CIVIS Foundation Report 2, Summer 1988 (Part One)

 

 

 

THANKS TO CIVIS AND A BLUNDER BY THOSE WHO RUN ANIMAL AID, THE SCANDAL OF INFILTRATION

WITHIN BRITAIN'S IANIMAL WELFARE' BREAKS AT LONG LAST

 

THE PREMISE

 

For years CIVIS had been revealing the names and deeds of various 'official' animal defenders in Great Britain who, disguised as selfless humanitarians, but following the discreet instructions of the RSPCA, direct the British anti-vivisection 'movement' (a misnomer if there ever was one) along the traditional, no-hope lines, designed to prevent the encroachment of any enlightenment or other disturbances from the outside.

 

As the Church used to do in the Dark Age, when she discouraged the populace from learning to read and write, so the leaders of today's A V societies also see their main task in keeping their members in deep ignorance. In this case, about the practical feasibility and scientific necessity of the abolition of vivisection today, for the benefit of medical science.

 

So, the growing number of medical doctors who share CIVIS' view and principles is being kept carefully concealed from their members by the heads of the A V societies. In fact at the head of the British A V organisations are mostly hangovers from the vivisection laboratories, including such widely applauded 'animal protectors' as Richard Ryder, Judith Hampson, Sheila Silcock, Michael Balls, Gill Langley, Angela Walder, to name but some of the principals.

 

Indeed, a cosy sinecure in some British animal welfare organisation, insuring both financial security and social respectability, seems to be a customary reward in Great Britain for a stint in some animal laboratory.

 

Their efforts as 'anti-vivisectionists' are all concentrated in keeping alive the myth of the Religion-of-Modern-Medicine-With-a-New-Miracle-Every-Hour and requiring animal holocausts, for which costly 'alternatives' must as yet be found - and financed - by antivivisectionists.

 

At present, the fools are in full force, concomitant with the power of the suppressive State and its medical business partners, giving bitter truth to the reflection of Johann Most: 'The more man clings to religion, the more he believes. The more he believes, the less he knows. The less he knows, the more stupid he is, and the more stupid he is, the easier he can be governed. The easier to govern, the better he may be exploited. The more exploited, the poorer he gets (in the case under examination, poorer not only in money but also health wise), and the poorer he gets, the richer and mightier the domineering forces grow. The more riches and power they amass, the heavier their yoke upon the neck of the people.'

 

After this premise, it becomes clear why, when Slaughter of the Innocent first appeared in Great Britain (1979), preceded by the praise of many doctors, the old-established British societies looked the other way, with the exception of the biggest and oldest of the lot, BUAV, which launched several vicious attacks against the book in its journal, ridiculing both its abolitionist stance and the technical descriptions of the torture instruments currently in use in the physiological laboratories. (Dr. Gill Langley was 'Technical Advisor' of BUAV at the time, John Pitt was the editor of the journal who authored the attacks.)

 

This also explains why the old British societies steadfastly passed under total silence the various successes obtained by the book abroad, like the Italian Parliamentary vote to suspend all animal experiments for 3 years, the launching of an initiative for Abolition in Switzerland which gained one third of the voters, the founding of an International League of Doctors Against Vivisection, and more.

 

Not content with silence, a relentless denigratory campaign against the book and its author was orchestrated in England along well-known Swiss guidelines, and carried out by Animal Aid's Gill Langley, whose husband is a high-ranking employee of Ciba-Geigy in London. In the course of these events, something happened that arose the Sleeping Beauty of British anti-vivisectionism and brought it into the limelight of publicity.

 

THE HAPPENING

 

Last December, even while our CIVIS Bulletin Nr. 2 exposing British infiltrators was in the process of being printed in Italy, an incident took place in the office of Animal Aid, near London, the society that we had helped grow to Britain's most active and popular A V organisation in the early 80's. John Bryant, AA's chairman, described the incident in the March issue of Outrage, the AA journal, which had had nothing very exciting to report since October 1979, when Hans Ruesch led the march on Oxford for AA and subsequently addressed the crowd at the University. Hyperbolized John Bryant, inter alias:

 

'Gill Langley, Animal Aid's Scientific Advisor and the Secretary of the Dr. Hadwen Trust, was working quietly and alone in her office when a man burst in and began beating her up until her screams of help brought neighbouring office workers to her aid. Her attacker was overpowered and held until the Police came to take him away. Apparently, he is a fanatical disciple of anti-vivisectionist Hans Ruesch, who somehow, despite all his brilliant exposure of the uselessness and horror of animal experiments, has managed to attract a kind of crazy worship from a bunch of social misfits. These people seem to be attracted by Hans Ruesch's obsession that the British anti-vivisection organisations are run by infiltrators from the drug industry. Such is the bigotry of Ruesch's more extreme followers that anyone in the movement that does not share their worship of their idol, is regarded as at least a traitor and at worst an infiltrator from the vivisection community, intent on smashing the animal rights movement.'

