Roger Yates (born 7 August 1957) is an English lecturer in sociology at University College Dublin and the University of Wales, specialising in animal rights. He is a former executive committee member of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), a former Animal Liberation Front (ALF) press officer, and a co-founder of the Fur Action Group. Yates was sentenced to four years' imprisonment in 1987 for conspiracy to commit criminal damage on behalf of the ALF. He absconded during the trial, and was on the run for two years, before being apprehended and serving his sentence. After his release in 1990, he began an academic study of animal protectionism and social movements, obtaining his PhD in 2005 on the subject of human/non-human relations. His current work focuses on the social transmission of speciesism. Yates maintains a blog on his web site, On Human Relations with Other Sentient Beings, and often co-hosts pro-intersectional podcasts with Carolyn Bailey of Animal Rights Zone (ARZone.)
Activism
BUAV, Merseyside Animal Rights Yates became involved in the British animal rights movement in 1979, following a false start two years earlier when he joined the Hunt Saboteurs Association (HSA), but failed to find fellow "sabs" near Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. By 1979 he had moved to Essex and had become active as a vegan animal rights advocate. He was one of a group of activists associated with the Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group (ALF SG), who tried in the early 1980s to gain control of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, a group founded in 1898. Yates became a member of the BUAV's executive committee in 1982, along with Dave McColl, a director of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and they used the position to radicalise the organisation, which meant that significant campaigning funds became available to activists for the first time. He co-founded the Fur Action Group with others from the BUAV, and created the largest data bank on fur-bearing animals in the country, later handed over to the Lynx anti-fur organisation. Kim Stallwood, BUAV's national organiser from 1981 to 1986, writes that the ALF activists who wanted to take over the BUAV believed all political action to be a waste of time, and wanted the group to devote its resources to direct action. The BUAV had been supportive of the ALF, and had allowed the ALF SG to use free office space in the BUAV's London offices, but in 1984 the board reluctantly voted to expel the ALF SG and to withdraw its political support from the ALF. Yates moved to Liverpool to become a main organiser of the Merseyside Animal Rights Committee, along with Hunt Saboteur Association co-ordinators Dave and Fiona Callender. He helped with the HSA's annual campaigns against the Waterloo Cup hare coursing event and the Northern grouse shoot sabotages, and joined the Merseyside Sea Shepherd's campaigns against seal killing in the Orkney Islands. He also devised the "fur pledge" campaign targeting Manchester-based furrier, Edelson Furs, which had a number of franchises in large department stores; the pledge involved members of the public vowing to boycott entire stores while they had fur departments. He initiated public showings of videos such as Victor Schonfeld's The Animals Film, and opened and ran the first "Animal Rights Shop" in Liverpool City centre, selling merchandise from a range of national animal protection organisations. Throughout this period, Merseyside activists were active members of the Northern Animal Liberation League (NALL), culminating in a daylight raid on ICI in Alderley Park, Cheshire, involving 300 activists.
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