The Rise and Fall of the Anti-Vivisection Campaign «Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty»: a Systems Theory Approach

Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was a decentralized anti-vivisection campaign mainly active in the US and the UK. The campaign was directed against «Huntingdon Life Sciences» (HLS), an internationally operating animal testing laboratory. SHAC was founded in 1999 and was one of the most successful campaigns within the animal liberation movement. Using special forms of communication and organization, SHAC activists were able to inflict considerable financial damage on HLS, primarily through covert and illegal methods, causing the lab to come close to economic collapse. SHAC’s wave of success came to a crashing end when several activists were sentenced to prison in 2006. How could an internationally active campaign consisting of autonomous cells and with no clear leadership organize itself so efficiently? What led to the relatively abrupt collapse of SHAC – a movement that initially appeared so victorious? Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, particularly his connection between system and communication, can be used as a helpful tool to explore these questions and break them down historically. Luhmann’s concept of self-referentiality offers a way to explain why SHAC became radicalized in contrast to other animal rights groups and why internal system communication was part of the reason for the movement’s success and downfall.

Basic Concepts of Luhmann's Systems Theory

1. A system is the difference between the system and its environment

What does Luhmann mean by «system»? A system is the difference between the system and all that it is not. By differentiating the system from its environment, the system is able to establish an identity – by observing which structures, elements and functions are typical for it.¹ The core of Luhmann’s systems theory is the concept of autopoiesis, also called self-reference or self-reproduction. Autopoiesis is a necessary characteristic that systems must have in order to be classified as such.²

Just as biological systems help us to process information and filter specific stimuli to avoid overload, social systems help us to reduce complexity, filter information, process data, perform various functions, and establish control. The political system performs political tasks, the economic system deals with economic issues and problems. Autopoiesis now exists when systems, e.g. the legal system, reproduce and maintain themselves. Environmental stimuli, such as moral norms, can be absorbed by the legal system, but they attain legal character only through processes internal to the system.³ Systems are thus recursive – the legal system always refers to its own operations (e.g. decisions, rules or judgments) and decides on the basis of them or creates new operations of the same type.⁴ Luhmann summarizes the autopoietic operation of systems under the concept of operational closure.⁵

In summary: The purpose of systems is the reduction of complexity. The system/environment difference enables systems to distinguish themselves from other systems or their environment and understand which processes and structures are typical for them. As a result, systems process dependencies and stimuli from the environment through self-regulation and, if necessary, reproduce their structures according to their own logic.

2. Communication and Structural Coupling

Now it becomes clear why Luhmann does not think of systems as the sum of actions of individual people. People can be part of different systems, but systems consist of operations that prevail, partly persist and reproduce over many generations.⁶ Social systems, just like any other non-social system, also need a mode of operation. The mode of operation of biological systems are biochemical processes, that of mental systems thoughts and feelings, and social systems, according to Luhmann, operate through communication.⁷

Communication is also autopoietic: political communications, for example, connect to political communications.⁸ Luhmann defines communication as the sharing and understanding of information. It is a synthesis of three selections: Information («selective exclusion of other information»), message («the system could have communicated something else»), and understanding («it must be possible to reconnect to communication in the future»)⁹ Consequently, communication does not consist of speech acts, but is «processing selection».¹¹

Communication as a form of operation and its recursive connectivity, i.e. its reference to the system history and its own realms of imagination, generates social systems.¹² An example may help: The term «filter bubble» refers to the isolation of different groups through the selective assimilation of information and repeated internal encouragement between members. The «Republican» system, for example, is described by some as a filter bubble of this type because it refers strongly to itself in its communication and only docks on to its own preceding processes. By referring to itself in this manner, the boundary between the system and its environment becomes more rigid and the system is less responsive to «environmental» irritations (openness to criticism, acceptance/adaptation of other opinions and values). Since the communication of systems is self-referential, we can also explain why empirical data deriving from the environment, such as statistics on migration or crime rates, are interpreted quite differently by different systems and thus draw different conclusions – namely, conclusions that are in line with the logic of the system and the preceding communication.¹³ That is, the Republican system is very likely to select a particular piece of information about migration statistics (e.g., that migrants + crimes) and communicate it with the intention that it can be referred to again in the future (e.g. in pursuit of a conservative immigration policy).

