Activists were told the decision to target individual companies involved -- however tangentially -- in vivisection was paying off.
"In the 1980s we turned up for a demonstration outside one company one week then another the next, never putting them under sustained pressure. Now, with organizations like SHAC and SPEAK, we are unrelenting in our pursuit of one organization and we are winning," one speaker said.
Other campaigners questioned the direct action tactics of "home visits" -- where employees of companies are targeted outside work, often having their cars attacked or properties damaged.
"But that is what works," another replied. "I have organized about 20 demonstrations without any interest from the press whatsoever. As soon as we had our first direct action, the phone never stopped ring with the media asking for interviews. I don't make the rules but that is how it works."
Greg Avery, the founder of SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty), told the gathering the movement was more successful now than at any stage in its history.
He said once the battle against individual companies had been won the movement needed to move into a revolutionary new phase and take on whole sectors of the "vivisection industry."
But among the rank and file, there were differences of opinion on how the battle should be fought. At the sanctuary, anarchists from Germany and the Netherlands, who dressed in black and wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like "Fuck Authority" and "Global Resistance and Revolution," mixed with neatly turned-out women from middle England.
"In the end it is all about the animals, not about us, we mean nothing," said an English woman who ran a stall every weekend in her local high street handing out leaflets.
But one thing that united all activists was the shared conviction that their cause is a righteous one. Speakers repeatedly likened the movement to the anti-apartheid campaign and the fight against the slave trade, with the media blamed for presenting the activists as extremists.
"Look back at the newspapers when those movements were at their peak and there will be the same terms bandied around as there are about us now," one said.
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