'...And If You Know Your History: Part 1'

An Introduction

‘’And if You Know Your History…’’ is a series of blogs tracing the growth of the vegan social movement in the UK during the first 70 years or so of the last century. Written by sociologist Dr Roger Yates, the series follows the fortunes of the early vegan pioneers including Arthur Ling, founder of Plamil, one of the world’s first vegan companies, who adopted a plant based diet aged 6 in 1926, through to Dorothy and Donald Watson, the co-founders of the Vegan Society in November 1944, the roles of people such as Eva Batt, Kathleen Jannaway, Leslie Cross and Elsie Shrigley as the society grew and prospered in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, into the 70’s and the beginnings of animal rights philosophy and vegan activism with a look at Tom Regan, and Ronnie Lee, co-founder of the ALF.

Of course, veganism has its roots in different cultures across the globe stretching back millennia, with multiple references to predominately plant based diets and in some cases 100% plant based diets frequenting the annals of history and shaping many of the menus that we see in today’s multitude of plant based options. It’s a fascinating history in itself, and well documented and easily accessible. And the shaping of animal rights philosophy and a vegan position which seeks to exclude the use of all animals wherever practicable and possible is evident in such luminaries as the esteemed Syrian poet Al Ma’arri, whose wonderful words from 1,000 years ago are shared here.

Victorian times in the UK saw a propensity for anti-vivisection actions, and the Scottish animal welfare charity One Kind has it roots going back over 100 years to when it was founded as an anti-vivisection organisation. Around 150 years ago, the National Anti-Vivisection Society, the world’s first such organization, was founded by Frances Power Cobbe, who went on to found a second group, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection. The UK passed the world’s first animal protection law, the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876, which governed the use of animals in vivisection. And by that time there was a thriving Vegetarian Society in the UK, with a USA society formed in 1850, and by the end of the century vegetarian societies were emerging in different continents including India and Russia, and the establishment of the International Vegetarian Movement in 1908 started to link up these groups into the beginnings of a cohesive global movement for some animals at least.

And of course, us modern day vegans should be celebrating this wealth of global plant based culture and the beginnings of the animal liberation movement intertwined with different individuals at different points of history in different cultures and influences. But we should also recognise and celebrate the beginnings of the UK vegan social movement for animals, in part for two significant reasons – in 1944, with the formation of The Vegan Society, we saw the first movement which included all animals, not just those used in ‘single issue’ environments. And in 1944, we saw like-minded individuals come together for the first time and form a social movement that centred all animals. Such is the significance of the events of 1944 – and as such becomes the focus for our ‘And If You Know Your History’ series – a time when our understanding of veganism as distinct from plant based diets or lifestyles – namely a social justice movement that centres animals, includes all animals, and humans – takes shape and evolves into the understanding we have today. It would be inaccurate to suggest that veganism was ‘invented’ in 1944, and to suggest as such would also erase the huge contributions that individuals, organisations, religions and indeed whole cultures have played in the development of plant based diets and vegan philosophy. It would be more accurate to say that the vegan social movement began in 1944, enhancing the relevance of the formation of the Vegan Society, and the development of the animal movement that we now recognise. Both aspects should be celebrated widely.

The significance of the formation of the Vegan Society in 1944 can be also in part be understood by the parallels with the formation and development of other significant social justice movements. The ideas and values of the Women’s Suffragette movement can be seen back in the early 1800’s, and the movement gathered pace with the formation of the Manchester National Society for Women’s Suffrage in 1867, before the formation of the National Union for Women’s Suffrage in 1897. The formation of the Women’s Social & Political Union in 1903, at the Pankhurst’s family home, is often seen as the start of the ‘militant’ era of action with the motto ‘Deeds not Words’’, with a significant change in the law following 15 years later. Likewise, the abolition of the transatlantic slavery movement that took shape in 1787 when Thomas Clarkson gathered petitions, funding and formed a council to draw together notable and influential individuals who shared his vision to form a movement and make a concerted team effort to abolish this abhorrent trade – which saw the law change and the trade outlawed in the UK in 1807. The significance of the beginnings and the growth of social movements is enshrined in history, and to be celebrated as such.

