DEMO REPORT - OXFORD UNIVERSITY VICE CHANCELLOR'S CHAMPAGNE RECEPTION

17th February, 2010

On Wednesday 17^th February 2010, SPEAK Campaign supporters held a demo outside the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace, London SW1 inside which a reception was being held for Oxford University’s new Vice Chancellor, Andrew Hamilton.  Campaigners arrived outside the UK’s national academy of science, the fellowship of which includes prominent vivisectors, late in the afternoon, in order to highlight the fact to Hamilton and his guests that while they were enjoying sipping their champagne over 16,000 innocent, non-consenting beings were imprisoned inside Oxford’s labs, destined to be maimed, tormented and killed in barbaric research projects.

Protesters set up banners and placards, handed out leaflets and made good use of the megaphone in order to ensure that everyone entering the Royal Society was made aware of the awful truth about Oxford’s horrific animal testing regime and the campaigners’ determination to see an end to it.  

Hamilton,  a Professor of Chemistry and himself a Fellow of the Royal Society was installed as the Vice Chancellor on 6^th October 2009, making him the senior officer of the University responsible for providing leadership and direction to the university and on taking up his position was challenged by prominent members of its alumni, including animal behaviourist Desmond Morris, Ann Widdecombe MP, Nobel Prize winning novelist JM Coetzee and former government advisor on animal experiments Prof. Michael Balls in an open letter to make Oxford a ‘progressive institution’ and to ‘lead the way in developing animal-free medical research’. The response from within the university, from the Registrar was typical; arrogant and disingenuous, claiming that Oxford is committed to ‘reducing, refining and replacing’ animals in research, when the numbers are on the increase, and that debate on the subject is welcomed, when it has done everything within its power to stifle free speech, and of course no mention of the ethics of incarceration, exploitation and infliction of severe/substantial suffering on the individual animals was made.

The campaigners made it clear that everyone associated with Oxford who stands by and does nothing is responsible for the exploitation of the animals in its labs and has a responsibility to ensure that it comes to an end. The SPEAK Campaign will continue to hold Oxford University to account and highlight to the world the suffering hidden away behind the locked doors and darkened windows of its labs until the enslavement of animals by this institution is brought to an end, once and for all.