John Curtin is a longtime activist from England who has spent 20 years fighting for animal liberation, spending time in jail for his part in ALF liberations. The following intreview appeared in Bite Back #1.

Bite Back: When you got into the animal rights movement did you go straight into direct action?

John Curtin: Just about. I knew I wanted to do something for animals. I was living in Ireland at the time, in 1983, and wanted to come back to England because the Animal Liberation movement was strong, the ALF direct action activism was at its absolute peak probably - things were total mayhem. I had wrote to the ALF Supporters Group before that - to Ronnie Lee to ask what I could do to become involved, something naive like that. I don’t think he replied. Because the focus was on direct action, everyone else was already cutting out on the demonstration side of things - so that was fine with me. So yeah - basically straight into direct action.

BB: Did you have any fear or anxiety on your first action?

JC: Yeah - Yeah, we were throwing a big pot of paint over a fur shop, me and this woman. We sort of planned, got to the fur shop, and we just threw the whole thing of paint and it rebounded back onto the both of us. We dropped the can - covered in our fingerprints - and went screaming through the town covered in red paint. We then locked ourselves in this room all night thinking the police were going to barge in at any moment. But then once we began to do it a bit more, then we began to realize how lax the police are really. Definitely how lax the police were in those days anyways.

BB: One of the things you are most famous for is helping to form the Hunt Retribution Squad (HRS) and participating in the action of digging up the Duke of Beaufort’s grave. Were the action and the formation of the HRS done more as a publicity stunt or was it intended to send a serious message that a sharper edge was being brought to the anti-hunt movement?

JC: It was both really. At the time we began to play with the media a bit - because they had turned on us by that time anyways. That was around the time we became known as the maniacs of the press. Before then we were the little Robin Hoods, the darlings, the animal rescuers. As arson began to be deployed and we began to cause millions of pounds worth of damage, we started to get called the axe wielding, baby-killing lunatics. So there was a bit of manipulation of the tabloid media and to “give ‘em what they want” sort of thing. But there was a serious side to it (HRS), where we definitely did have plans to use violence against hunt people. But that got thwarted by our arrest and it never quite materialized from then. But whether or not it would have happened I don’t know, because I don’t know if we are violent people. But we did - I remember seriously wanting to go along those lines.

BB: How did you get caught for this action?

JC: It's just totally weird what happened. We never actually did dig the body up. And that is an everlasting story in itself, but we did desecrate the grave. We dug a big six-foot hole. We got within like an inch of the coffin. We did all that - got back to London - and bam-bam-bam (the story was in the newspapers).
Basically our weak point was that somebody’s mother knew where this safe house was, and this mother had a hunch-and only a hunch-that her son was involved. She actually went to the police with this information, saying her son was involved in animal rights. All the quirks, circumstances, and coincidences just converged and that was like an Aladdin’s key for the police.

BB: Was this your first time in prison and how much time did you get?

JC: Well at that point I was already on bail for raiding laboratories. I got two years for the HRS action and nine months for something else. It was my first time in prison.

BB: Did you have a hard time adjusting to prison life this first time?

JC: I remember the first night, it was very scary. They put us in the worst possible cell in the whole prison, the coldest cell in the prison. My nose bled - I’ll never forget that. I don’t know whether it had to do with nerves or what. Even though I consider myself an anarchist and I knew it was coming, I’d still read all the books and had seen the TV programs about the beating up and rapes - but my god, nothing could have been further from the truth. Once I sort of realized what prison was about, all the fear went away you know. And I realized the reason why most people who go into prison end up going back, because it’s not that bad. It is bearable, 99 out of 100 people could face it and do it.

BB: That was not your last time in prison. What else have you been in prison for?

JC: Let’s see: the grave digging, the raid on Wickham Laboratories - nine months, 12 months for violent disorder for smashing up the house of someone who killed Mike Hill (the hunt saboteur) and 18 months for taking 82 beagles and 26 rabbits from Interfauna.

BB: Can you tell us about the preparations you have to make to raid a lab animal breeder like Interfauna? That it is not something you simply do on a whim.

