Jill Phipps

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 Bob Phipps 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 Lesley, 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 Luke 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.

Fatal accident

On 1 February 1995, Phipps was one of 35 protesters at Coventry Airport in Baginton, protesting at the export of live calves to Amsterdam for distribution across Europe. Ten protesters broke through police lines and were trying to bring the lorry to a halt by sitting in the road or chaining themselves to it when Phipps was crushed beneath the lorry's wheels; her fatal injuries included a broken spine. She died on the way to the hospital accompanied by her brother Zab. Phipps' death received a large amount of publicity, being brought up at Prime Minister's question time in the House of Commons.

The Crown Prosecution Service decided there was no evidence to bring any charges against the driver. Phipps' family blamed the police for her death, because the police appeared determined to keep the convoy of lorries moving despite the protest. The inquest heard that the driver may have been distracted by a protester running into the road ahead of him, who was being removed by a policeman. The policeman in charge of the protest speculated that Phipps had chosen "deliberately [to] fall" under the wheels of the truck, but Phipps' father insisted that she did not want to die as she had a young son to live for.

Aftermath

Veal calf exports from Coventry Airport ended months later, when the aviation firm belonging to the pilot responsible for the veal flights, Christopher Barrett-Jolly, went bankrupt following accusations of running guns from Slovakia to Sudan in breach of EU rules. In 2006 he was charged with smuggling 271 kg of cocaine from Jamaica into Southend airport.

The continuing level of protest was such that several local councils and a harbour board banned live exports from their localities. All live exports of calves later stopped due to fears of BSE infection. In 2006 this ban was lifted, but Coventry Airport pledged that it would refuse requests to fly veal calves.

Memorial

Jill's Film, with footage of Phipps, the Coventry live export campaign, the funeral, and interviews with Phipps' family was produced and shown for the first time at the Jill's Day 2005 event in Coventry. Memorial events are held by grassroots animal rights groups around 1 February each year.