‘People were shocked, and understandably so,’ says Steve Bone, a 40-year-old photographer from Clacton-on-Sea, Essex. ‘I mean — you walk into a shop and all of a sudden there’s a tall, ginger-bearded man pouring milk all over the cheese display. You’d think: “My God, what’s going on?”’
Bone, the tall, ginger-bearded man in question, is a member of Animal Rebellion, the animal and climate justice group that dominated headlines last week after several of their direct action protests went viral. You will have seen the clips: activists entering high-end food stores such as Fortnum & Mason, Selfridges and Waitrose, and proceeding to binge-dump dairy products across the floor. To say that these antics divided opinion would be something of an understatement. Depending on where you go for your news, you’ll either find passionate voices of support for Animal Rebellion’s cause, or (and due to the nature of online commentary, this one’s probably more likely) splenetic, expletive-filled rants about ‘entitled lefties’ wasting food. But more on all that noise in a moment: during the protest itself, Bone says, things felt far less hostile.
