Injunction Hearing Update

Today’s proceedings at the High Court in London saw the adjournment of the Injunction hearing until 18th May. Oxford University had sought to increase the terms of the Injunction granted to them in November 2004. In the event, what they got was a temporary order, which lifted some of the restrictions imposed on SPEAK campaigners at an earlier hearing on the 6th March, during which we had not been allowed to defend ourselves. Oxford University, avowedly a bastion of free speech, had asked for the hearing to be convened without us being able to put forward our defence.

Despite the claimant’s best efforts to proceed with the hearing, for which SPEAK had been given very little time to organise any defence (a ploy used by their legal team on previous occasions), the Judge made it clear that he required an adjournment in order to properly familiarise himself with the site and the general lie of the land in Oxford itself, since much of what the University is seeking would exclude from specific areas of the City anyone served with an order.

The University’s efforts to stifle SPEAK’s campaign to stop the construction of their new animal abuse centre have been characterised by misrepresentation not only surrounding the facts about the proposed laboratory, but also of the campaign’s methods and campaigners. The slur on the campaign’s activities and aims has been further augmented by media coverage that has done little if anything to present a balanced view; indeed, journalists across the board – barring a few who have had the courage to paint a broader picture - appear to have become the voice of Oxford University. It rather belittles the idea of a ‘free press’, if all they are willing to do is represent the status quo. Indeed, media coverage of the last two day’s events has been slim at best, favouring rather the new organisation that has offered up itself and its members as the courageous band of merry men who are willing to stand up to us ‘extremists’ and ‘human-hating lunatics’, and in doing so, are risking life and limb! Based on the scarcity of available evidence, one would like to know quite how they risk life and limb, but that evidently is something to which only they have an answer.

It seems that to be a ‘terrorist’ – as we have been described by Oxford University – one has only to voice opposition to an injustice. In addition, contrary to the popular human-hating stamp with which we are branded, we have persistently argued that the campaign is not just about establishing the right of non-human animals to exist without exploitation, but about the rights of humans too. It is because we care about all life - human and non-human - that we are convinced that the practice of trying to replicate human disease in animals is responsible for holding back medical progress; that drugs safely tested on non-human animals kill hundreds of thousands of people a year due to the adverse reaction from drugs.

It is perhaps a vain hope that after today’s adjournment and the new terms of the order are looked at, the press might take note of the fact that an experienced judge has considered the case on its merits, not Oxford University’s merits. The media would do well to look to today’s results and consider there are always two sides to every story. Meanwhile, we can only say what we have always said: it is not in our interest to play foul. Ours is the business of the truthful dissemination of facts, of putting them forward in the public arena so that the public can decide for themselves. SPEAK plans to continue with its campaign in Oxford as long as the University continue with their plans to build another torture centre. Whatever you do to try and stop us, we will fight you, because it’s right.

A copy of the new order that will be in place until the hearing on the 18th May will be posted on the website when it is available to us.