The ongoing Undercover Policing Inquiry has released a couple of documents indicating that 'spycops' were reporting on musicians as part of their infiltration of the animal liberation movement in the 1980s.
A report from 1988 states that 'In 1985 Animal Liberation Front activists Viv Smith and [redacted] established useful links with sympathetic artistes and musicians through a front organisation 'Artists for Animals'. In particular album entitled Abuse featuring the recordings of the Style Council, Madness, [redacted] and others promoted the work of the ALF and contributed substantially to its funding. 'Artists for Animals' now no longer exists in a formal sense but [redacted] continues to exploit her contacts in this field to the financial benefit of the ALF. On Sunday 10th July 1988, [redacted] was understood to be meeting one of these contacts in Fulham in order to collect a donation of £2000 or £3000'.
In another document spycop 'HN109' reports that 'on Wednesday 26th April 1989 at 7:30 pm the group Artists for Animals are to hold a benefit gig at Dingwalls Club, Camden Lock. It is not known what numbers are likely to attend'. HN109, who has remained anonymous, was at some point the manager in the Special Demonstration Squad that deployed police to infiltrate oppositional groups and campaigns. The gig seems an odd thing to write up as this was presumably a public event listed in music papers and hardly needed a secret police report.
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| (I haven't been able to find out who played at this Dingwalls gig - anybody know?) |
The initial focus of 'Artists for Animals' seems to have been on benefit gigs, the first of them at Kingston Poly in February 1983 headlined by The Sound. A 1983 NME interview with Viv Smith, described as Artists for Animals organiser, mentions musicians who had expressed an interest in supporting them as including Prince Far I, Attila the Stockbroker, Kevin Coyne, Orange Juice, Crass, Thompson Twins, Modern English, The Raincoats, Dislocation Dance, Nightingales, The Sound, Paul McCartney and Paul Gray 'The Damned's bassist and active member of the Animal Liberation Front' (rather odd thing to say, not something people would normally admit to!). Conflict, Annie Anxiety, Hagar the Womb and others played an Artists for Animals benefit at Brixton Ace in May 1983.
'Artists for Animals' put out a number of compilation albums to raise funds for the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group and related causes. As mentioned in the police report the first album,
Abuse (1986), included some big names such as The Style Council, Madness, Robert Wyatt and the Durutti Column, with cover art from Ralph Steadman.
1987's
Mindless Slaughter was a benefit for the Hunt Saboteurs Association featuring mainly punk bands including Conflict, Blyth Power, Chumbawamba, Rubella Ballet and TV Smith (ex-Adverts)
The Liberator (1989) seems to have been mainly a compilation of tracks from the earlier albums, but also included a new track from Shelleyan Orphan - a band with a great name and even better hair.
The South East Animal Liberation League - the Wickham and Unilever trials
Some of these musicians had deeper connections than just donating a song or two. The mid-1980s was a time when the animal liberation movement was becoming increasingly confident perhaps crystallised in particular by a series of spectacular actions taken by various regional '
Animal Liberation Leagues'. These included in 1984 a mass raid on Unilever vivisection laboratories in Bedfordshire and a South East Animal Liberation League (SEALL) raid on premises associated with Wickham Laboratories in Hampshire. Ultimately 30 or so people were to be convicted and jailed for these two actions and I personally attended court cases in Winchester, Leicester, Northampton and London in support of the defendants.
'Londoncentrical', who worked at the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection in this period, has noted that Paul Weller's partner at the time, Gill Price, was herself arrested in the Unilever raid. Weller also co-wrote a 1985 track with Tracie Young '19 - the Wickham Mix', referencing the 'Wickham 19' on trial for the raids there. And the bassist in Tracie's backing band was the partner of one of the Wickham and Unilever defendants. The Style Council, supported by Tracie and the Soul Squad, also played a benefit gig for SEALL at the Margate Winter Gardens in December 1984.
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| Gill Price on the cover of The Jam's Beat Surrender |
'Target' - the post-Wickham trial edition of the South East Animal Liberation League zine explains why SEALL was disbanding:
'With the completion of the Winchester Trial, the time has come for S.E.A.L.L. to cease to exist as an entity. Of course, the Wickham Defence Fund will remain in operation until the last prisoner Mike Nunn is released. S.E.A.L.L. has set many new trends in the animal rights movement - use of video, subtlety in direct action, the concept of raiding an establishment to bring a prosecution, cultivation of good media relations and many other ideas - and has fought, in the Wickham 19 trial, the most dramatic and significant criminal trial to date in animal rights' history. But the strength of a group is its ability to keep one step ahead of the opposition and hence to continue S.E.A.L.L. as if nothinq had changed would be foolhardy in the extreme.
Most key S.E.A.L.L. activists are under severe police scrutiny (or in prison!) and many of the original S.E.A.L.L. stalwarts are now involved in other areas of animal rights campaigning. For S.E.A.L.L. to continue would undoubtedly lead to more political show-trials and the effective emasculation of much of the militant animal rights movement in the South East'.
It does seem likely that the targeting of spycops like Bob Lambert on the animal liberation movement in this period was at least partly in response to the audacious tactics of SEALL and similar groups.
In another interesting twist the press officer for SEALL at the time, one John Beggs, has subsequently made a name for himself as a barrister acting for the police including in the Hillsborough inquest and in other cases. People change of course, but that really is quite a journey.
'Liberator' (BUAV paper), December 1984, covers the Wickham raids:
[post updated 10 April 2025 with SEALL magazine]
See previously:
