Martin Balluch – The Interview

When he wasn't sabbing with Barry Horne, running from Consort Kennels with a liberation beagle, or playing his part in 50 open raids on battery hen farms Martin Balluch was successfully forcing the ban on fur farms, battery hen farms and putting animal protection in the Austrian constitution.

This interview was first published in Biteback magazine No. 10. Re-printed with kind permission.

BiteBack: Often direct action activists view the political process with disdain and as distinct and separate from the radical campaigns they run and many within the legislative effort for animal protection feel the same of controversial and cutting edge campaigns. The Austrian animal rights movement has demonstrated that direct action and policy creation need not necessarily work against each other and can indeed compliment each other's respective methods. Your Austrian organization, the Association Against Animal Factories, saw the marriage of these two factions and has achieved remarkable success as a result. What influenced your organization's decision to enter into the political foray? What gave you hope in coupling the two tracks of activism that so many others involved with direct action or legislative change have not seen or shared?

Martin Balluch: In my own activism, I have spent much more than a decade before having anything to do with politicians and legislation. My first experience with such politics was the fur farm ban we achieved in Austria in 1998. When all but one fur farm had gone by different means of activism, it was astonishingly easy to get a ban. I realized that politicians are happy to ban animal abuse, if there is not much economic pressure against it. But that experience is nothing new: it's the animal abuse industry and its economic power and undemocratic influence that are by far the most important single obstacle for animal liberation.

So, I suggest a new approach. View laws not as steps to improve animal welfare and reduce animal suffering, while their usage is not being questioned, but view laws as attacks against the animal industry. A new animal law, never mind whether its welfarist or rightist, is a good thing if it costs the industry, and no good thing if it does not. Any law that makes it more expensive and difficult for the farmed animal industry, the vivisection industry, the hunting industry, the animal entertainment industry and so forth, is a good thing, much like economic sabotage. In essence, it is economic sabotage. If a capitalist enterprise does its sums and finds that not abusing animals is less expensive, they will stop doing it.

And, secondly, we found that the classic grassroots campaigns against animal industries can equally be used to pressure regional or national governments to make new laws. There is just one very important ingredient: your campaign has to be seen by the public to be just and understandable. The pressure you can build up against politicians is public pressure, less psychological. The moment the politicians can portray you as terrorists and are believed, they have won this battle, no matter what. But that, also, is an important ingredient for campaigns generally, even if to a lesser degree. The more you can be portrayed as an undemocratic terrorist threat, the easier they have it to come down on you like a ton of bricks and lock you up for good, with or without the corresponding laws.

BB: Do you think lasting social change can be achieved with the exclusion of radical action and pursuing only policy? Do you think radical/liberationist campaigns can create permanent social change without lobbying for new laws protecting their gains?

MB: I think people are neither bad, so that they have to be forced by law, nor good, so that they stick to high moral principles to their own disadvantage, but people are adaptive and go with the flow, choose the easiest and most comfortable way of living on a long term. Hence, the system how a society is run, the social support, health care, wealth distribution, but also the availability of products, defines how people behave. Lasting social change means changing the system how society is organized.

Some people believe such a change could come about by slowly turning ever more people vegan, until eventually everyone is, or until the animal industries feel the boycott and change. History shows, I believe, that this will never work. Not because people are inherently bad, but because most people have neither enough time nor enough energy to invest into swimming against the flow, i.e. against the system in society, long enough for a boycott to bite.

My suggestion hence is this. We need to change industry to provide easily available ample and cheap vegan alternatives to everything and at the same time make it ever harder for animal industries to produce cheaply, so that eventually the animal industries are pushed off the cliff and disappear. For that we need to damage those industries and hurt them in their pockets by any means. That can be economic sabotage as much as direct campaigning or achieving animal laws. The latter are very effective, because they cause lasting damage. Direct economic sabotage on the other hand can never occur on a very large scale lest society reacts with violence and ever worse police state methods. We will never be strong enough to counter that. Hence direct economic sabotage actions can only be stings, but put into the right place at the right time they can still be very effective.

I believe radical actions on the fringe of legality and beyond are very important tools for any campaign, for law changes as much as industry changes. They are vital so that your opponents know you mean business. To meet and talk only, with politicians or industry representatives, is in my experience never ever enough. Secondly, I cannot believe that it will be possible to exert enough pressure on animal industries to get rid of them, without the use of animal laws.

BB: One of the most remarkable achievements for animal rights in the new millennium has been that a first world western nation, Austria, has included animal protection into its constitution. In 2004, along side human rights, the new constitution in your country reads, "The state protects the life and wellbeing of animals in its responsibility for them as fellows of mankind." Can you explain more definitely what this means for animal rights in Austria?