And importantly, history is there to be learnt from. Every movement has a history and members of a social movement gain from knowing their history – and in doing so ensure the movement gains. The growth of the vegan social movement in the UK is fortunate to include some incredible individuals, with deep reaching ethics, principles and standards. Donald Watson and Kathleen Jannaway were both conscientious objectors during the 2nd World War and the early vegan movement included a number of pacifists and individuals committed to ending not only the use of animals but also the wars between humanity – and ultimately the war humanity wages on the environment. We have much to learn from this chequered, imperfect and genuinely pioneering group of individuals that make up the beginnings of the vegan social movement. Enjoy the series.

Further Reading:

‘The Bloodless Revolution: Radical Vegetarianism and the Discovery of India

by Tristram Stuart

Sins of the Flesh: A History of Ethical Vegetarian Thought

by Rod Preece

Vegetarianism: A History

by Colin Spencer

The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement (1817-1921)

by Adam Shprintzen

The Victorian Vegan

by The Vegetarian Society

Of Victorians and Vegetarians: The Vegetarian Movement in Nineteenth Century Britain

by James Gregory

Part 1: 'The Difficult & Argumentative Birth of the Vegan Social Movement'

Dr. Roger Yates of the Dublin-based Vegan Information Project looks at how veganism as a social movement emerged and developed with the focus on accounts of the individual pioneers of the vegan movement.

In an interview in 2004, co-founder of The Vegan Society, Donald Watson, said that the birth of the society had been “difficult,” and it had “never been rich.”

Not only a difficult birth, but the vegan movement struggled somewhat with its relationship with a fairly sympathetic vegetarian movement and, in 1944, finally broke free from “the lactos,” as Watson would sometimes call vegetarians. Watson saw lacto-vegetarianism as weird and made possible only by humanity’s “capacity to exploit the reproductive functions of other species.” Although critical of vegetarianism, Donald Watson sought to maintain a respectful stance towards vegetarians, seeing “no need for animosity” between vegans and vegetarians. In this first of a series of blog entries for VegfestUK, I trace the beginnings of a radical vegan social movement that has focused on our relations with other animals but which maintained a scope much wider than that, for example, by including serious concerns for human animals too. Another of the initial co-founders, Elsie Shrigley, would declare that the vegan movement could be described as “idealistic” in nature, whereas historians have noted a strong “anti-establishment” feeling among the vegan pioneers.

Watson says that it was the “milk issue” that caused the formation of the Vegan Society. In August 1944, six months after Watson had delivered a talk about dairy products to a meeting of the Vegetarian Society, Shrigley and Watson proposed the formation a “non-dairy section” within the organisation. In the first issue of The Vegan in November 1944, Watson reports that “the lactos’” committee was sympathetic to the plan but ultimately rejected a non-dairy section because they wanted to concentrate on the abolition of flesh as human food. The Vegetarian Society committee, probably fearing some dissent from rank and file members, told Shrigley and Watson that they would be “freer” operating independently.

Two years later, in the Spring 1946 edition of The Vegan, Watson claimed that, “for ninety years vegetarian literature contained nothing to question either morally or physiologically the use of animal foods

Donald Watson: co-founder of the Vegan Society

Elsie Shrigley: co-founder of the Vegan Society

other than flesh.” Leah Leneman, in a 1999 paper entitled, “No Animal Food: The Road to Veganism in Britain, 19091944,” says that Watson is plain wrong about this. For example, in the Summer 1988 issue of The Vegan, under the title, “Out of the Past: A founding father takes us on a walk down Memory Lane,” Watson says that the first vegan cookbook was Fay K. Henderson’s Vegan Recipes, published in 1947, whereas Leneman states that Rupert Wheldon’s 1910 publication, No Animal Food, “must be counted as the first British vegan cookery book.” Split into three sections, with the first two being essays on, “why eating animal food was not a good idea,” and covering heath, ethical, esthetic, and economic arguments, the book contained one hundred vegan recipes. The book’s publisher, C.W. Daniel, understood how oppressions are entangled, publishing texts on radical feminism as well as plant-based cooking. From 1909-1912, and then again after “World War I,” the Vegetarian Society’s journal, The Vegetarian Messenger and Health Review (TVMHR), featured “vigorous correspondence” on non-flesh animal products, revealing, according to Leneman, that the Vegetarian Society had some members avoiding such products in these early years.

