An echo from the past. More than 30 years – in mid-1979 to be exact – myself and my colleagues Mike Marten and Mikki Rain launched one of the world’s first animal liberation magazines. At that time, the movement was in its infancy; now its gone global.
Much to my delight and surprise, I got a message from Josh Harper that he and a team of volunteers at Conflict Gipsy – who are establishing an Archive and library of historical animal liberation and wilderness defence publications - had got together and scanned all 10 issues of the magazine to make it available once more to the wider world.
Their aim, says Josh, is ‘to give younger generations a better idea of our history in the hope that they would stop re-inventing the wheel and repeating old mistakes.’
The response to the posting had been good. Josh writes: ‘ We’ve heard from activists in the 70s and early 80s… who are saying how great it is to have the collection available. One member of the Sea Shepherd staff has printed some of the issues to share around the ship. A professor at MIT wrote to say how mesmerised he is. The singer of the hardcore band Trial has been reading each issue straight through….I could go on.’
At some stage I hope to write at more length about the making of The Beast and will publish other material from the Archive. For the moment, just enjoy these issues from way back when.
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