Keith
Mann was brought up in Rochdale in the 1970's where soon after leaving school
he became involved with a group of local hunt saboteurs who were distributing
leaflets on an information stall in the high street. Meeting people who
were selflessly trying to help others - particularly animals who have no
voice - was incredidibly inspirational to him. As a child he had always
wanted, like many youngsters, to be a footballer and ‘play for England’
until the moment he found out exactly what we as a society were doing to
other animals. It was a defining moment for him and the start of a lifelong
crusade to bring about a change.
In
his own words (from Dusk til Dawn):
They
believed I should make it more personal, since they felt I have a story
to tell, and so it has become something of a personal overview of the movement,
with autobiographical overtones, although for obvious reasons I have not
been at liberty to disclose everything. Hopefully you will get a fuller
understanding of how and why some people are taking the law into their own
hands, shirking conformity and risking everything. There is no financial
reward and no glory. It’s a selfless occupation, which increasingly
carries a risk of arrest, imprisonment, violence and even death. But the
rewards are large and by necessity outweigh the risks. It’s about
animals.
I’ve
probably been at my lifelong happiest and saddest in this environment and
very scared too. I can’t think what I would rather have been doing
were it not this, despite the invited trauma and ever present risk of serious
physical harm. I’ve fallen from a building and through a roof, jumped
through a first floor window and swum a river in a pair of wellies and then
had to get on a bus, dripping wet and beg a free ride! I’ve been shot
at while trying to rescue animals; I’ve put my own car window through
with a ball bearing that bounced back off someone else’s property;
I’ve been spat on, punched and driven at, covered in a bucket of elephant
piss by an angry clown, chased through woodland by men with spades and arrested,
charged and convicted for things I haven’t done. I’ve felt utter
despair and been driven to distraction - and action - by the endless procrastinating
and indifference of officialdom and I’ve been locked in prison and
made to go without food for my objections to the abuse of animals. All this
aside from the indescribable suffering and cruelty I’ve witnessed
first hand, but it’s precisely that, and being able to do something
about some of it, that has made it all worthwhile. These close calls are
nothing; the lucky breaks and the confrontations recharge my batteries rather
than drain me, as, of course, do the victories in every life saved or opinion
altered. The angrier I see the people I oppose and listen to their reasons
for what they do, the more I empathise with the animals they are messing
with and feel compelled to act. My only regret is getting caught. It has
given me a voice but taken away my anonymity to risk behaving as above.
I have a lot to say, but I preach that words are cheap and actions are everything.
Allow me this lengthy contradiction.
I
can’t imagine that winning ten World Cup competitions would give me
anything like the same satisfaction I feel after convincing someone to stop
encouraging slaughterhouses and factory farms or by placing a neglected
animal in a safe, loving home for the rest of its life on Earth. I have
never hurt anyone for being cruel but have defended myself when under attack
and have done a lot of things to help desperate animals to which I can’t
confess, not out of any sense of shame but because I’d be arrested
and sent to prison. That this happens to people like me in a nation of animal
lovers never ceases to amaze me as does the fact this nation treats other
animals so appallingly. I write this book to document not so much my journey
but that of a movement of people just like me who want to make the world
a better place for all.
The
story of the Animal Liberation Movement is a story shared – one that
documents the struggles of many who make up this rich, diverse movement,
driven by tens of thousands of people around the world of whom I’m
just one. I had intended to make the book a historical document, not a personal
journey, but others felt differently about the tone I had adopted in the
earlier drafts.