Fay. K. Henderson

This led to the editor of TVMHR asserting in 1912 that there were two types of vegetarians, those eating dairy and eggs and those who were not. He went as far as declaring that the minority of non-dairy and nonegg vegetarians had a strong case, while the arguments for eating dairy and eggs, at least those offered in the society’s journal, were “not satisfactory.” The debate that took place between 1909 and 1912 features the type of claims-making we still see in the 21st century. For example, in his 1910 cookery book, Rupert Wheldon states that: “It is quite impossible to consume dairy produce without slaughter as it is to eat flesh without slaughter.” A year earlier, in TVMHR of 1909, one correspondent claimed that, “Vegetarians, so-called, are responsible for their share of the numbers of cows, calves, and fowls killed.” Another writer in 1910 noted that once cows became too old or too diseased to be milked, they become “the butcher’s property.” Some vegetarians fought back, mak- ing what we would probably regard nowadays as largely welfarist claims. For example, in 1911, someone holding a diploma from a Scottish dairy school, said that cows can be used for milk with “no need for cruelty,” that few cows fret over their removed calf, “provided they are not allowed to see or lick it, or if it is placed so far away that they cannot hear it.” Another TVMHR correspondent in 1912 was on the opinion that he didn’t think mother and calf “suffer much” from separation provided, again, that they do not see each other. TVMHR itself, in 1942, offered some thoughts on “consistency” that present-day vegans will surely recognise, saying that, “few vegetarians, however strict they may be, would claim the impossible, namely, absolute consistency,” and suggesting that, if the public were encouraged to proceed “step by step,” that would be the better, more successful, ask.

Dorothy & Donald Watson on their wedding day

Some of the correspondence to the pages of TVMHR in 1909 focused on the plight of “poultry,” with one writer stating that, “you cannot have eggs without also having on your hands a number of male birds, which you must kill.” However, it appears that it was the dairy issue that remained a central concern, although John Davis, former manager and historian of the International Vegetarian Union, suggests that the discussions about “non-dairy” in those days was a “catch-all” phrase meaning non-dairy, noneggs, and (mostly) non-honey.

By the 1930s and into the 1940s, the arguments that were to prompt the foundation of the vegan social movement were in full swing. In 1935, for example, a Muriel Davies noted that, “cattle must suffer abuse, captivity and ultimate slaughter” in order for humans to consume calf food. In 1943, Leslie Cross, who would play a huge role in the early years of the British Vegan Society, and described by Leneman as “a purist,” asserted that: “Milk and its derivatives are products of pain, suffering and abominable interference with the law of love.” In 1944, Dugald Semple made a very modern-day sounding claim: that, if cruelty is the criteria, then dairy products are likely to cause more of it than flesh products, while Donald Watson, writing in TVMHR in the same year, said that, “the cow feels the loss of her calf in much the same way as a human mother would feel the loss of her child,” adding: “Sometimes she will cry for days.”

And so, the stage is set for the suggestion of a non-dairy section of the Vegetarian Society, its rejection, and the foundation (sometime in 1944 – the Vegan Society are not certain when) of the organised vegan social movement. I say “organised” but by today’s standards and widespread access to the internet and instant global communications, it was barely that. Watson, in his 1988 article, notes that, “We were few in number and widely dispersed… We had no funds, no private transport – apart from bicycles, no precedents to work on, no office, little experience in public speaking, and none in publishing.” Significantly, and this would shape the radicalism of the vegan pioneers, they were witnessing the end of the second “World War” the experience of which Watson would call “sickening,” and were still constrained by rationing, which would go on several years after the end of the war. “Despite all this we went ahead and formed the society. It was indeed a difficult birth,” Watson writes.

We’ll pick up the story of Donald Watson in particular - what he did (and didn’t do) - next time.