JC: Yeah - we took in definitely weeks, if not months, of surveillance for the raid. It involves a lot of sitting out in the dead of night in the wind, rain, sitting in the side of a hedge just watching, waiting. That is a large part of all the raids I’ve ever known of - the surveillance before hand. You really want to know the run of the place, you want to know what time the staff come in, what time do the rotators change, what time does the day staff change, when does the security make their rounds - and you want to know all of this like the back of your hand. That involves just sitting there, and getting wet and getting cold.
You’ve got the logistics really, the weeks and weeks and weeks of watching, then getting the people together, picking the day, its like… I imagine robbing a bank, which would take a lot of work, and because you’re dealing with animals there could even be more problems. So for the few hours it takes to do the raid… it takes many, many weeks of 24/7 concentration on it in order for it to go well. There may be times when you could do something spur of the moment, but you don’t want to rush into that intentionally. I would always want to know my enemy before I went there.

BB: Despite all your preparations for the Interfauna raid, you were still caught and it was in an unusual way, wasn’t it?

JC: Yeah, it was the beginning of the police putting all their resources into catching us. On the van I hired (rented)… I still to this day am not quite sure how they got that van, but the police somehow got a hold of the van, and in the under carriage of it they managed to find a piece of wheat that had a fungus on it. It is was very, very rare and they managed to… one of the fields the van was driven through (by Interfauna) the wheat in that field had that rare fungus, and they managed to match it up. So they put the amount of resources in for taking these dogs as they would for a murder inquiry. Eventually 6 police forces were involved and there was a surveillance operation at one point involving 120 police officers, which is bizarre when you think about it. You know, you’re dealing only with the theft of some dogs.

BB: As a frequent ALF prisoner did you get enough support from the animal rights movement? How did this affect your prison stay?

JC: The two are inseparable, really. Enormous amount of support, which was sometimes an embarrassing amount of support. When it got near Christmas the screws would actually give you your letters in piles and piles. I would have been shocked; you’re more shocked when you don’t get a letter. You really get an enormous amount of support. And it doesn’t matter what these say - just the fact that there are people out there thinking about you. That is just what keeps you going, you know. It's what, to some degree, if you’re getting a hassle in prison - it’s that level of support that protects you, because people know you are not isolated, you’re not vulnerable.

BB: You have known most of the activists that have been killed in the fight for animal liberation, like Barry Horne, Jill Phipps, Tom Worby, and Mike Hill. What effect did these deaths have on you as an animal liberation activist and how do you think they affected the movement?

JC: Jill’s death, and Mike Hill’s death, and Tom Worby’s death were really just sort of galvanizing you into action. Their deaths just symbolized all the injustice, all the tragedies - it took on, and became a real symbol to keep you going. When times get tough you remember that. The death of Barry to… To me the death of Barry happened when he was on his hunger strike. When he was on his 68th day of the hunger strike. Barry’s death to me happened then. It actually happened two years later, and it numbed me actually when I found out. It made me very, very sad. But the important thing about Barry’s hunger strike is not the actual time that he died or anything, it was the actual amount of action happening on his hunger strikes. There was so much action going on when Barry was on his hunger strike, so again it’s that galvanizing kick in the ass basically to remind you to know where you're at to put other things into perspective. You know, you’re a bit tired, you’re a bit knackered, you think my God, you know, these people, these friends of mine have died for this - so I don’t have a right to be whining and moaning because my feet are cold, or something.

BB: Direct action extends well beyond just donning a mask as an ALF activist. It can also be done right out in the open. You were a part of two very famous protest campaigns in the last 5 years. Can you tell us about the Coventry Airport campaign and the protest camps at Huntingdon Life Sciences?

JC: Ok. The Coventry airport, all I can say about it is that it is a fantastic example of people power. The authorities did everything they could to allow live exports to continue, but there was just a massive resounding NO! Within six weeks of Jill’s death (Jill, another activist, was run over at the protest) we had stopped it. And it wasn’t just animal liberation people that did it. It was people from the community. They were just as involved as the others standing side by side. They were local neighbors, standing side by side with animal liberation activists. It was just a big resounding NO from everybody and it shows you what you can do when you put your mind to it.

