Encaenia - Honouring the great and the good?

Demo Report - Wednesday 24th June, 2009

Each year, on a Wednesday in the latter part of June, Oxford University holds its Encaenia Ceremony, when it bestows honorary degrees on those deemed by them to be ‘the great and the good’, and commemorates those who give them money, something very important to such a greedy institution. Dating back centuries, the ceremony is attended by the honorands, university dignitaries and invited guests.

Every year since the beginning of the campaign, Oxford University has conferred an honorary degree of Doctor of Science upon an individual with an involvement in the brutalizing of innocent, non-consenting animals in experimentation and this year was no exception with Australian physician Professor Barry Marshall receiving an award. This man’s most famous work is concerned with the discovery of the cause of most stomach ulcers which, in fact, he eventually found after infecting himself with bacteria, but this was only after he had searched unsuccessfully for an animal model, attempting to infect various different species along the way, including piglets.

This event is a centuries old tradition, but it is now also a tradition for SPEAK Campaigners to attend Oxford on this day to protest against the appalling catalogue of abuse heaped upon innocent, living beings by this institution which promotes itself as a centre of academic excellence and nobility. 2009 was no exception, and on 24th June, as the university and its guests began to assemble, so did protesters, determined to bring attention to the plight of the animals who would be suffering while the celebrations took place.

The ceremony begins with a procession of some of the participants into the Sheldonian Theatre on Broad Street, inside which the main event takes place. It enters by a side entrance to the Theatre, on Catte Street, and this is where the demo began, with protesters setting up their banners and placards and beginning to hand out leaflets to those entering the building for the ceremony, and to those simply passing by. Right from the start support was received, including from those in their robes attending the ceremony. Despite having been found to have illegally arrested protesters on the same occasion in 2006, the police were on hand to attempt to intimidate and harass protesters, but SPEAK Campaign supporters are made of sterner stuff and made it clear that they would assert their rights to inform the public of the horrific fate facing over 16, 000 animals in Oxford’s laboratories. As the procession came into sight, with a large crowd gathered to watch it, the protesters made good use of the megaphone to make everyone in the vicinity aware of what really goes on behind the attractive façade of the city’s ‘dreaming spires’.

After the procession had entered the building and the onlookers had dispersed, the protesters moved around to the front of the building on Broad Street, where many tourists were passing by, and continued their demo for the duration of the ceremony. When the festivities were over some protesters remained in this position, while others returned to Catte Street so as to reach as many people leaving the theatre as possible. As before, many people signalled their approval to the activists, while many others accepted leaflets and could be seen studying these intently as they walked away.

The right to ‘hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers’ is enshrined in law by Article 10 of The Human Rights Act. SPEAK will continue to assert our right to impart, and the public’s right to receive, the facts about the horrors that occur in Oxford’s labs each and every day and will continue to demonstrate at occasions such as this to do so. We will not be bullied, we will not be harassed, we will not be intimidated into going away and we will NEVER be silenced. 24th June 2009 was a beautiful sunny day for the people of Oxford and its university, but for the innocent animals in its labs, like every other day, it will have been a living hell. These animals have no one to fight for their rights but us, and this we will continue to do until vivisection is brought to an end, once and for all, and every cage is empty.