Systems relate to other systems that perform different functions. An example of a structural coupling is the contract, which is a coupling between the systems «economy» and «law». The coupled «object», for example the contract, is used differently by the respective systems for their autopoiesis. The economic system is able to access information through contracts about who owns or does not own certain goods, and this information is essential for the operational mode of the economic system. The legal system, on the other hand, can determine from the information contained in a contract whether someone is the owner of a certain thing and, if necessary, take legal action and sanctions if the answer is negative. The systems must also be able to rely on each other: A transaction, for example, is seen by the economic system as an exchange of goods or services for money. The legal system sees this transaction as a contract between creditor and debtor. Only if the legal system defines this transaction as a contract, the economic system can render certain transactions possible, and if the economic system executes transactions, the legal system, interpreting them as contracts, can continue its autopiesis. For both systems, the structural coupling is profitable in terms of promoting their own autopoietic processes.¹⁴

Protest systems, such as SHAC, arise when a «no» is communicated to another system, thus rejecting its observed selection of decisions, demanding that the negated system evaluates its decisions and changes them in the future.¹⁵

Animal Liberation without Compromise: The Rise of SHAC

The SHAC campaign was founded by three UK-based animal rights activists who were protesting HSL and other animal testing laboratories prior to the founding of SHAC.¹⁶ At least two important moments have contributed to the emergence of SHAC: on the one hand, the release of undercover video footage from a HLS laboratory, broadcasted under the name «A Dog’s Life» on Channel 4 TV in 1997 in the UK, led to a public outcry and a desire for action.¹⁷ The footage not only revealed the violent and unnecessary experiments performed on animals, but also how the staff beat and mistreated several dogs. Public outrage channeled in protests against HSL organized by PETA, which unfortunately were quickly shut down again as HSL threatened legal action if the protests would not stop.¹⁸ The second important factor crucial to the rise of SHAC was the observation of successful forms of protest: The British Hillgrove Cat Farm and Consort Kennels – breeding farms for laboratory animals – were forced to shut down in 1998 and 1996, as a result of aggressive, partly illegal protests lasting a total of 3 years. Greg Arvery and Heather James, founders of SHAC, were co-organizers of these protests.¹⁹

In 1999, SHAC took over the campaign against HSL. SHAC was a result of the ineffectiveness of previous forms of activism and the reproduction of successful ones. In contrast to organizations dedicated to animal welfare, SHAC adopted an abolitionist stance demanding the uncompromising liberation of laboratory animals and rejected any non-abolitionist reforms.²⁰ Accoring to Luhmann, SHAC should thus be seen not as a completely new system, but as an extension of a protest system that Arvery, James and many others had already brought about through the closure of the Consort Kennels. SHAC had a complexity-reducing function in that it channeled and unified the social outcry against HLS and distinguished specific tactics.

In addition, the previous victories against Hillgrove and Consort Kennels led to the recognition that HLS could not be stopped by appealing to moral values only. By observing the opposing system, SHAC identified the logic of the laboratory as a primarily financial and capitalist one, and consequently directed its protest behavior to disrupt that logic. That means, SHAC did not identify HLS as part of the scientific system, but of the economic system, since HLS was primarily a service provider that took requests from various companies or institutions to perform the requested experiments on animals. Arvery said: «Businessmen don’t care about ethics; all they care about is profit. They don’t make ethical desicions, they make financal ones».²¹ This became the guiding principle of SHAC’s operationality against HLS. If HLS’s access to financial resources could be cut off, the system would be forced to change its form of operation or it would go down.

Internal and External Protest Communication: SHAC’s Strategy to Success

Protest communication consists of several aspects. Internal protest communication refers to the system’s internal selection of communication that can be referred to again. External protest communication exists when a protest system communicates to the outside – that is, to the one from whom it expects change.²²

(1) Autopoiesis and internal system communication

Luhmann believes that a system’s unity comes about operationally through communication and is constantly reproduced as the system refers to the system’s history and its ideas.²³ Thus, one of the most important tools for SHAC was the Internet, which regulated communication with the outside world as well as with the system’s internal world. The SHAC website, newsletters and mailings fullfilled two essential functions of communication. On the one hand, the administrators of the website selected information they received from activist groups or other allies and published them publicly. This information included location information, sensitive data on targets who worked at HLS, and information on individuals and companies to which HLS was financially dependent or affiliated.²⁴ On the other hand, the website also served as an activist press to document past actions.

