BEEN HUMMING Handel all weekend — “. . . and a little child shall lead them”. Well, not such a little child: Laurie Pycroft is 16, taking a year off before his A levels to brood over his computer. He brooded well. He has a long-held interest in science, and as a small child lost a grandfather whose life had been prolonged by medical advance. Laurie lives near Oxford, and became aware of the “animal rights” campaign of intimidation against the building of a new research centre. So he decided to do something about it.

On Saturday — Glory be! — the boy’s “Pro-Test” initiative brought a large demonstration, including grateful scientists, on to the streets of Oxford with a plain message: that limited and regulated animal testing is unfortunately still necessary, and that a small number of vicious and unbalanced terrorists may not overturn the law of the land.

He is brave. Braver than the suppliers that broke off relationships with Huntingdon Life Sciences, braver than the New York Stock Exchange that was frightened to float it, braver than numerous construction companies, the Crown Prosecution Service and the whole of Cambridge University. You may say that a 16-year-old has less to lose, but he does have life: Laurie has already had threatening e-mails, one saying: “We are going to kill you, you evil, evil scumbag.” This is not a pleasant feeling, but it may be a small consolation to the Pycroft family that you don’t actually need to stick your neck out as far as Laurie in order to have these creeps threaten you. To take a minor personal example: I have never hunted, shot or fished, I have opposed the testing of cosmetics on animals, and I rant against chicken batteries and sow-crates. But the moment I opined that the hunting Bill was a spiteful waste of parliamentary time, my address turned up on a web list of “bloodsport scum” with the message: “These people are not immortal and their homes are not fireproof.”

Rhetoric, maybe: but scientists’ children have picked up letter bombs on the mat, the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences was clubbed with a pickaxe handle, and nobody has returned the corpse of an elderly woman dug up from her grave because her family bred guinea-pigs — even when they stopped. Ten minutes on any animal-Nazi website yields boasts of tyre-slashing, paintstripper attacks, nocturnal arson and the latest infantile tactic of sending letters to neighbours of people “connected” with animal testing, claiming that they are paedophiles.

The “connection” may be very tenuous, because all fascist movements like to spread fear widely. Concerning the Oxford research centre, they first named as legitimate targets any employees (and their relatives) of any building firm doing any work at all for the university. For a small builder in Oxford this could spell ruin. Next, the bullies sent out 100 letters to companies that donated to the university, saying that if they did it again: “You will have your offices trashed and the homes of your directors, employees and trustees attacked . . . your details will be sent over the internet to other animal rights activists.” This, they smugly claim, led to several companies withdrawing support; they add: “Any company who has not made (such) an announcement can now expect full attention from the Animal Liberation Front. It’s not going to be pretty.” Finally they announced that all students and staff of the university are targets. No doubt there will shortly be threats against Oxford Marmalade.

These people are not “activists” or even “extremists” as mealy-mouthed news bulletins like to put it. They are terrorists. Death threats and physical attack are their prime arguments. They are, in some ways, more horrifying than the Abu Hamzas who threaten all unbelievers and offer no escape: animal thugs prefer to make their threats individual, in order to cow individuals into silent compliance. Their attack is not on cruelty to animals but on free speech, free thought, freedom from fear. They assume that their limited view of what is right excuses them from giving the slightest respect to law, democracy, or common humanity. A stupid woman questioned by the BBC said that any attack was fine because: “These are like, evil people, yeah?” Nicolas Atwood, unmasked last week as the manager of a website run from Florida that passes on calls to criminal action, drivelled that “ the academics set themselves up and I agree with protest . . . I am not going to say what form the protests should take”. So Atwood’s a coward as well as a thug, is he? His website does, in fact, pass on very practical and violent incitement. The Americans, by the way, roll up their eyes, cite the First Amendment and say they can’t do anything. This from the nation that brought you Guantanamo.

Notice that I say little about animal testing itself. There is plenty of material to help you to decide: in a nutshell, my view is that there has been laudable progress since the 1970s, that welfare and pain avoidance are much improved, and that with luck future advances will make it redundant. Meanwhile, honest scientists working for human (and animal) welfare say we still need it. It is also relevant to note that if research centres get driven abroad to less scrupulous and less craven countries, more animal suffering will undoubtedly result.

But Saturday’s splendid show of faith on the streets of Oxford was as much against thuggery as it was in favour of science. Several demonstrators said that they were personally opposed to biomedical research, but even more opposed to intimidation. Saturday was a massive “How dare you!”, a blow for freedom and a blast against bigotry. We need more of these, to give our wet authorities courage to act more resolutely against those who glorify and incite this particular violence. It may be a turning point, the beginning of the end for a filthy minority who have gone beyond love of animals into love of violent power. It took a kid to show the way. Honour him.

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