OXFORD UNIVERSITY - A DISHONOURABLE INSTITUTION

Encaenia Ceremony Demo Report - Wednesday 23rd June 2010

On Wednesday 23rd June 2010, Oxford University held its annual Encaenia ceremony, the most important event in it's calendar, when it awards honorary degrees to those it considers to be worthy, and those who help fill its coffers. As ever, SPEAK Campaign supporters were on hand to inform recipients, guests and tourists of the horrific truth hidden behind the pomp and ceremony - of the 16,000 plus innocent, non-consenting beings imprisoned and exploited in the university's labs, less than five minutes walk from the Sheldonian Theatre where the day’s events were taking place.

Every year since the beginning of the campaign, Oxford has made the highly dishonourable decision to honour someone involved in some way with the barbaric practice of vivisection and 2010 was no exception, with an award being presented to one of its most ardent supporters and a crucial figure in the building of Oxford’s new torture lab, Lord David Sainsbury. Sainsbury bought his way into the Labour Government, attaining a life peerage and then the post of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science in July 1998. While in this post he played a major role in the forcing through of Cambridge University’s plans to build what would have been Europe’s largest primate laboratory, riding roughshod over the opinions of the local people and council and manipulating the planning process. When the fight to stop this lab from being built was won, Sainsbury and the government turned their sights to Oxford and ensured that their lab would be completed, no matter what the cost, allowing the construction and security to exceed its estimate by millions of pounds – but those who really pay the cost are the over 150, 000 animals who suffer physically and psychologically each year in worthless research, some of which has been refused a licence in other countries due to the appalling cruelty involved.