 

The appearance of Bryant's editorial in Outrage of March '88 produced a chain of interesting reactions, which Bryant had clearly not foreseen.

 

While all the other British societies tried to exploit the incident to the hilt, reprinting uncritically John Bryant's 'report' - as did even a Californian society, run by an English woman - a mass of CIVIS faithfuls expressed their outrage at Bryant's ill-advised attempt to blame an act of violence by some obviously deranged young man on Hans Ruesch, who was working quietly in Switzerland during the event, and had never even met the felon who, for all anybody knows, might have been an agent provocateur.

 

Such, at least, was the opinion of one of our London correspondents, Henry Turtle, who found highly suspicious the similarity with which all the British societies commented the event, to discredit Hans Ruesch.

 

This was pointed out by Green Line, a new (to us) British magazine, which dedicated a full page to the incident, under the heading 'Infighting', signed Barry Maycock. Below, parts of it:

 

The assault last December on Gill Langley, Animal Aid's scientific advisor, has been reported in most animal rights magazines, which have all made a point of stressing the connection between *******, the alleged attacker, and the famous author and anti-vivisectionist Hans Ruesch: the outspoken beliefs of the latter, to the effect that Langley and her husband are vivisectionist infiltrators, are said to have inspired the attack. Ruesch is thus pilloried as a fanatic who incites 'disciples' to commit acts of violence. This has now become the accepted view: and points to a desperate need for an independent animal rights magazine which could put forward alternative 'unofficial' ideas about what is going on (a task perhaps for the newly formed Federation?). After all, it is one thing to condemn the attack, quite another to use the incident to discredit Ruesch, who had nothing whatever to do with it...

 

There are wider issues here which have a bearing on the whole nature of the anti- vivisection campaign. Ruesch's Slaughter of the Innocent (and the later Naked Empress) gave a dramatic boost to the abolitionist cause: the author could see that the age-old ethical arguments against vivisection had got nowhere because they have always been countered by a 'superior' ethical position: that in the end we have to face a choice between 'our child or our dog'. Ruesch put the question of 'ethics' to one side, and attacked animal experimentation from a scientific and medical viewpoint, demonstrating in great detail how these experiments are both useless and dangerous: in fact that we could best look after both 'our children and our dogs' by abolishing vivisection altogether, and immediately.

 

His books shook not only the vivisection industry but also the established animal welfare societies, who were exposed as less than committed abolitionists, advocates of slow reform, restrictions on 'useless' experiments, and eventual abolition only in the misty utopian future. The 'reformist' argument - that some experiments have been necessary, and continue to be necessary - provides the opening whereby the whole of the vivisection business can go charging through. Also, Ruesch is scathing about 'alternatives' which end up legitimising research, and which enable vivisectors to lead their opponents down the usual blind alleys. Ruesch's outspoken attacks on the antivivisection establishment, which he thought had become extensively infiltrated by the vivisection industry, created bitter divisions, shock waves whose ripples are still being felt today.

 

What has angered many people about the current controversy is the attempt to blacken Ruesch's name when he has converted so many to the anti-vivisection cause, and inspired countless others. There may be 'fanatics' who are obsessed with infiltration theories, but there are many more campaigners who are genuinely troubled by the attacks on Ruesch, even more by their inexplicable vehemence. Does Ruesch really demand uncritical adulation from 'disciples', as is alleged? It is surely possible to criticise his work constructively while remaining enthusiastic about his contribution to the anti-vivisection cause, which has been immense and incalculable. His books avoid the usual mess of ethical abstractions and woolly generalisations: he deals in specifics, names the vivisectors, the money they earn, the firms they work for since vivisection is above all big business. 'Science' and 'research' do not float around in space; we need to know who exactly is doing this 'science', who is controlling and funding the 'research', and for what purpose.

Those who prefer calm restraint and understatement may be offended by Ruesch, whose books are unashamedly polemical: to respond fully to his books it is necessary to be seized by the same passion - the white-hot and uncompromising rage that will sweep away, and sooner rather than later, the black crime of vivisection.

