nazis.

    13.05.2011 11:33 Reply

  7. meathead:

    SHAC are a pretty unique type of terrorists; ones that haven’t actually killed anyone. Maybe Al Qaeda should adopt their tactics? Don’t take the piss mate, there is intimidation and there is terrorism; they are clearly very distinct and to describe intimidation as terrorism is just a bit ridiculous really. Seeing as AR people have a proven track record of mouthing off about violence and then sticking to property destruction only a fool would live in fear of anything other than their car getting a new paint job.

    11.07.2011 08:47 Reply

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