Original article published on the HSA website. Tap and donate some coins to them!
“One of the brightest flames in Britain’s animal rights movement has gone out.
Karl Garside, Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activist , hunt saboteur and investigator has passed away aged 59 from heart disease. For more than four decades on the frontlines of the fight for animal liberation, Karl fearlessly took direct action to end animal abuse.
Karl was born in Birkenhead in March 1966 and in the mid-seventies his family settled in Altrincham, Greater Manchester. In 1983, aged 17, he threw himself into the fight for animal liberation, going vegan and skipping classes at Trafford College to disrupt the Grand National by invading the course. He became a member of the Northern Animal Liberation League (NALL), quickly rising to prominence.
The following year Karl conducted undercover reconnaissance at the ICI laboratories in Alderley Edge, dressing in a suit and pretending to attend a job interview ahead of a major raid. That April he was part of a mass raid by NALL, when around 300 activists stormed and occupied the ICI labs.
That year also saw Karl become an active member of Manchester Hunt Saboteurs, primarily targeting the Holcombe Hunt. Opposing fox hunting became one of Karl’s greatest passions and he dedicated much of his life to confronting hunts directly.
In August 1984 he was one of 200 activists who took part in the Eastern Animal Liberation League’s raid on the Unilever research laboratories in Bedford, where animal experimentation took place, while a demonstration was staged at the front. Karl was among 25 people convicted of conspiracy to burgle, with combined sentences totalling 41 years. He served eight months in prison for his part in the raid, but this didn’t deter him.
While awaiting trial, Karl participated in coordinated ALF actions against the House of Fraser store to highlight and disrupt the chain’s sale of fur. Karl and his then partner were released from prison just after Christmas in 1986.
Karl rapidly became a key figure in organising national hits against hunts notorious for cruelty. He coordinated major actions against the Beaufort Hunt and helped establish the annual Cumbria “fell weeks” alongside his friend and fellow hunt saboteur Dave Callender. These were week-long operations in March when many hunts had already packed up for the season, disrupting a different pack each day across harsh mountainous terrain. Up to 100 activists from the North and Midlands came together under one roof, working side by side for six days of relentless sabbing.
Karl also played a key role in national actions against the Altcar hare coursing event and the Quantock Staghounds. After fell week, through the nineties, he and others kept the pressure up by hitting a different Saturday hunt still running late in the season. The approach was simple: no tolerance for nonsense. Terrier men who thought they could get away with violence quickly learned otherwise. Many late- season Saturday meets in March and April descended into pitched battles that even the authorities couldn’t control.
a fell week.
Famously, on the night his daughter was born, while other new fathers were calling relatives from the hospital payphone, Karl was busy using it to coordinate a hunt sab for the following morning. After leaving Manchester, he remained deeply committed, on various occasions sabbing with groups from Aberystwyth, Liverpool and Sheffield. He also sabbed extensively in Surrey and throughout Wales.
Karl was also passionately involved in the fight against vivisection. The Consort Beagle Campaign began in late 1996, targeting a breeding facility near Ross-on-Wye where around 800 puppies were kept in wire mesh cages for vivisection. In early 1997, during a protest marking Barry Horne’s first hunger strike, activists broke in and rescued ten puppies. Sixteen more were later liberated in ALF actions. The campaign escalated when hundreds of activists tore down fencing at a World Day demo. After just ten months of intense pressure Consort closed and around 200 beagles were rehomed.
Building on this, the campaign to close Hillgrove Farm in Oxfordshire began in 1997, targeting a profitable cattery that bred cats for laboratories in the UK and abroad. Daily protests, night-time vigils and home visits to staff made Hillgrove a national focus for the anti-vivisection movement. On World Day 1998, 1,500 activists confronted police and tore at the fencing surrounding the farm. Karl played a decisive role in the campaign, which saw over 350 arrests and 21 prison sentences. After nearly two years of sustained pressure, the farm closed in August 1999, and 800 cats were rehomed. It remains one of the most significant victories in British animal rights history.
After the Hillgrove campaign, Karl and his young family moved to Surrey where they lived on a narrowboat. Momentum continued with the campaign to shut down Shamrock Farm, the UK’s only importer of primates for laboratories. Beginning in 1998, Save the Shamrock Monkeys (SSM) organised a mix of protests, all-night vigils and large national demos. Despite a £3 million annual turnover, the facility lasted less than 16 months under pressure. Karl took part in the campaign, which ended in March 2000 when the site announced its closure. Although Shamrock claimed its primates would be humanely relocated, all were sold to laboratories. The closure marked another landmark victory in the fight against vivisection suppliers.
After Shamrock, attention turned to Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), the largest animal testing laboratory in Europe. In 1999 the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) campaign was launched with the goal of closing HLS through sustained pressure on its clients, suppliers and financial backers. Karl joined the campaign early on, taking part in direct actions across the UK. SHAC became one of the most high-profile and heavily policed animal rights campaigns in British history. Karl remained active throughout SHAC’s peak years, supporting actions that exposed the cruelty inside the labs and challenged the corporations funding it.
