Jill Phipps - Background

Background

Phipps did well at school but chose not to stay on after the age of 16; she went to work for the Royal Mail (her father was a postman). She had become interested in caring for animals when young, and joined her mother's campaigning against the fur trade from the age of 11. After herself becoming a vegetarian, Phipps persuaded the rest of her family to join them. By her late teens she joined the Eastern Animal Liberation League, a group affiliated to the Animal Liberation Front. A local campaign in Coventry supported by Phipps and her mother succeeded in closing down a local fur shop and fur farm. In 1986, together with her mother and sister, Phipps raided the Port Sunlight factory of soap manufacturers Unilever on Merseyside to protest at their use of animal testing. After smashing computer equipment, the group were caught and prosecuted, with Phipps' mother being sentenced to six months' imprisonment and her sister to eighteen months. Phipps herself received a suspended sentence as she was pregnant.

After her son was born, Phipps spent more time caring for him (having divorced her husband, she raised him as a single parent). She attended occasional demonstrations and hunt sabotage meetings during school holidays together with her son. The use of Coventry airport for export of veal calves horrified her, and in January 1995 she walked almost 100 miles from Coventry to Westminster to protest; on her 31st birthday she protested outside the home of the businessman who had organised the trade.