Barry Maycock

 

(May CIVIS respectfully suggest to Barry Maycock that the 'independent animal rights magazine' that he invokes already exists, at least as far as vivisection is concerned, in the form of the present Foundation Report. Any thought of a 'Federation' entrusted with reducing animal exploitation makes us shudder, considering the various Federations we have known, starting with the World Society for the Protection of Animals, which has kept widening its evil influence since we first described it in Naked Empress.)

 

Particularly interesting was the spate of letters provoked by the incident and Bryant's report of it. So the previously mentioned Mr. Turtle wrote to Gill Langley on May 30, 1988: 'I refer to your Editorial in Alternative News, No.28, Spring 1988. Ironically, in accusing Hans Ruesch of doing great harm to the 'animal rights' movement and in striving to convince your readers that you are not an infiltrator you demonstrate irrefutably that you are one. Infiltrators, being obliged to stick closely to the guide-lines laid down for them, may be spotted not only by what they may say but also, often more importantly, by what they may not say. Your Editorial is a text-book example.'

 

From Barbara Barrett to the BUAV Committee and various other people: (Excerpts from a three-page letter dated March 29, 1988):

 

'Several years ago Hans Ruesch's book Slaughter of the Innocent (American version) was making converts and opening the eyes of the public about the true nature of vivisection. The British version was then reviewed in the BUAV magazine (Animal Welfare, June 1979) by someone (the Editor, John Pitt) who made the astonishing criticism that a 'torture instrument' described in the book was actually 'ingenious and valuable' and devised by 'distinguished surgeons', thereby applauding the inventors and the use of that barbaric instrument, but criticizing Hans Ruesch for condemning them.

 

'Hans Ruesch was generous enough to travel from Switzerland to join the first Oxford march, and whilst addressing the crowd in one of the colleges, he calmly and objectively touched upon the damaging and inaccurate review. At this point a woman started yelling from the hall that he was 'backbiting'. I was informed that this woman was Gill Langley. I found these rude interruptions quite shocking and felt that Hans Ruesch had the right to defend his book, as any slur on it would damage our movement. As I had gone to a great deal of expense and trouble to publicise Slaughter without Hans Ruesch's knowledge, I could see the damage that was being done to my own campaign. My young daughter came close to being beaten up by an Oxford vivisector (psychiatry dept!) when just the two of us distributed these leaflets.

 

'In autumn 1982 Gill Langley reviewed in Animal Aid magazine Hans Ruesch's book Naked Empress stating that it contained many inaccuracies, but offered no proof. I discovered how damaging this review was to our cause when I attended a march and rally armed with leaflets, printed again at my own expense, advertising Naked Empress. My efforts sprung from a genuine desire to get rid of vivisection - Hans Ruesch's books were the best weapons anybody could have. Some people said they had not purchased the book as they understood it was 'full of inaccuracies'. On sending copies to Ireland, I was informed by an anti-vivisectionist that it was not purchased there as it was 'full of inaccuracies and not very well documented'. I am extremely angry that my work, which involves bringing people into such groups as BUAV and Animal Aid is constantly being blocked.

 

'The groundless, damaging criticism of Hans Ruesch's work in anti-vivisection magazines have done more damage to my campaign against vivisection than anything else. Hans Ruesch has assisted anti-vivisection groups by giving lectures and allowing his photographs to be used to campaign against vivisection. Other societies refuse to allow copying of their photographs. Gill Langley was a total stranger to Hans Ruesch when she attempted to belittle him in public and turned people away from his books, and I have never understood her motives....I have observed that when scientists join anti-vivisection groups in an advisory capacity, the groups lose their strength.'

 

Jean and Harry Fawcett used to direct the very active Ipswich branch of Animal Aid when it was unconstitutionally dissolved by the AA Council member, John Bryant, in a way that left no doubt in their minds that the society was heavily infiltrated. This seemed confirmed when suddenly a new Council was imposed on Animal Aid, to the exclusion of any regular election by the members. The new Council was handpicked by Jean Pink, who stood under pressure from Bill Bingham and strongman John Bryant. Jean Pink stopped working for AA after that, and her name figured only as 'Founder of AA' after that incident. Bill Bingham also vanished into thin air, and Bryant took the Chair, in alliance with Langley. (Bingham is now with NAVS.)

 

Formerly, John Bryant was working as an engineer in a helicopter factory when, still a young man, the RSPCA chose to employ him as its vice-chairman, then groomed him as a Hunt Saboteur, obviously to gain him the admiration and blind trust of every true animal lover.  When his reputation as a fearless, devoted 'animal defender' was firmly established, he was funneled into Animal Aid, where Gill Langley had already been appointed as 'Technical Advisor,' putting frail Jean Pink out of action. It has never been revealed exactly what caused Jean Pink one day to surrender the direction of Animal Aid, which she had founded in 1977, into Langley's and Bryant's hands. She seems afraid to talk about it, and never gave a plausible explanation to her stunned members of her unexpected turnabout, when she suddenly decided to go 'spiritual,' along Asian Ahimsa lines: 'Resist not evil.'

