Vernon
Coleman: Animal Rights Human Wrongs
June 24 1999
It Doesn't Have To Be Like This - Closing remarks: Are you angry? Do you care enough, and are you brave enough, to make your voice heard – and to try and change the world?
Naturewatch (an excellent British organisation which campaigns against animal cruelty) recently conducted a major survey of British people. They found that only 0.2% of the general public felt that the Labour government's performance on animal welfare issues was "very good" while just 2% felt that it was acceptable. A massive 63% felt that the government had failed to fulfil their pre-election promises on animal welfare. A staggering 98% of the British public felt that there was a clear conflict of interest in government departments (particularly the Ministry of Agriculture) and felt that this could best be addressed by appointing a Minister for Animal Welfare. (Interestingly, when the Labour Party was in opposition they had a Shadow Minister for Animal Welfare. When they got into power, and no longer felt the need to try to win votes, the Labour government abandoned what now may seem to some to have been no more than a ruthless vote-catching exercise.)
The survey showed that only 5% of citizens who had written to the Home Office (their Home Office it has to be said) were satisfied with the reply they had received. The Home Office is the government department responsible for animal experiments.
The survey showed that only 11% of British people supported the use of animals in medical research. An impressive 98.5% complained that there was far too much secrecy involved in animal experiments. Just 8% of people felt that medical advancement would be curtailed if animal experiments were stopped whereas 89% believed that a ban on animal experiments would galvanise industry and government into taking real action to look for non animal methods of testing new drugs and other treatments and into promoting preventative medicine techniques.
So why, when so many people (including doctors – who are often wrongly thought to be supporters of vivisection) are clearly opposed to animal abuse, do our political representatives take no notice? Why do politicians no longer listen to what the electors are saying? Politicians are, after all, merely the elected representatives of the public. Their power is borrowed for the duration of their term of office.
The bottom line is (as I showed right at the beginning of this book) that our present system results in decisions being made not for the good of the electors, or even for the good of mankind as a whole, but for the short term good of powerful vested interests which have lobby groups which can push politicians into making decisions which are not in the interests of the human race at all.
We have reached a point where our world is being run for the short term financial benefit of large, international corporations and those short term interests are causing permanent damage to human beings, the environment and, in the end, to those industries themselves. Vital decisions are made solely to help ensure that next quarter the bottom line profits for a few multinational corporations draw approval from brokers, bankers and shareholders.
The truth is that it doesn't have to be like this.
Liberty, freedom and justice, equality, compassion and simple kindness have been defeated by a potent mixture of greed, prejudice, intolerance, privilege and bureaucratic interference. We have created a force over which we have no control. We have gone far beyond materialism and created a cruel and uncaring world which is like nothing that has ever existed before (indeed, nothing like it has ever been imagined or forecast); a world which regulates our lives without conscience. Industrialists, bureaucrats and politicians all mindlessly serve the monstrous, invisible force we have created.
But if we want to change things, and move towards a world without cruelty, then we need a revolution.
We need a modern, twenty first century revolution in which politics and political control are taken back by the people, for the people. We need to take power back from the industrial giants which, as I showed at the beginning of this book, control our politicians and our lives. There is an urgency about all this: if we don't take action quickly then soon it will be too late.
We need a People's Party to overcome ignorance, prejudice and cruelty and to bring honesty, morality, ethics and a genuine sense of caring back into government. We need to ensure that children are taught to honour and respect all other living creatures. We need to create a social environment in which cruelty is unacceptable and unjustifiable and in which the vivisector, the hunter, the butcher and the abattoir worker cannot stand unaccused.
Together we can do it: we can make a difference; we can change the world. We have to believe that. If we don't believe then there is no future.