Dending Animal Rights

Abstract

IN the two decades after the second world war, animal welfare was largely absent from public discourse. Even the burgeoning environmental movement in the 1970s, in so far as it touched upon animals at all, focused upon wild species and, more specifically, the plight of whales. Many animal protection societies still existed but they tended to be dormant, engaging in little active campaigning and relying financially on bequests rather than subscriptions from an active membership. The position of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) was a symbol of this inertia. Founded in 1824, it had by the 1960s become a respected charitable organisation, but it was inactive on most animal welfare issues, concentrating on pet animals and, in particular, the development of its inspectorate which polices existing legislation. The climate was summed up by the Littlewood Committee, set up by the Conservative government in 1962 to look into the case for reforming the law on animal experimentation, which found, in its 1965 report, no evidence of extensive public demands for reform, let alone pressure which might be electorally significant.