This communication strategy enabled the formation of two activist wings: a moderate and a radical one. The published information were used for legal actions, such as organizing demonstrations, authorized gatherings in front of private property, phone calls, etc., as well as for illegal actions carried out by anonymous autonomous networks. In particular, the development of the illegal operations can partly be traced back to the deliberate centralization of information. Underground groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) are composed of loose activist cells that operate autonomously and in a self-determined manner. The ALF functions without leadership and the umbrella organization merely communicates what criteria must be met for an action to belong to the system.²⁵ Because SHAC left open how protests were to be held, direct action groups were able to infiltrate efficiently, while requiring minimal effort and resources to be put into the communication channels.²⁶

The autopoietic aspect of communication, in turn, found expression in publishing past actions. Anonymous underground groups, for example, could utilize the continuously published history of actions to additionally reinforce pressure on certain targets that had already been attacked through legal actions (protests, mass mailings, phone calls). Conversely, the ALF was able to illegally obtain essential and sensitive information that was published on the SHAC website. The release of this content led again to legal or illegal actions. Various protest participants thus acted autonomously and contributed to the self-referentiality of the system through their actions.

Luhmann assumes that any conflict relationship between systems will result in the system whose actions are negated to eventually fight back.²⁷ SHAC's efficient and successful organization resulted in the interference of authorities and police. However, the informal or non-existent connections between activist cells and website authors made it impossible for the police to identify, predict, or stop SHAC's internal operations. The autopoietic aspects rendered SHAC's actions unpredictable.

(2) External protest communication, protest behavior, and the influence on opposing systems.

SHAC was so successful because the system was able to locate the enemy system's weak point in order to attack there. As already discussed, HLS was primarily a service provider and relied on credit and insurance companies.²⁸ The activists realized that attacking HLS alone was not enough. HLS already experienced attacks by anti-vivisection movements and responded by implementing increased security measures or by threatening legal action.²⁹ If SHAC had focused on HLS alone, the movement might have shut down much sooner due to state repression. By identifying dependencies and affiliations, SHAC attempted to deprive HLS of system-maintaining connections. SHAC not only attacked the primary target, but extended its radius to HLS's customers, suppliers, and lenders.

Illegal ALF actions exerted financial pressure on target companies through eco-sabotage (property damage, intimidation, and bribery) or by obtaining incriminating evidence (secret recordings, leaked information). The influence exerted by the ALF or the subsystem operating in the underground cannot be underestimated. Many systems associated with HLS felt their existence threatened by SHAC and did not want to risk becoming victims of eco-sabotage as well, which led to a disassociation from HLS.³¹ In turn, groups operating on the surface made use of methods such as persistent phone calls or serial letters to disrupt the communication of enterprises affiliated with HLS. In addition, activists protested in front of the companies for weeks. The protesters carried posters and placards with messages such as «Puppy Killers» to influence the public, business partners, and the media.³² Legal protests and civil disobedience created social and representational pressure on HLS partner unions and had a destabilizing effect on the systems structurally coupled to HLS - and thus on HLS itself.

The combination of (1) and (2) formed a threat incomprehensible to other systems. HLS and its partners were under threat of being financially hit by underground groups. The groups operating on the surface, in turn, damaged the companies' national and international representation. By 2003, SHAC had managed to force about 100 HLS-affiliated companies and lenders, including the Royal Bank of Scotland, to cease doing business with HLS. The HLS partners did not want to take any risks and complied with the demands of the protest system. They adapted their internal processes to the external stimuli.³²

The End of a System: The Destructivness of Autopoietic Conflict Systems

Luhmann assumes that if conflicts between systems persist due to a long-lasting and communicative disagreement, the conflict itself becomes a system whose subsystems are parasitically opposed to each other. IIn the case of SHAC, the conflict was not only with HLS and its associated companies, but rather with a whole coalition that was formed across multiple systems against SHAC, with the state and judicial systems leading the way. Conflict systems have an escalative tendency, as conflict communication is expressed primarily in mutual disadvantaging, harming and coercion, and the autopoiesis of these processes can lead to the aggressive destruction of one party.³³ Luhmann suggests that when protest systems do not incorporate complete nonviolence into their operativity, the conflict system becomes increasingly tense as the opposing side is forced to respond and retaliate with violence as well in order to keep itself alive.³⁴

he demise of SHAC can be analyzed with these system- and conflict-theoretical considerations. Above all, Luhmann’s observation that nonviolence is used by many protest systems to keep themselves alive is vital. SHAC has rejected this renunciation of “violence” and has thereby come into conflict with the police system, whose function is to control the preservation of laws, and the state system, whose interests SHAC has harmed. In particular, the state system, which is strongly structurally coupled with the economic system, responded to the illegal ALF actions. SHAC identified the weak point of the conflicting parties in a neoliberalist and capitalist logic and effectively used means to damage the systems, but this in turn caused the opposing systems to also radicalize. An example of the coaliton strength between the state and economy can be seen in the fact that the state-managed Bank of England funded HLS when it was on the verge of bankruptcy.³⁵ In 2001, after SHAC had succeeded in cutting off almost all of HLS’s essential sources of revenue and no private enterprise could be found that would enter into partnership with them, the state system decided to lend to HLS through the Bank of England, which had previously only financed state-owned entities, saving HLS from collapse.³⁶

