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.^[3]

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.^[4]

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.^[5]

ALF press officer

In 1983 Ronnie Lee, the co-founder and national press liaison officer of the ALF SG, asked Yates to act as the organisation's northern press officer.^[6] This coincided with a dramatic change in ALF activity from direct rescue of animals to committing acts of economic sabotage, and in the government and police response to direct action. During this period, homes for animals rescued by animal liberationists were drying up, so Yates founded the Rescued Animals Sanctuary Fund.

In February 1987, he was one of 12 defendants convicted at Sheffield Crown Court, including three ALF SG press officers, after police raided a house in which they found evidence that incendiary devices were being created from fire lighters, batteries, and broken light bulbs. Similar devices hidden inside cigarette packets had been used in fur stores and department stores selling fur throughout England and Scotland, with the intention of setting off the sprinkler systems.^[7] Yates was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for conspiracy to cause criminal damage, while Ronnie Lee received a ten-year term.^[8] Lee's sentence coincided with the jailing for six and seven years of two defendants in the Ealing Vicarage rape case—where two men raped a woman in front of her boyfriend and father, who were badly beaten—prompting Conservative MP Steven Norris to declare in 1987 that, "sentencing at the moment seems to suggest that a woman's body is less valuable than property or the right of experimenters and mink farmers to live in peace."^[9]

Yates absconded during his trial and spent three years on the run. He writes: "While we were getting to the end of the trial our barristers told us that Ronnie [Lee] could expect something like 16 years in jail and the 'lieutenants' in the case, such as Brendan, Vivian Smith and myself, might get 10 years each. I was the only defendant with children at the time and I realised we were talking about most of their school years...."^[1] While on the run, he helped launch the Federation of Local Animal Rights Groups.^[10]

Yates was arrested in north Wales in 1989 after a bomb exploded in the Senate House bar of Bristol University, an act claimed by the "Animal Abuse Society," an unknown group. The attack was followed by a series of car bomb attacks.^[11] Yates became a leading suspect in the Bristol attack. His mug shot was widely distributed and he was arrested within three weeks.^[12] He appealed to activists from his prison cell in a statement to The Guardian that they take no life-threatening action, in line with ALF policy.^[13] The car-bomb attacks continued, claimed by the "British Animal Rights Society," another unknown group. After a nail bomb attack on a Land Rover, the car's owner, a huntsman, was charged with having blown up his own car. He was jailed for nine months, reportedly telling the court that he had done it to discredit the animal rights movement.^[14]

Vegan Ireland, Animal Education Outreach, Animal Rights Month

Yates is a co-founder and the Press Officer of Vegan Ireland: The Vegan Society of Ireland and a representative of Animal Education Outreach,^[15] which gives talks about animal use and treatment to Irish schools and colleges. 2010 was a busy media year for Vegan Ireland, with Yates taking part in numerous events, conferences, meetings and media interviews on their behalf.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]}

While working on his Ph.D. at the University of Wales, Yates began public events called Animal Rights Month; for example "Animal Rights November" in 2000.^[27] He has continued such events in Ireland, organising "Animal Rights July" in 2009 and "Animal Rights November" in 2010. The latter features professors Gary L. Francione and Robert Garner discussing themes from their 2010 book, The Animal Rights Debate: Abolition or Regulation.^[28]

Further reading