“The One the State Missed”: Karl Garside, Animal Liberationist, 1966–2025
:A Life Lived Freely in Defiance
From sabotaging hunts and burning abattoirs to exposing cruelty through covert investigations, Karl Garside was among Britain’s most prolific Animal Liberation Front militants, dedicating over 40 years to the fight for total liberation.
One of the brightest flames in Britain’s animal rights movement has gone out. Karl Garside, Animal Liberation Front (ALF) militant, hunt saboteur, and investigator has passed away aged 59 from heart disease. For more than four decades on the front lines of the fight for animal liberation, Karl fearlessly took direct action to end animal abuse. Across those years of action, he was involved in more actions claimed by the ALF than any other individual, which would make him Britain’s most prolific ALF activist.
Karl was born in Birkenhead in March 1966. In the mid-1970s, 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 horse race by invading the course. That same year saw him carry out his first ALF action at Mister Monty Furs, smashing windows and cycling home in a balaclava. He became a member of the Northern Animal Liberation League (NALL), quickly rising to prominence.
The following year, Karl conducted undercover reconnaissance at the Imperial Chemical Industries (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. He was integral to establishing the Hunt Retribution Squad (HRS), which warned the frequently violent Holcombe Hunt that any harm done to saboteurs would provoke direct retaliation. Attacks on violent hunts which targeted their vehicles escalated, and kennel vehicles were burnt out at the Holcombe, Vale of Lune, and as many as a dozen packs all across the country.
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 took place at the front. Karl was among 25 people convicted of conspiracy to burgle, with combined sentences totaling 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 attacks on the House of Fraser store in Altrincham, smashing 22 plate-glass windows overnight with ball-peen hammers to highlight and disrupt the chain’s sale of fur. Karl and his then-partner were released from prison just after Christmas in 1986. They celebrated the end of their parole the following year by helping dismantle a monument local hunt saboteurs had stolen from Wemmergill Moor, a notorious grouse-shooting estate. After carving “Hunt Retribution Squad” into the monument, they delivered it directly to the British Association of Shooting and Conservation headquarters, locking the gates shut with bicycle locks. Karl insisted the statue be prominently re-erected outside their entrance in protest against grouse shooting.
Karl (left) on the autumn 1992 cover of HOWL, sabbing a grouse shoot.
Karl rapidly became a key figure in organizing national hits against hunts notorious for cruelty. He coordinated major actions against the Beaufort Hunt following the infamous exhumation incident 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. If hunters kicked off, they got it back and Karl made sure of that. 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.
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’s activism evolved with the movement. While he was known for hunt sabbing during a particularly violent era, he also took part in a wide range of clandestine actions, from burning vehicles used in animal transport to disrupting the meat industry’s logistics hubs. These actions were intended to stop abuse, expose cruelty, and increase the cost of complicity.
From the late eighties onwards, Karl became a key figure in ALF campaigns, working closely with a small circle of trusted activists to carry out direct action against a wide range of targets involved in animal exploitation. These included companies that supplied laboratory staff, farms involved in egg and dairy production, slaughterhouses, meat wholesalers, and businesses linked to hunting and bloodsports. For a short time, Karl was proud to hold the record for the most livestock lorries [transport trucks] burned in a single night: a dozen. At its peak in the 1980s and ’90s, the rolling waves of economic sabotage that the ALF unleashed on vehicles and buildings caused damage running into many tens of millions of pounds.
While the ALF is best known for liberating animals, Karl specialized in property damage. He acted both to stop animal abuse and to deter those responsible from continuing their harm. In 1993, Karl joined the fire brigade, motivated by a desire to gain the practical skills and training he needed to become a more effective activist for the ALF. His time in the fire service didn’t last long and he quickly returned to full-time animal rights activism.
Karl (in green joggers), sabbing the Royal Rock Beagles in Little Barrow, Cheshire, 1995.
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. Karl was among those who broke into the site and freed a beagle. The campaign escalated when hundreds of activists tore down fencing and overwhelmed police at a World Day for Animals in Laboratories demo. After just ten months of intense pressure, Consort closed and around 200 beagles were rehomed.
Building on that success, 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, nighttime vigils, and home visits to staff made Hillgrove a national focus for the anti-vivisection movement. On World Day 1998, 1500 activists confronted police and tore at the fencing surrounding the farm, while others damaged the owner’s property. 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) organized 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 following an arson attack on a director’s car. 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, the fight 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 and putting pressure on staff at all levels of HLS. SHAC became one of the most high-profile and heavily policed animal rights campaigns in British history. Despite intense state repression, including surveillance, raids, and long prison sentences for organizers, the campaign succeeded in cutting HLS off from banks, insurers, and many corporate partners. 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 organize 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.
Karl in the field during a covert investigation.
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 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds had hired a known blood-sports enthusiast to kill wildlife on conservation land, leading to a backlash that forced the organization 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, frankly, the one the state missed. 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.
The photograph at the top of this eulogy shows Karl with his much-loved daughter, on holiday in Gardenstown, Scotland.