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| Animal free now - the big top circus tent |
The only thing on at the theatre was Murder on the Orient Express, which I had seen twice at the cinema so I knew what happened. Agatha Christie works better if you do not know whodunnit so, despite having the excellent Henry Goodman as Poirot, I gave it a miss and decided to go to the circus instead. I like to go to a live performance about once a week; it was just a short walk away and so I coughed up my twelve pounds and went along.
The last time I had been to see a circus must have been over half a century ago and my memory of it is inevitably hazy. What had changed in the meantime was our attitude to animals. Today it is considered unacceptable to exploit animals by using them in circuses where they perform for the public who gawp at the way they do human things and seem to threaten the lives of performers who put their heads into the mouth of a lion or tiger.
It is certainly hard to argue in favour of animal cruelty and there is definitely something exploitative and undignified about elephants on tiptoe, which has now ended, leaving the human performers to keep the circus going without any help from animals. Before we celebrate, however, I want to know what happened to those animals who were released from the humiliation of performing in public. Did they just end up being sent to the abattoir?
In our haste to free these same animals from performing in public, are we in effect abolishing them altogether? I have the same reservations about vegetarianism. We are often told that eating animals is an “inefficient” way of using the land and we could certainly feed a bigger population if we adopted a vegetarian – and eventually a vegan – diet. But this cutting out the middle man (or creature) must result in more people and less animals. Is that what we want?
Societies that adopt vegetarianism tend to be ones which are densely populated – India, Ireland in the period leading up to the potato famine, when the population was well above what it is today (eight million as opposed to six million) and, controversially, Nazi Germany. Of course, the Nazis did not give up meat universally but I am convinced that Hitler, who adopted a vegetarian lifestyle, considered a meatless world an essential part of lebensraum.
This literally means “living space” and was how he envisaged a future for a Germanic people who would dominate the world and eliminate all the unnecessary and inferior peoples – Slavs, the disabled, homosexuals, gypsies and Jews – who were occupying space that would be used by pure Aryan stock. Animals would eventually follow these people into oblivion. The difference between Hitler and a sentimental vegetarian is that he was honest about it.
My own daughter and several others in my family are vegetarians and my brother and his wife are moving towards a vegan lifestyle now. I do not love them any the less because I disagree with their choices – and I certainly think that we eat too much meat in our society – but I wonder what the future is for animals once we cease to eat them. Vegetarian societies certainly do not seem to be ones in which animals and humans live in peaceful harmony.
It is a long way from Nazi Germany to a visit to a modern circus which has to manage now without animals. The human performers certainly gave it a go. They performed magic and acrobatic tricks, made jokes, brought in a clown who encouraged the many children in the audience into making lots of noise. The ringmaster gamely played his part but I had the feeling that something was missing and that was the non-human element in the event.
A similar thing happened on a smaller scale on a visit to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight recently. I had been looking forward to see the horse and carriage that took us down to the Swiss Cottage but this had been replaced with a minibus. The new vehicle is quicker, more efficient and cheaper than a horse-drawn carriage but what has happened to the horses meanwhile? They have been abolished and another small step in human control is taken.
When – eventually – we decided to abolish slavery it was necessary for former slaves, who had previously been considered the property of their white owners, to find a new role as freed people. It would be stupid to say that this has been plain sailing since then but enough black people have prospered, such as politicians like Barack Obama and sportsmen and singers like Marcus Rashford and Aretha Franklin, to show that such a thing is at least possible.
There does not seem to be such a hope for animals who are destined for a one-way trip to the abattoir once they do not have a role either entertaining or being eaten by humans. This is the fundamental difference between racism and what is known as speciesism, the belief that some species are inevitably superior to others. It is up to those who refuse to eat or be entertained by animals to find a role for them that allows them to survive and even prosper.
There is precious little sign of that happening at present. While the short, cramped and uncomfortable life of a battery chicken may not be worth preserving, that of the performing animal might have been kept going if we had not been so absolutist in wanting to abolish all trace of it. It takes a lot of time, money and effort to feed and care for a large animal and there is little likelihood that anyone will do this if there is no economic reason for it.
So what happened to the animals that used to perform in the circus or take the children on a carriage ride? Put down I bet, for the sake of a misplaced compassion. That is just another way humans have found of dominating the planet for themselves.
My other blog is diaryofatouristguide.blogspot.com
Edwin Lerner
