‘My point to you is this,’ Tony Blair said of terrorists last month, ‘It’s time we stopped saying “OK, we abhor their methods but we kinda see something in their ideas or maybe they’ve got a sliver of an excuse or justification.” They’ve got no justification for it.’
The Prime Minister’s words must sound pretty hollow to the Hall family of Newchurch, Staffordshire, this week. The Halls have been driven to close their farm, which breeds guinea pigs for medical research, after a six-year sustained campaign of terror by animal rights extremists. Over that time they have been subjected to numerous death threats, a firebomb attack and hundreds of acts of criminal damage. The final straw for the Halls was the desecration of the grave and theft of the remains of one family member, Gladys Hammond, by a group calling itself the Animal Rights Militia.
When the Halls finally threw in the towel earlier this week the government did not immediately condemn the tactics of the animal rights lobby.
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