Censorship and the Long Arm of the Law!

These are the images they don't want you to see.

Click on images to enlarge

None of us could be blamed for wondering quite what the Thames Valley Police divide line is between the rational and irrational and how their definition extrapolates to proper law enforcement. Their latest interpretation of the latter, which seems to have no discernible guidelines, suggests that the prevailing opinion about their policing is fairly apt: they are a law unto themselves, or if not unto themselves, then to someone higher up who is a law unto themselves and who is pulling their strings.

Apparently, their most recent infringement on the right to free speech on 14th January wasn’t to be a restricted example, because just when we thought we’d seen enough to prove that this force resorts to underhand and mendacious methods to achieve their ends, they go one step further to show madness in their method.

This crack force doing its duty on behalf of Oxford University and its Blairite bedfellows in government have now seen fit to confiscate leaflets as part of their counter-strategy against SPEAK’s anti-torture lab campaign.

It seems likely that officers were acting on instruction when they approached a stall in Cornmarket in Oxford city centre and seized SPEAK campaign leaflets on the grounds that the images of monkeys with electrodes fitted in their skulls could have been deemed 'offensive'. We, of course, would argue that what is offensive is the very fact that these atrocities are permitted under the sanction of the law; we would argue that what is offensive is the fact that the police defend these acts of brutality and protect their perpetrators and thus uphold their continuation, while alleging that to disseminate the truth about cruelty is itself offensive. In short – one might say a small difference of opinion!

These photographs are readily available for reproduction and have been frequently published by other organisations, including charitable institutions, which apparently have not fallen foul of the law because of this (Yet). They have been used on SPEAK campaigns literature for over two years without causing offence, yet it appears that overnight, human sensibilities have altered so incontrovertibly, that the very sight of these images might cause severe and enduring suffering to onlookers. Or something like that anyway…. Except that of course the only severe and enduring suffering is the suffering endured by non-human animals such as those shown in the SPEAK flyer.

So what’s this all about? A brief survey of experiments conducted on primates at Oxford university reveals that electrodes inserted into monkeys skulls is 'normal' practice in any experiment that will involve trying to register neural activity in the animals brain. That’s a fact. Yet the new guardians of the public’s morals appear to have decided that there’s a little too much fact, and a little too little fiction!

And what do you do when you want a little less fact? Why, it’s easy. You silence the right of those who SPEAK up for the truth. Are we now entering an era of ever increasing state censorship? The evidence is there already as the Government continues to cut a swathe through the laws in this country to restrict free speech, cripple civil rights laws and have them enforced by an indiscriminate heavy-handed police force that has been given too much power.

The widespread criticism of Google’s decision to provide their search engine service to China under that country’s censorship laws, which required that for example, no mention be made of the massacre of Tiananmen Square in 1989, illustrates that where those in power are concerned, the truth is only as real as the status quo are prepared to allow it to be. It does not require a huge leap of imagination to see the long-term implications of the insidious nature of censorship manifesting in this country.

Those observing the political posturing concurrent with the theme and threat from 'extremism' will have seen that this moral panic is being used to attack all forms of protest. What is equally disturbing is the readiness of some police bodies to use this as a cover to act as some kind of political police force, with the power to halt the dissemination of information to the public about issues they have decided they no longer want people to hear about. Evidently, a nod or a wink from on high, and they have a complete carte blanche to do as they will.

And so it is that under such censorships, while acts of animal abuse perpetrated against animals inside Oxford University are not deemed important enough to warrant prosecution, the seizure of public information literature about animal experiments is potentially 'offensive'. Thames Valley Police and others charged with keeping public order would do well to remember that they are public servants, and not censors or a political force acting on behalf of an institution that in the not too distant past was prepared to lie about the part built animal lab on South Parks Rd.

Needless to say, SPEAK are unbowed by such desperate tactics on the part of our enemies, its business as usual, we have no intention of losing this battle and we are confident that it is only a matter of time before the animal rights movement notches up another historic victory.

Disclaimer: The information on this website is for the purpose of legal protest and information only. It should not be used to commit any criminal acts or harassment.