 

By contrast, press cuttings show John Bryant as a sort of poor-man's Charles Bronson, the movie tough guy whom we wouldn't wish to encounter on a deserted street at night.

 

From Jean Fawcett, another interesting letter, dated 22. 2. 88:

 

'There was a programme on television about the Economic League, an employers' association that infiltrates people into organisations. Ciba Geigy is one of the firms subscribing to the Economic League. They infiltrate trade unions etc.' (CIVIS: Would it be far-fetched to assume that the discreet 'etc. ' comprises AV organisations? And that the RSPCA, deeply committed as it is to keep the vivisection fraud going, is also a subscriber to this Economic League?).

 

Mrs Margaret Newson, Wetherby, West Yorks., to John Bryant, 3.5.1988:

 

'In your society journal I saw the story of an attack on Gill Langley. While I do not condone physical violence, I am aware of a rather more sinister type of violence that is operating within our society today. They are not burning people at the stake or deporting heretics to Australia; instead they assassinate the character and make absurd statements about the very person who has deeply studied and documented the medical fraud of vivisection, which YOU, John Bryant and your cronies support while hiding under the umbrella of Animal Aid. You are pretending to your readers that you are unaware of infiltration or that it does not exist, even though your scientific adviser had to admit it last year after Alfred Bunting blew the whistle on her and her husband. It is because of infiltration by these parasites that your members have been uninformed or misinformed about the counter-productiveness of vivisection. If the masses found out about the REAL effect of vivisection, you and your conmen would be out of a job, minus the salary that goes with it. I see that you are advertising for someone to fill the post of Deputy Director with a salary from £ 8,000. Good pay. A real A V society exposes and publishes the medical fraud of vivisection without the aid of a salaried scientific adviser.’

 

Mobilise!, the monthly of Bette Overell's sensationally successful New Zealand Anti-Vivisection Society, dedicated its entire 16-page May issue to Hans Ruesch and the Langley case, documenting the fine lady's past, eight-year long laboratory activity - when she was cutting up cockroaches and decerebrated rabbits with one hand while wiping her tears of compassion with the other.

 

Virginia Trendall, the editor of Burbanks' Fur 'n Feathers, minced no words either in presenting the Langley case to her readers under a banner headline that ran 'INFILTRATORS EXPOSED!

 

IT'S JUST A BEGINNING

 

Obviously, all this is just a beginning. Infiltrators, once exposed, become valueless to their employers, and have to be replaced. No easy matter. Money alone is not enough. It takes time, too, as it took time to build up AA's John Bryant and Mark Gold in England, Clive Hollands in Scotland, Madame Pasternak in Switzerland.

 

Eventually, since CIVIS exists, sooner or later they will all have to go. A ruined virginity can't be repaired except with costly surgical operations, involving pigs' bladders, and they don't last, Switzerland's Madame Pasternak resisted our exposures for years, but recently she called it quits and announced her retirement for 1989, leaving us wondering who is being groomed to replace her.

 

GREAT IDEA AND INSTANT ACTION

 

Judy Stricker, of the California Society Against Vivisection, has been one of CIVIS' most dedicated and effective allies ever since Slaughter came out 10 years ago. She also helped finance, with considerable personal sacrifices, the historic rally in Los Angeles of April 1984, in which she participated with Javier Burgos, Bob Barker, Hans Ruesch, and many others.

 

So Judy was also one of the first to respond to the publication of our CIVIS Foundation Report Nr 1. She was so enthusiastic about Prof. Pietro Croce's call for total abolition now, in concomitance with the 'first-ever' foundation of our international League of Doctors for the Abolition of Vivisection, that she proposed we should print immediately an additional 2,500 copies of the Report, including Prof. Croce's speech, and she would distribute them to as many MDs in the California area.

 

No sooner said than done. While Judy collected the addresses, indefatigable Bina Robinson got the reprint done, and CIVIS came forth with most of the necessary funding, which never comes easy, because there seems to be a hole in our pocket, and also because we have several long overdue, new publications in different languages being processed, such as 1000 DOCTORS AGAINST VIVISECTION and Prof. Croce's VIVISECTION OR  SCIENCE, a Choice.

 

To Part Two