MB: It is true that on 27 th May 2004 the whole Austrian Parliament unanimously voted for the change in the constitution you quoted. I consider constitutional changes very vital, because the constitution, after all, is the very basis of society, the minimal consensus everybody agrees on. Every politician, every law and every act of law enforcement must conform to the constitution.

However, practically speaking, there was something else more effective in practice being established with the same vote on 27 th May 2004: the animal solicitors. Every province in Austria has now an animal solicitor appointed, funded by government, who can intervene on behalf of animals in all cases concerning the animal law. The animal solicitors, who have been active since 1 st January 2005, can intervene, bring animal abusers to court and appeal bad decisions and make sure abusers are prosecuted. The animal solicitors even did press releases and press conferences against animal abuse already and so far we have a good working relationship with most of them. If somebody breaks into a factory farm and films illegal conditions, we hand the evidence to the animal solicitors and they prosecute! Animal solicitors are a big step towards animal rights, since their installment essentially means that for the first time the interests of all animals (be they great apes or lobsters) are being officially recognized and represented before courts and at the political level.

BB: It took roughly 8 years of political campaigning and grassroots activism to achieve this incredible precedent. Can you describe what went into the campaign both on the aboveground and underground level?

MB: Yes, it was an unbelievably successful campaign since, at the beginning, not one single of the 4 parties in Parliament, including the Green Party, was in favor of the new law and the constitutional change. At the beginning, none of the political parties had an animal spokesperson and animal rights demands were usually ignored.

We started the campaign in 1996 with a so-called people's initiative, i.e. in Austria if enough people officially sign a demand it can be put before the general population, who has one specific week to go to their magistrate and sign officially. 11% of the population signed, as did 6% of MPs. At the general election 2002, we intensified the campaign by occupying the HQ of the Conservative Party for 13 hours! As a consequence, the Conservatives in government agreed in principle to debate a new law, without agreeing to any demands in advance. They thought they could keep the lid on the topic this way, without looking responsible if there is no progress.

We then started an ever more intensive classic grass roots campaign, with permanent demos, occupations, blockades, media work, fly posting and disrupting Conservative election rallies. Especially the latter proved very successful, as the Conservatives reacted irate and attacked us physically. During our campaign there were 3 elections which the Conservatives all lost, sometimes dramatically. It was this, the election losses together with relentless pressure at their rallies and media news against them, which persuaded them to agree to our demands. The opposition, who supported our campaign, was not able to disagree with our demands after the government had given in, so suddenly the road was clear and almost all our demands were met.

BB: Thanks to 50 open rescues you and your organization undertook with press attention in a two week period in 2003, battery cages were banned in Austria in 2004. This campaign saw a dramatic court room battle over your role in liberating simply 7 hens in one of the raids and a rather sensational act of civil disobedience in a governor's office. Can you tell the story of this campaign, your charges, and the elements that made the ban a reality, and what this means for Austrian egg production?

MB: Battery farming of laying hens has been a very long term issue in Austria. As everywhere, almost all hens were in cages only 20 years ago. Due to pictures and films of their suffering, it slowly became common opinion that battery farming is the worst animal abuse there is, even in school that was taught as part of the curriculum.

Three groups of activists broke into, altogether, 48 battery farms, keeping 40% of all laying hens in Austria, and publicized the conditions there, including that all laws and regulations were broken and that there was no governmental control scheme. We did a number of open rescues with lots of media attention. In addition, we occupied the Governor's office by chaining ourselves to his furniture and putting dead battery chickens onto his desk.

This campaign shook up the battery industry badly. Obviously, we had countless trials, at least 25 against the battery farmers with us as witnesses, but also as much against us for trespass and theft. Most of the battery farmers were convicted, we got some convictions too, but the Highest Court ruled that my liberating the hens was not illegal, as I acted in accordance with the public's wishes! A very remarkable result.

After many demos and actions, battery farm occupations and more open rescues, surprising the Conservative party leaders in Parliament with battery cages and a TV team in attendance, and after the Conservatives started to loose all elections, we won. Battery farms will be illegal in Austria from 1 st January 2009 onwards.

BB: You are currently Sabbing the now illegal ‘bird trapping', a 400 year old tradition in Austria, and this means taking considerable risks physically. In your reports from the field you talk about spying on the trappers, avoiding possible ambushes by them, and voicing a general concern over physical altercations and assault. How real is the threat of violence by the opposition, and what is your policy on responding to it?

MB: The more seriously we have an impact on animal industries, the more vicious they will fight us. If we manage to get the public and the law on our side, then they will resort to violence. That has often been the case. I had a number of death threats, I had my windows smashed at home, and I do use some precautions to avoid ambush from animal abusers generally in my life. That's the price you pay for such successes and if you are in the lime light of it all. During a public debate on bird trapping, a trapper pulled a knife on us. After a trial against a battery farmer that I won, the farmer told me in leaving that he has bought a gun to shoot me. I do believe he did buy that gun and would use it.

