Running Scared: Public meeting a great success

Despite the best efforts of Oxford University staff to undermine the public meeting on 4th November, it proved to be an unbridled success. Over 100 residents and students attended the meeting to hear the facts about SPEAK's campaign to prevent Oxford University's vivisection expansion programme as well as the scientific arguments against vivisection.

It was heartening to see the wide cross-section of Oxford residents who turned up to hear the different arguments both for and against the new lab. Despite an invitation by SPEAK, offering the University hierarchy the opportunity to argue their side, predictably the University declined, without even giving us the courtesy of a response. Instead we learnt of their decision via Central News 15 minutes before the meeting began.

Oxford University have always been keen on using the media at both a local and national level as a conduit for their lies but they have never been interested in using a public forum, where they may face the prospect of having to answer awkward questions. SPEAK and the animal rights movement have no such fears. We have both the moral argument and scientific evidence to back up our convictions. After Oxford University's failure to attend Thursday night's public meeting one is led to wonder about the strength of their convictions. Do they fear that their outmoded scientific practices will be discredited? Do they fear that their project will be exposed for being driven purely by the prospect of financial gain? Or is their academic arrogance so extreme that they believe themselves above all this?

It is in the spirit of free speech that SPEAK offered the University the chance to put their case. Oxford University's frequent avowals that they are in favour of free speech and expression themselves, however, seem to have been rather undermined by their pursuit of gaining an injunction against peaceful campaigners. Represented by their solicitor Timothy Lawson Cruttenden, they most recently dragged campaigners through the courts in an attempt to stifle their legal right to protest; coupled with the constant lies being peddled by the University and with some media assistance to paint them as somehow whiter than white, their failure to turn up to the public meeting has fooled no one. Oxford University have existed in isolation for so long they no longer feel that they have to justify themselves to the people of Oxford.

Fortunately, that's where SPEAK comes in. The University can rest assured that despite their efforts to silence us through the courts, we will continue to highlight their every lie, we will remember every animal killed in a scientific fraudulent practice, and we will counter every attempt to stifle peoples' civil liberties.

SPEAK would like to thank Andrew Tyler and Andre Menache from Animal Aid and Sue Baumgardt from the Green Party for attending the meeting. They spoke with great passion and gave compelling arguments against vivisection. A special thanks also to all our supporters who braved the cold and driving rain to deliver thousands of leaflets advertising the public meeting; and finally, thanks to all those who attended the meeting and for the enthusiastic response from Oxford students and residents. Many more people have signed up to the campaign, reinforcing our belief that together we can and will win. The University already know they have lost the argument. Very soon they will realise they have lost the battle.