My friend Ronnie Lee stops by to chat about his wild life as a animal liberator and vegan activist. Ronnie founded the most famous radical animal rights groups, the A.L.F. (Animal Liberation Front) in 1974. Ronnie Lee was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his efforts in animal liberation including actions against animal test research facilities and seal hunting vessels. Ronnie Lee has been a vegan for 50 years and is living proof of the vegan lifestyle being incredibly healthy and good for the planet as well as the animals! This is an amazing conversation with a compassionate and brave human being.
Ronnie Lee is a British animal rights activist. He is known primarily for being the Press Officer for the UK Animal Liberation Front (ALF) in 1976. He also founded the magazine Arkangel in 1989
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Lee was a member of the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA) in the 1970s, and formed an offshoot of it, which he called the Band of Mercy. The original Band of Mercy was started by a group of activists in England in 1824 to thwart fox hunting by laying false scents and blowing hunting horns. Lee and another activist, Cliff Goodman, revived the name in 1972, and set about attacking hunters’ vehicles. They progressed to attacking pharmaceutical laboratories and seal-hunting boats, and on 10 November 1973, they set fire to a building in Milton Keynes with the aim of making insurance prohibitive for what they saw as industries that exploit animals, a strategy the ALF continues to pursue.
In August 1974, Lee and Goodman were arrested for taking part in a raid on Oxford Laboratory Animal Colonies in Bicester, which earned them the name the “Bicester Two”. Daily demonstrations took place outside the court during their trial, with Lee’s local Labour MP, Ivor Clemitson among the demonstrators. They were sentenced to three years in prison, during which Lee went on the movement’s first hunger strike to obtain vegan food and clothing. Paroled after 12 months, Lee emerged more militant than before, and organised 30 activists to set up a new liberation campaign. Seeking a campaign name that would “haunt” those who used animals, he chose the Animal Liberation Front.
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