Barry Horne

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Barry Horne (born March 17, 1952 in Northampton , † November 5, 2001 in Worcester ) was a British animal rights activist . To date (as of 2009) he received the highest sentence for offenses with animal rights motivation, in his case 18 years for arson . His death came as a result of a series of hunger strikes in British captivity. While the British media see him essentially as a terrorist, he is considered a "martyr" in some parts of the British animal rights movement.

Early activism

Horne was working as a garbage collector in Northampton when his second wife introduced him to animal rights issues. He became a vegetarian and participated in non-violent hunting sabotage . He also became involved in the Northampton Animal Concern from 1987 and was involved in a raid on a Unilever research laboratory and a subsidiary of Beatties , a clothing store that also sells furs .

Activism in the ALF or ARM

Rocky the dolphin

Horne first attracted public attention in 1988 with the "rescue operation" of a bottlenose dolphin . Rocky the dolphin was captured at the Florida Panhandle in 1971 and held in the concrete pool of a dolphinarium in Morecambe , Lancashire , for many years - most of the time in isolation. Horne and four friends planned to load the dolphin in a rented mini metro and cover the 200 meters between the dolphinarium and the sea.

After secretly familiarizing themselves with the dolphin, they were caught in the dolphinarium as a result of a second break-in. Originally they wanted to free Rocky that night, but found that their equipment was completely inadequate. As one of the activists said, when they were stopped by the police on their way back, they were unable to substantiate the innocuous reasons for which they were carrying a dolphin carrier . Horne, along with Jim O'Donnell, Mel Broughton and Jim Buckner, were sentenced to £ 500 each for conspiracy to steal. Horne and Broughton received 6 months suspended prison sentences.

Horne and the others then continued their efforts to free Rocky. They held vigils and rallies, distributed flyers and campaigned for the city council. As a result of a drop in viewership, management sold the dolphin for £ 120,000. The money was raised by various organizations, including the Born Free Foundation . Rocky was gradually accustomed to a free environment and later successfully abandoned. There are now no more captured dolphins in the UK.

Robbery at Harlan Interfauna and demolition of a conference at Exeter College

Together with Keith Mann and Danny Attwood, Horne founded a small cell for the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). They broke into Harlan Interfauna , a company that supplies laboratories with animals and body parts. They climbed in over the roof and stole a list of the company's customers as well as 82 beagle puppies and 26 rabbits whom they, with the help of individuals, provided medical care and housed in various locations in Britain. Based on evidence at the scene and a house search, Mann and Attwood were sentenced to 9 and 18 months in prison for conspiracy to robbery .

Horne and others disrupted a conference of several animal researchers at Exeter College in 1992 . They had a fight with the police to gain entry and then rioted in the conference rooms. He and five others were sentenced to prison terms for violent disturbance. During his detention, Horne became increasingly radicalized.

Arson attacks and conviction

After his release in 1994, Horne only worked alone. As a result of some nightly arson attacks that were carried out on leather goods shops and charity shops for cancer research in the Oxford area within the next two years, the suspicion quickly fell on Horne, since next to him practically no one in the animal rights movement would have been openly ready to use arson as a political tool Propagate conflict. Animal Rights Militia (ARM) wrote letters confessing to certain attacks . Horne seemed to be aware of this: he saw himself at a kind of war and was ready to sacrifice himself for it. He was caught in 1996 with already laid and other incendiary devices.

On November 12, 1997, proceedings were opened against him in the Bristol Crown Court ; six weeks after he ended his second hunger strike. He pleaded guilty to the attacks in which he was picked up but denied having been involved in other attacks on the Isle of Wight . In a circumstantial investigation, which was accompanied by a critical public, he was found guilty of arson. The explosives used turned out to be identical on the one hand. On the other hand, he was not identified in 14 confrontations .

The court also found that Horne had no intention of killing anyone and called him an urban terrorist . His sentence was 18 years old, the highest sentence ever given for an animal rights offense. Robin Webb of the Animal Liberation Press Office (ALPO) escaped conviction for conspiracy over the same offenses.

Hunger strikes in captivity

On January 6, 1997, Horne began to refuse to eat unless the conservative John Major consented to refrain from political support for animal experiments for the next five years. Because it was considered certain that Labor would be elected to the government in May, he ended his strike on February 9 after Elliot Morley , animal welfare spokesman for the Labor Party, declared that its aim was to reduce animal testing and possibly suspend it in the long term . The strike was accompanied by nationwide protests that occasionally referred to horns and some animal liberations .

He went on a second hunger strike on August 11, 1997, with the aim of getting the government to withdraw from animal experiments within a certain timeframe. On September 12, 1997 there were some large protests in London , Southampton , The Hague , Cleveland , Ohio and at Umeå University . 400 people marched to Shamrock Farm , a monkey facility near Brighton , and 300 to the Wickham laboratories. Labor Party offices and the home of Jack Straw ( Home Secretary ) have been occupied. Activists set up a fortified camp across from the Huntingdon Life Sciences facilities in Cambridgeshire . Later in September the Newchurch guinea pig farm was broken into and 600 guinea pigs were freed. Horne ended the strike on September 26 after Lord Williams of Mostyn (Home Secretary, later Attorney General) offered his supporters an offer to speak.

