The protestors assembled in Hyde Park before setting off on a slow and peaceful, but noisy, march through central London. Chants like “No more torture, no more lies, every six seconds an animal dies” and “Close down the animal labs” were sustained throughout the march, with the exception of a silent march through Trafalgar square (although it took a few minutes for the call for silence to propagate to the back of the march).

Caroline Lucas, Green Party leader and MEP, was the first speaker at the rally, hitting out at the Labour government for reneging on their pre-election promise to hold a full review of testing on animals in the UK, and pointed out the fallacy of vivisection as a scientific practice.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlYaUUwxWTU

Daniel, an anti-vivisection activist from Sweden, spoke of his experiences going undercover in three animal experimentation laboratories in Stockholm.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbhAF-6dLL4

John Carmody, founder of the Irish group Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN), spoke of ARAN’s recent successes in staging publicity stunts to attract the mainstream media, thereby bringing the cause to the attention of thousands of people who wouldn’t otherwise take any notice.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NTwzTg2O6c

Richard Deboo spoke of his political party Animals Count, and reminded us that Parliament belongs to us, and the power to bring about a change in policy also belongs to us.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGbCeFEMDqw

Debbie, an activist from Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), stressed the need to keep up the pressure on Huntingdon Life Sciences and their suppliers and clients, and reminded us that vivisection has resulted in the deaths of many humans as well as many non-human animals.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7imQZEYBPyw

Finally the compere of the rally said that the anti-vivisection movement had three fronts to campaign on; ethical, scientific and legal, and that the legal side was likely to throw up some unpleasant results for animal experimenters, and sooner than they expect. He gave some careers advice for people currently working in vivisection labs. Joking that there was a shortage of plumbers at the moment, he advised them to leave their current jobs and either become plumbers or retrain and start doing some real science.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBnlv-uDFrY

A 10-minute compilation of excerpts from all the speeches can be found at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOTeGm7vyOY

More photos from JimDog are available at the following links:
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/428459.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/428480.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/428517.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/04/428538.html

And finally, a quote from a t-shirt I saw on the day:

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rulers and they have no respect for the status quo.
You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them.
But the one thing you can’t do is ignore them, because they change things.
They push the human race forward.
And while some may see them as crazy, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Jack Kerouac.