Mel Broughton

Mel Broughton (born July 5, circa 1960) is a British landscape gardener who has risen to public prominence as one of the UK's most notable animal rights advocates. He was the co-founder, with Robert Cogswell, of SPEAK, The Voice for the Animals, a campaign to stop animal testing in Britain, which is currently focused on opposition to a new animal laboratory at Oxford University.

Early life

Broughton's father is a former painter and decorator and his mother a care assistant in an old people's home. Both are committed animal rights advocates who work alongside Broughton on the SPEAK campaign.

Activism

Broughton has been involved in animal rights for over 30 years. He worked on Operation Osprey in Scotland when he was 15, living in a tent to guard osprey nests. He later worked in animal sanctuaries, and campaigned against zoos, circuses, factory farming, and live animal exports.

He lives in Northampton with Bella, a rescue dog, devoting most of his time to SPEAK. He told The Independent on Sunday:

This was always my life, but now it takes up so much of my life that it's very difficult. In fact survival is very, very hard. My flat's nothing special — two rooms — and I live as frugally as I possibly can to make sure I can campaign. I'm not trying to make myself out to be a martyr because this is my choice.

Rocky the dolphin

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Barry Horne and his son play with Rocky during secret visits to the dolphinarium, just before Broughton and Horne tried to move Rocky to the sea.

Broughton was first arrested in 1988, when he and three other activists, including Barry Horne — who died in 2001 during an animal-rights hunger strike — tried to remove Rocky, a bottlenose dolphin, from a small concrete pool inside Marineland, in Morecambe, Lancashire. Rocky had been in the pool, mostly alone, for 17 years, after being captured off the coast of Florida in 1971.

Broughton and the others intended to move the dolphin, who weighed 650 lbs, 200 yards from the pool to the sea, using a ladder, a net, a home-made dolphin stretcher, and a hired Mini Metro. On the night of the action, they realized the logistics of the operation were beyond them, and decided to abandon their plans, but were arrested when the police found them with the dolphin stretcher in the back of the car. Broughton, Horne, Jim O'Donnell, and Jim Buckner were fined £500, while Broughton and Horne were also given six-month suspended sentences.

The management of Marineland eventually agreed to sell the dolphin for £120,000 in response to Broughton and others picketing the facility, money that the activists raised with the help of the Born Free Foundation and the Mail on Sunday. In 1991, Rocky was transferred to a lagoon reserve in the Turks and Caicos Islands, then released. Peter Hughes of the University of Sunderland cites the campaign as an example of how promoting an animal rights perspective created a paradigm shift toward seeing dolphins as individuals, as a result of which, he writes, there are now no captive dolphins in the UK.

Jail sentences

Broughton was first jailed in 1999 after being arrested in possession of incendiary devices, and convicted of conspiracy to cause explosions. He was sentenced to four years, and released in June 2002 after serving two years and eight months.

Broughton told The Independent on Sunday that he took the chance to educate himself while in prison, studying philosophy and social science with the Open University. "I found a lot of sympathy inside," he told the newspaper, "but a lot of the general prisoners found it very difficult to understand that I was inside for something I'd done for no personal gain."

He lives alone in Northampton, with his rescue-dog Bella. Most of his time is devoted to the campaign, run by him and Robert Cogswell with other supporters.

"This was always my life, but now it takes up so much of my life that it's very difficult," says Broughton. "In fact survival is very, very hard. My flat's nothing special - two rooms - and I live as frugally as I possibly can to make sure I can campaign. I'm not trying to make myself out to be a martyr because this is my choice." One feature of his flat is an entire shelving system, full of injunctions and files from the High Court. "There are just thousands of pages," says Broughton. "I've been named on all kinds of injunctions for things I've got nothing to do with. They just stick your name on.

2007 possession and conspiracy charges

In connection with his role in the SPEAK campaign, Broughton was charged in December 2007 with conspiracy to blackmail and possession of incendiary devices after fire broke out inside a sports pavilion belonging to Queen's College, Oxford in November 2006, and two petrol bombs were found inside the university's Templeton College in February 2007. The Animal Liberation Front claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Transcripts were submitted to the court during Broughton's trial of a recording in which Oxford police discussed a "dirty war" against Broughton, and how they were going to "get him." Broughton told the court that he was under constant police surveillance.

The jury was discharged in November 2008 after clearing Broughton of keeping an explosive substance with intent, but failing to reach verdicts on the other charges. Broughton was remanded in custody and is expected to face a retrial in 2009.