Additionally, the pharmaceutical and life sciences industries, as well as numerous ventures affected by SHAC attacks, began to apply increased pressure on the government through lobbying in 2003. Pharmaceutical profits were a significant source of revenue in the UK at the time, and lobbying groups threatened the state system to relocate in the future if they failed to deal with the SHAC problem. Consequently, in so called Operation Forton launched in 2004, police attempted to gather intel to identify and eliminate those organizing and channel internal system communications. The British and American intelligence services, after large-scale cooperation, succeeded in arresting the six individuals who managed SHAC’s American website and punishied them with 4-7 years in prison. In 2007, the arrest of 7 SHAC members in the UK followed, receiving 4 – 11 years in prison. This marked the beginning of the end of SHAC. By arresting those responsible for transmitting information and running the website, the police deprived SHAC of its communication channel and made the activist organization increasingly ineffective for the first time.³⁷

SThis can be seen in the criminalization of the activists who ran the website.The affiliation of autonomous groups to the system was a reason for its downfall. Precisely because the ALF was seen as constitutive of the system and the radical front was the most threatening to the system coalition, its fight was localized, among other things, in the deprivation of internal system communication.³⁸ Several activists who run the SHAC website were convicted on charges of conspiracy. Kevin Jonas, a SHAC activist sentenced to 6 years in prison in the U.S., interpreted the harsh countermeasures to indicate that the government and corporate sector recognized that a movement like SHAC was not only a threat to animal testing laboratories, but by the nature of its organization and tactics, would be able to destroy other systems as well.³⁹

State repression researchers share this assumption. The judicial system in the US had no legal means to prosecute the operators of the SHAC websites. In the same year of their arrest, the FBI and the vivisection lobby therefore pushed for an expansion of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), which was subsequently approved. The expansion of AETA had the effect of allowing nonviolent protests to be interpreted as acts of terrorism if they resulted in sufficient financial harm to a facility or enterprise. AETA can be interpreted as an autopoietic consequence of the conflict system, representing the culmination of an escalative dynamic. AETA was capable of convicting the American SHAC members under the charge of “conspiracy,” even though the FBI had no evidence of the individuals’ involvement in property destruction and illegal actions, nor could the prosecutors prove that the activists were actively involved in the “conspiracies”.⁴⁰ By charging not only certain individuals, but SHAC as an organization, the conflicting parties were additionally able to permanently shut down the SHAC website in the US and prohibit its resumption.⁴¹ AETA now can interpret even non-violent and peaceful protests that are able to potentially inflict financial harm to a target as terrorist acts, which means that even moderate activism is deprived of some of its freedom of operation.

AETA is still part of the counterterrorism program and is directed against other direct action systems.

Conclusion

Based on Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, I tried to answer how SHAC was created, why the system relied on radical tactics, and what role communication played in the system. The first question was answered by reconstructing the history of SHAC and showing that the system implemented a normative abolitionist logic and tried to implement those forms of action that could follow this system-internal logic. SHAC is a good example to grasp the concept of autopoiesis historically. Internal system communication constantly referred to itself and allowed many different autonomous groups to constitute the system through communication. SHAC consisted of loose activist groups, but forming a unit. The application of ecosabotage created a conflict coalition that disrupted SHAC’s communication flow to such an extent that the system came to a complete halt years later. AETA offered a tool to put a permanent end to adversarial communication, taking a way to organize between underground und legal activist groups. Luhmann’s systems theory provides helpful means to break down complex historical contexts and to rationalize and conceptualize system behavior. What Luhmann’s theory cannot do is to interpret the facts critically. If one were to do so anyway, we can see where the priority of our legal, state and police systems lies: State, scientific and judicial systems have internalized the protection of capital in their self-referential logic so badly that the protection of sentient living beings is grossly neglected. In addition to the inability of systems theory to include and evaluate the actions and responsibilites of different systems and especially individuals, the high abstraction grade of the theory can prevent a more detailed analysis and trivialize historical processes.