Some of our activity involves breaking in and filming evidence or directly sabbing and stopping animal abuse. Being confronted during such activity, obviously, is psychologically the most dangerous situation, because the abusers feel they are being “attacked” and in their “rights” and must defend themselves. We had a number of injuries already, I have been punched in the face quite a number of times, we had broken noses, one of us was shot in the thigh and another had a badly damaged vertebra after an assault. But the moment we stop our activity out of fear, we have lost the cause. Freedom means no fear, of nobody. And we are prepared to fight for that.

BB: The SHAC campaign has been criticized that closing HLS will just send the animals and testing to countries with laws not as strong or as well enforced (which is a joke if you know anything about US animal welfare laws and regulations). It seems your circus effort success has experienced a similar problem as at least one of the Austrian circuses sold off its animals to a German one which is not as protective of how its animals are treated. How do you respond to this concern?

MB: Sure, animal rights is a global problem demanding global solutions. But those, too, will have to be realized step by step. There won't ever be a global big sweep towards animal rights in one moment. The bans in Austria make precedents for other countries, as they did already for example with the fur farm ban in England. And EU-bans will be precedents for elsewhere as well. The idea of animal rights and animal protection will spread over the whole globe sooner or later; we are only in an interim period.

BB: The conservative party has been the main obstacle for your organization's political advancements, why is this?

MB: The Conservative Party historically represents the farmers in Austria, who are responsible for the biggest number of animal abuses. Also, the city with its stronger leaning to left-wing socialist politics is far more open to animal rights than is the countryside, which mostly votes conservative. The usage of animals and the view of nonhuman animals as things are traditions. When conservatives keep traditions, they keep the status quo of animals being for the use of humanity. The Conservative Party hence is the natural enemy of the animal rights movement.

BB: Do you believe in single-issue politics? If a politician is pro-animal but against other social policies that help the environment or traditionally oppressed people (ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians, etc) should we still lend them our support because the plight of animals is vastly more endemic and tragic, or oppose them because of the commonality and interconnectedness of oppression?

MB: Every social justice movement needs “mad” people, who are so much involved that they give up anything and everything for the cause. It's this handful of mad people that gets the others going and makes the movement move. So, I do believe, for a successful campaign, at least some key activists should stay focused on the one issue at hand and not divert their attention elsewhere at all.

When it comes to cooperation with other movements or politicians, you must be very careful. If you are after a very specific goal, like destroying HLS or getting a ban on battery farming, then I say do as wide a coalition on this specific issue as you can. Try to get everybody into the boat for this specific demand and push it through. After that you part again.

If you do general campaigning for a change in awareness, trying to persuade people to change and become vegan and adapt their lifestyle etc., then I say do not do any associations with other causes or people of different persuasion. Because anybody else on board with any political persuasion, be it communist or right wing, religious or atheist, will distract from your message and turn somebody away. Show that the animal rights message is of wider importance and has many parallels and deep connections to other oppressions, by any means, but don't imply that for becoming animal rights or vegan, you have to be left-wing or anarchist or anti-catholic or whatever. I don't think you have to take the Catholic's faith away before you can turn them vegan, they surely can become faithful vegans and good activists within their belief system, even if the catholic church has a bad record of animal abuse, human and non-human.

BB: A lot of your success with radical action and progressive policy implementation has come from courting a sympathetic press. How important is the press to the Austrian animal rights movement? Could you have achieved as much if the media was far more antagonistic than supportive? Do you fear that as you become more successful and the government and major corporations are more threatened as a result that the media trend will change against you? How would you deal with this?

MB: The media played and still plays a very important role for the movement. To start with, I think, any media coverage is better than none (with exceptions, obviously), even if it is not sympathetic. The worst fate a social justice movement can suffer is being ignored.

Take the trapping sabbing campaign. Local media always report negatively about us, portraying us as a mob and as terrorists. The alternative would be they ignore us and the trappers trap as they always did, don't realize how active we are and there is no conflict. With this negative reporting, there is conflict, in the minds of people there is a debate, their trapping is being questioned. Better conflict than they keep trapping like business as usual.

BB: While earning your PhD at Cambridge University, you spent some time in England where you also cut your teeth on radical animal rights activism. What did you learn from their strategies, demonstrations, and movement politics that you've applied to your efforts in Austria?

MB: The movement in England is mostly run by the working class and is very activism based, with rather little concern for media and how the activity is portrayed publicly. There is a very strong general distrust of authority and a strong opposition to national animal welfare organizations.