The Huntingdon protest was fantastic. It ended up basically as a practical joke on Huntingdon with them having to pay a 200,000-pound bill. They thought we would just move on to another little camp. But we had done quite a lot of planning. When it came to the eviction, there was a woman locked down this tunnel in this big massive six-foot safe. We got three consecutive evenings live on television on the local TV station. And we had everyone on our side. Huntingdon had to pick up the 200,000-pound bill. When they evicted us we moved on to a piece of land behind Huntingdon and Huntingdon actually bought the piece of land especially to evict us. Probably the only piece of land that had been bought specifically to evict someone off it. It was very bizarre.

BB: In the last couple years there has been an increase in the number of ALF actions and direct action attacks on targets of grassroots campaigns like Shamrock, Hill Grove, and Huntingdon Life Sciences (to name a few). Do you see this relationship between an aboveground well-strategized campaign and underground activity as how the ALF is evolving?

JC: I suppose I’m one of a network who had my battle line drawn, you know. I think I’m a bit old fashioned in my ALF sort of mind set. (Meaning) that the clandestine stuff would be done clandestinely and that’s where there would be interaction with the police, but you could demonstrate and do all of your campaigns, and the police would never bother you. All that has changed now and I’ve always said that the two don’t really mix--direct action and protesting--but I’m obviously wrong because there is a time and a place for everything. But I would still give people the advice that if you are going to break the law, then don’t do it out in the open unless you managed to find quite a number of people to do it with you. So then it becomes some sort of civil disobedience thing where you're much harder to control than the police can handle, which happened with Hill Grove and Consort and we basically just had riots. You know, full-blown riots.

BB: What actions have inspired you recently or, in your opinion, stand out for efficacy or cleverness?

JC: There was one recently, but I don’t know if every person will agree with it. There was a New Church (Guinea Pig Farm) worker whose neighbors all had his picture circulated of him being put into a police car, and someone had obviously doctored actual footage from the newspaper of a child molester being arrested. They slapped this New Church worker’s face on top of this image. It caused chaos in the local area. So that impressed me for its ingenuity. And also animal liberation, every time I hear of the littlest smallest little things… I’m an old softy, really. To me animal liberation can be achieved in a simple act of nicking a dog that’s been abused out of a shed or battery units. That’s what I really, really love to hear. Maybe the other things are more effective- but that’s just what I just jump for joy every time I hear it.

BB: As a convicted ALF activist and as someone that is very well spoken, you have appeared in interviews, on TV programs, on the radio, and at speaking events across the country. What role do you find yourself playing in the animal rights movement at the moment and where do you see yourself going?

JC: I’m into this movement until I die. But what form that will take-I don’t know, and I don’t care what for its going to take really. I would dearly love to not be so well known to the police; and once you are well known to the police, you have to be very careful. The important thing is that I ended up doing something. Either sanctuary work, doing a stall, whatever. It’s all really the same.

BB: Do you have any advice you would give to any new animal liberationists or people coming into the animal rights movement on the direct action side?

JC: Use your brain. It won’t come natural to you, but think like a criminal. Use your brain and work with people who you trust. Not strangers you might meet once at a demonstration. You would be mad to go and do something seriously illegal with them. An ALF cell is a bunch of good friends really. So look after your friends. When you can find one that you can trust your life with-treat them like gold dust.

BB: What fuels you? What keeps you going?

JC: Well I think love and compassion obviously, and empathy with animals. I think what did for many, many years was anger and hatred towards animal abusers. I think someone that is fueled with anger and hatred, makes a bloody good activist. There has been a natural process within me where a lot of the hatred, the anger towards animal abusers is definitely subsided, but that’s not to say that I don’t believe in all the forms of direct action. I always have supported economic sabotage, and even acts of violence. So what gives me energy now is that original love and compassion. And to me anger can blind you--make a bloody good activist but it's got its own danger within it. So when you do get involved with animal liberation, you got to observe what’s happening to yourself.