His longest strike was on October 6th and ended on December 13th, 1998. Activists also threatened the situation with a far-reaching escalation, including death threats against selected scientists, in the event that Horne died. The case was discussed in the media around the world and briefly brought the animal experimentation issue to the center of the political agenda in England.

Hornes demands included:

  • Scientists are no longer required to issue licenses for animal experiments and current licenses may not be renewed.
  • Animal experiments for non-medical purposes are basically to be banned until 2002, whereby the experiments of Porton Down , the scientific center of the Ministry of Defense, are to be stopped immediately.
  • Dissolution of the biased Animal Procedures Committee , a government advisory body on animal testing issues.

After protests brought about an improvement in his prison conditions, he received the anointing of the sick after a 43-day strike as a result of critical weight loss. The Labor government did not want to give in to any public demands and described the process as extortionate. However, discussions took place. Hornes MP , Tony Clarke , visited him on November 12th and negotiated a meeting between his supporters and the Home Office on November 19th. The meeting ended with the result that he yielded in his demands and limited himself to the convening of a Royal Commission for Animal Testing, which the Labor government had also promised before its election.

Horne was transferred to a hospital. He lost his sight in one eye, suffered severe liver damage, became deaf in one ear, and was on the verge of a coma. In order to be able to follow reports of his followers as a result of further discussions, he agreed to drink sweet liquids for a limited period of time. The media then presented his strike as a farce .

Vigils were held at the Houses of Parliament in London and Westminster during his strike . Alan Klark (Conservative) briefly supported these protests. On November 24, activists unveiled a poster on the Queen's vehicle on her way to the opening of Parliament. Shortly thereafter, two activists parked a car on Downing Street . While they stabbed the tires and chained themselves to the wheel, a small protest group accompanied them. There were 2 "animal exemptions" nationwide. There were vigils outside some British embassies abroad.

When Hornes death was foreseeable, unknown persons who belonged to the ARM sent death threats through Robin Webb (ALPO) against three scientists by name ( Colin Blakemore , Clive Page and Mark Matfield) as well as against seven others whose names were kept under lock and key by the police for security reasons were held. Those affected received police protection, which in some cases continued for several years. A special police force was called up to monitor the ARM and Webb.

On December 10, 1998, Horne was transferred back to prison from the hospital. He was hallucinating and reportedly couldn't remember why he was starving. The last two days of the strike are not documented. On December 13, Horne decided to eat again after Labor organized a meeting between him, Michael Barner, APC Chairman, and Ian Cawsey, Chairman of Parliament's non-partisan animal welfare commission.

Death and private matters

Horne did not recover from the effects of the hunger strike. He then joined a few more, but practically no public notice was taken of them. He died of liver failure on November 5, 2001, the 15th day of his last hunger strike.

The negative public coverage of his person continued after his death. For example, the Guardian wrote :

“During his lifetime he was a nobody, a failed garbage man who became an arsonist. He will be remembered as the first martyr of the most successful group of British terrorists: the animal rights movement ”

- Kevin Toolis : in the Guardian

He was buried in Northampton under an oak tree in the Northampton Town football shirt. About 700 people attended his neo-paganist funeral.

Barry left behind his second wife, Aileen and a son. He was vegan from around 1990 until his death .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lancashire Evening Telegraph , Nov. 8, 2001.
  2. ↑ Mann 2007, pp. 164-165.
  3. ↑ "No Dolphinaria in the UK" ( memento of the original from November 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file; 98 kB), Born Free Foundation. The Bellerive Foundation (Switzerland) and the World Society for the Protection of Animals were also involved in the so-called "Into the Blue" campaign @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bornfree.org.uk
  4. ↑ Mann 2007, p. 167.
  5. ↑ Hughes 2001, pp. 321-329.
  6. ↑ BBC News 2003.
    • Mann 2007, p. 508
  7. ↑ Mann 2007, p. 542.
  8. ^ Webb 2004, p. 78.
  9. ↑ "Barry Horne" ( Memento of the original dated February 7, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , BarryHorne.org .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / barryhorne.org
  10. ↑ Mann 2007, p. 538
  11. ↑ Mann 2007, p. 540
  12. ↑ Mann 2007, p. 546.
  13. ^ Johnston 2001.
    • Mann 2007, p. 547.
  14. ↑ Mann 2007, p. 548.
  15. ^ New Scientist 1998.
    • BBC News, December 8, 1998.
  16. ^ The Independent 1998.
  17. ↑ Mann 2007, p. 551.
  18. ^ Vidal 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Horne, Barry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English animal rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH March 17, 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH Northampton
DATE OF DEATH November 5, 2001
Place of death Worcester