While living in Surrey, Karl and his family played a central role in the Surrey Anti- Hunt Campaign, a focused effort to shut down the Old Surrey, Burstow and West Kent Hunt. Launched in the wake of a near-fatal incident in 2000 in which saboteur Steve Christmas was run over and seriously injured by a hunt vehicle, the campaign applied the same uncompromising tactics used successfully against animal testing suppliers. For several years Karl helped organise sustained pressure on the hunt and its supporters, combining regular sabbing with public outreach, intelligence gathering and targeted actions. It was one of the first campaigns in the UK to treat a fox hunt as a primary target, rather than a weekly opponent and helped establish a new model for anti-hunting activism.
Karl also supported the SPEAK campaign (originally launched as SPEAC – Stop Primate Experiments at Cambridge) from 2002 to 2007. The campaign, run by his friend Mel Broughton, successfully pressured the University of Cambridge to abandon plans for a new primate testing lab, citing financial risk. After that victory the campaign shifted focus to Oxford University, where a new animal research facility was under construction. Over the next three years SPEAK delayed the project through sustained protest and action.
Following earlier successes in direct action, Karl spent the final decade of his life focused on covert investigations, while continuing to take part in direct action until 2020. In 2014 he founded the Hunt Investigation Team (HIT), a grassroots collective dedicated to exposing cruelty and illegality within hunts through covert surveillance and evidence gathering. HIT quickly gained a reputation for its professionalism and impact. That same year, during the badger cull, Karl was arrested for aggravated trespass while sabbing. Despite focusing increasingly on investigative work, he remained committed to frontline action.
As the founder of HIT he oversaw some of the most impactful exposés in the British animal rights movement. In 2016, HIT’s footage led to an official investigation into the South Herefordshire Hunt after evidence emerged of fox cubs being thrown to hounds in a kennel yard. As a result of HIT’s investigation, the South Herefordshire Hunt disbanded entirely.
The following year, HIT exposed illegal hunting and wildlife persecution on the Moscar grouse shooting estate, revealing the use of snares and traps targeting protected species.
In 2018 the team revealed that the RSPB had hired a known blood-sports enthusiast to kill wildlife on conservation land, leading to a backlash that forced the organisation to cancel the contract. That same year they captured footage of a badger caught in an illegal snare set by a hunt master and filmed another badger dying slowly during the Cumbria cull, raising serious concerns about the cruelty of government- sanctioned wildlife management.
Karl also turned the lens on the meat and fur industries. In 2019, footage Karl obtained from a Welsh abattoir showing disturbing abuse of animals triggered a criminal investigation. In 2020 they returned to Moscar and also filmed inside Gressingham Foods’ duck slaughterhouse, exposing brutal handling of animals. That year they uncovered the activities of a lone trapper in South Wales who was snaring, killing and skinning foxes to sell their pelts, offering a rare glimpse into the UK’s connection to the global fur trade.
In 2021 and 2022 Karl and HIT carried out a series of high-profile investigations that made national headlines. They filmed hounds being shot dead at the Beaufort Hunt’s kennels and exposed routine abuse at farms supplying the organic and dairy sectors. One of the most politically sensitive investigations came in 2022 when HIT revealed wildlife crime on the estate of William van Cutsem, a close friend of Prince William. The exposé prompted a police raid and widespread media coverage. Footage Karl helped obtain also contributed to successful prosecutions of fox hunters brought by the League Against Cruel Sports.
In the final months of his life Karl had begun working full time as an investigator for the League Against Cruel Sports, continuing his lifelong mission to expose animal cruelty. On his final day he rescued hens from a so-called free-range farm before heading out for a run.
For his entire adult life, Karl was the tenacious, driven, ruthlessly obsessed man that we all knew. Nothing could shake him from his chosen path. He had a brain that was unrivalled, able to think outside the box, able to inspire love and devotion and loyalty and commitment from those who volunteered to assist him. He was always wedded to the notion of his own tight personal security, aware that so many of his colleagues had been brought down by the state and imprisoned. He was the quiet one, the thinker, the planner, shunning the limelight and keeping himself focused on what really mattered. Yet he subscribed to the Irish Republican tradition of always being there for the families and children of those comrades that got locked up. Karl was the best of men, the best of colleagues and the best of activists. He will be sorely missed by all who knew him.
Karl is survived by a daughter and two granddaughters.
Karl Garside – Celebration of Life
Saturday 2 August 2025
2pm – late
Corn Exchange, Newport, NP20 1DD
Join us to celebrate the life of Karl Garside, with vegan food, a bar, Celtic music and stories shared among friends, family and all who knew him.
All are welcome.