In Austria, the movement is not and has never been working class based. It is rather the middle class that does the campaigning. The idea for permanent demos outside fur shops or elsewhere was directly imported from Britain. It was something new in Austria. It took a while before it became clear that these new tactics of protest would not alienate the public, if carefully applied, and that the media as well as the politicians, especially from the opposition, are much more sympathetic and open to animal rights than they were in England. I think we have now reached an effective mixture of the two kinds of tactical approach, avoiding the pitfalls of infighting between animal rights and animal welfare, and still running radical, honest and successful campaigns.

BB: You were arrested on one of the most famous grassroots demonstrations in our movement's history - when a riot broke out at Consort Kennels and a beagle was almost successfully liberated in the midst of it. Can you tell this story (briefly - and include how you had that very beagle on your lap as you were driven to jail) and how it changed you.

MB: At this demo, to the surprise of all of us, many thousand people turned up. The police had cordoned off the place and some 300 riot cops were inside. At the very beginning, some activists used the moment of surprised, managed to get into Consort Beagles and liberate a beagle. However, soon the riot cops closed in and cut off their escape route. Suddenly, masked activists appeared on the roof top with a beagle in their hands and called to the other protestors to help.

It was a tremendous upsurge of energy and, riot cops or none, people ripped down the fence and stormed in. Soon, police were driven back and the activists from the roof could dive into the crowd with the beagle. Everybody started to roll up some clothes on their arms, so that it looked as if they were carrying a beagle and walked off to their vehicles. The police were freaked and tried to prevent that at all costs.

I happened to be in the group of people, maybe 10, who were carrying the dog. Suddenly, a lone police officer came and checked us, soon spotting the dog. While some distracted the officer, I took hold of the dog and ran off, since I was very fit from lots of sabbing in those days. But a police car spotted me and set a police dog loose on me, who came and bit me and was clinging on to me till police caught up. Some activists came and we all held on to the dog and built a huge heap of bodies, by then surrounded by ever more coppers. When they were many more than us, they started to attack and arrest one by one, till I was left alone with the dog. I was put into a police car, with the dog on my lap, and was driven to the police station, where, eventually, they took the dog away by force.

It was a very moving experience, and very sad for this particular dog. But it was also a powerful experience, to realize that we are strong enough to break through police cordons with hundreds of riot cops, if need be, to liberate one beagle dog. The atmosphere then among the protestors and the will to help, and the smart action for everyone to run off pretending to have the dog, was admirable. It took them hours to catch the dog by shear luck, many miles away from Consort Beagles. Now, Consort Beagles has long been closed.

BB: Also while in England you were very public in your show of support for convicted ALF activist Barry Horne, whilst on hunger strike, hanging off the side of a church steeple in Cambridge with a banner. Barry's amazing legacy is still be debated today, as a supporter and an activist that has traveled extensively how do you think he affected our movement as a whole with his sacrifice?

MB: Barry Horne was a very brave activist, I used to sab mink hunts with him, and sometimes it was just us two intervening. When I was shit scared, he acted nevertheless and pulled me with him. Similarly in his campaign of economic sabotage and then in his hunger-strike, he was fearless, focused on the issue and determined to pull it through.

Every movement has its history. That is important, because it forms an identity for the movement that can help to get you and others to commit yourselves to the cause. It is often not easy to drop your “normal” life, or to risk imprisonment, but without such brave acts I doubt we will ever succeed. We need the “mad” people in the movement, who are willing to invest all they have in the cause. It's the most important cause I can think of, worth such investment, especially with the prospect of serious change ahead.

I would like us to learn from Barry's death how much we need each other, how much we depend upon each other in this movement, to be successful and to achieve real progress. Let's drop the infighting and destructive arguments on tactics or positions, but go ahead and smash the animal industries each in our own way, supportive to the rest of us. We are one movement, united in the will to change things for the better with regards to animal abuse, there is enough room for different tactics, but there is no limit in how much we need to pull on the same rope, when it comes down to it.

BB: What is your all time favorite ALF action?

MB: On 6 th July 1985, I believe, activists entered University Park Farm in Oxford, England, where animals for vivisection are being held, for reconnaissance. They found Rosy, a mixed breed dog, obviously someone's pet, who was about to be used for transplant experiments. In this night, the most famous picture of Rosy in an activists arm was made. The activists left and Rosy stayed behind.

In the next night, Rosy was liberated together with 31 other dogs from this place. But, very few days later, police raids in Birmingham found Rosy and identified her as coming from this lab. She was brought back there.

Some days later, on the 18 th July 1985, the activists came back and liberated Rosy again. She then continued to live for about 18 years in a loving family until she died peacefully. What an amazing story!