South East Liberator (1992 – 1996. West Sussex, England)

Editors note: When we originally posted South East Liberator in 2011 we had an agreement with its primary author to keep her identity a secret until after her death. We are sad to report that Gillian Peachey, a long time animal liberationist and former ALF prisoner, has passed away this week. Now that she is no longer with us we can reveal that she was the anonymous figure behind this publication. Rest in peace, Gilly.

One of the most important things we do at TALON is to preserve the telling of our movement’s story by it’s participants. In the case of South East Liberator, we are almost preserving the story of our movement as told by the mainstream media and then copied and pasted by it’s participants. Confused? Well, South East Liberator was largely written and edited by one person who would include press clippings for major actions around the area she was active in- actions for which she was often responsible! She later ended up doing time for planting incendiary devices, which put this popular DIY publication out of business.

South East Liberator was angry, over-the-top, and compiled by front-line activists giving their all for animal liberation. We are very proud to have the complete collection hosted on our site, along with this new introduction by the editor:

“The Liberator was produced in the ‘90’s by a small group of determined animal rights activists to publicize how much could be achieved by working quietly within a close knit group, and to encourage like minded people to carry out similar actions.

Economic sabotage will always be one of the most effective ways of hitting the abusers where it hurts them most and we, along with other similar groups throughout the country, were proving this time and again.

Liberations, bombings, arson attacks, massive damage to property and vehicles and general sabotage were carried out week after week, with the cops going round in circles!

Thousands of lives were eventually saved through liberations and hellholes closing. Many many hundred of thousands of pounds worth of damage was caused along the way.

Inevitably there were arrests and imprisonment but nobody who was totally involved then, for the right reasons, would say that they had any regrets for any of their actions. Many of us are still involved in the fight for animal liberation and always will be.

Personally the only regret I have is that I’ve never done enough to save enough lives. Oh, and getting caught of course!!”

-Anon