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Will The Real Dr Simon Festing Please Stand Up!

Dr Simon Festing

On a good day, you probably wouldn't even notice the somewhat unremarkable new Research Defense Society (RDS) director. Yet he obviously has something of an inflated ego, judging from his behaviour when he agreed to appear on a recent broadcast of BBC Newsnight programme. He insisted he would only appear if he was given a 'Green Room' to himself prior to the live discussion as he didn't want to come into contact with a spokesperson from SPEAK - a campaign that operates within a legal framework.

Mark Matfield

A prima donna might be excused such eccentricity or arrogance, but Festing hardly qualifies for this title in its true sense. But a self-styled prima donna he most certainly appears to be, and one might imagine his background could have had a hand in developing his delusions of grandeur. But hold on a minute - maybe his swift climb up the pro-vivisection ladder is attributable more to nepotism than to his being head-hunted because of his eminent suitability for the post of Director of RDS recently vacated by Mark Matfield. Did 'Daddy' put in a good word for little Festing junior?

For those unaware of Festing's family background, Dr. Michael Festing is a consultant for Harlan UK (a part of Harlan Sprague Dawley Inc.), which has boasted that it supplies more animals to research than any other commercial animal vendor in the world. He is a member of - or holds financial interests in - PPL Therapeutics; GlaxoSmithKline; Oxford Glycoscience; Acambio; Powerject Pharmaceuticals; Alizyne; Cambridge Antibody; Shire Pharmaceuticals; and Celltech and further, is one of five Trustees who control the British Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experiments (FRAME), a front group for the animal model industry. He is also a member of the ILAR Council. The Institute for Laboratory Animal Research (ILAR) is the animal model lobbying arm of the U.S. National Research Council, a part of the National Academies of Science.

So not much unbiased parental influence on little Simon there then... But dig a little deeper into Simon Festing's life, and some more intriguing information comes to light.

Simon says...

It may surprise many to learn that in the mid 90s, Simon Festing was at the heart of what became known as "The Battle Of Newbury", in which anti-road protestors and environmental campaigners became locked in a bitter struggle with the Government and road building companies. What might surprise people even more is the fact that far from being on the side of the establishment as one might have expected from his recent appointment at RDS, Festing junior was a prominent figure among those opposing the construction companies, the police and the Government. And let's not forget that the opposition's tactics took varied forms, a significant proportion of which were direct actions, some of which were considered highly illegal.

We are of course not suggesting for one moment that Simon Festing was involved in any illegal activity, however being on the ground during this most bitter of struggles, he would have been at the very least aware that illegal activity was going on around him! But read on and make up your own minds about the new RDS director.

The story begins in early 1996. On January 10th, the Daily Mail ran the headline: "Rag-tag wreckers", detailing events at "the siege of Abbots Farm" in which a group of protestors confined 400 security guards in their camp using tripods. Richard Benyon (presumably the same Richard Benyon who once stood as the Conservative candidate for Newbury), described the protestors as "louts" - one might have expected the new RDS director to have concurred with such sentiments - but truth is stranger than fiction! Instead, Simon Festing - the then transport spokesperson for Friends of the Earth - was quoted as saying that the day's events had been "very successful". Presumably, then, he would have been delighted to read in the Daily Mail article that the cost of policing the protests against the bypass had been estimated at £35,000 a week...

The following day, the Times newspaper quoted him in an article entitled "Ragtag army devises its tactics in the pub" which described strategy meetings taking place "in the cramped town centre office of Friends of the Earth." One must assume that given his key FOE role, Dr Festing would have been present. He discussed the tactics and strategies of the campaign he was helping to organise and said: "We have many different cells which work on our own style of tactic. At the moment our main strategy is to take the fight to them as much as possible, as you saw at the coach firm this morning." (Strong words from a man who condemns milder methods used by animal rights campaigners conducting a legal campaign today. The use of the word "cell" is also interesting, given its terrorist connotations).

Misunderstanding, an isolated incident, words taken out of context or wrongly attributed to Dr Festing? Maybe. Or maybe not...

On the 12th January, Simon was reported by the Guardian to have said: "We have been confrontational, but not violent. Most of the injuries have been accidents from people slipping". (Pull the other one!). He went on to say that he was "expecting the battle to become fiercer in the weeks to come" adding that: " things have got to change. We are working on the strategy of being more pro-active". It would appear that Festing's environmental campaign rhetoric sounds decidedly as though he believed he was fighting a war...

The icing on the cake is a Guardian report the following day in which the roads minister John Watts was quoted as saying: "the protestors were a bunch of anarchists and that the police should intervene", presumably including Dr Festing in his remarks? An anarchist as director of the RDS - whatever next? Those "reds under the bed" get everywhere!

The next time Dr Festing appears in the newspapers is in the Times on the 23rd January, 10 days in which to calm down and one would have thought, time for an intelligent man to take stock of the situation and perhaps evaluate their own role and assess tactics used. The title of the Times article was "Bypass protestors accused of cutting brake pipe". The article details how "protesters against the Newbury bypass were accused of using increasingly sinister tactics yesterday, after a brake pipe was apparently cut on a coach carrying security guards". The article goes onto describe how "protesters have urinated on guards, embedded nails in trees and spiked trees with metal wires, said the Highways Agency".

One would have imagined that this would have provided Dr Festing with an ample get-out clause to distance himself from such actions by condemning behaviour that might endanger peoples lives but instead he continued to use the language of the militant.

So there you have it in black and white.

Will the real Dr. Simon Festing please stand up! But which one is it? Is it the man who just 8 years ago was at the forefront of one of the most bitterly contested environmental campaigns of recent years? Or is it the man who now represents all that is supposedly respectable in society? What does the employment by the RDS of a man with this kind of track record say about them? What should we make of his two conflicting faces?

How - given his track record - can he occupy this prominent position, while animal rights campaigners running a legal campaign to prevent the building of a new animal research laboratory by a world renowned university - end up having injunctions taken out against them in order to silence them from telling the truth?

In 7 months, not a single incident of harassment or intimidation has taken place against anyone connected to the university, yet in the interest of protecting their staff, the university has abused the judicial system to restrict the legal activities of the organisation, simply because it has been too effective at exposing the Government and the University's lies.

This is reputedly the most democratic legal system in the world, put in place to protect the individual, yet it has proved unable to withstand the interests of Government and big business. As democracy continues to be eroded, the media sit back and let it happen. The public listen and sit back and let it happen. The Simon Festings of this world get promoted to positions of trust within the pro-vivisection lobby despite having been at the forefront of a bitter environmental campaign just 8 years previously, while animal rights campaigners who eschew violence are labelled terrorist, have their right to freedom of speech curtailed, have their movements restricted. It's a case of one rule for them, and one rule for the rest of us.

So maybe the title shouldn't be 'Will The Real Dr. Simon Festing Please Stand Up'. Instead it should read, Will The Real Dr. Simon Festing Please Sit down & The Real Movers & Shakers Stand Up!!

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