by Leslie Cross (1914-1979)

From the 10th anniversary edition of The Vegan (winter 1954 volume 9 number 3 pages 9-12). Available as PDF. Learn more about Leslie Cross and the history of veganism.

This is an attempt to state in simple terms what veganism is and why and how it came into existence, and to suggest what it could mean for mankind.

The word "veganism" is a symbol that stands for a major change, a new mutation comparable to the freeing of the serfs and the freeing of the slaves.

Its official definition — "the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals" — is accurate, precise and comprehensive, but not always fully understood. This is not as surprising as it might seem, for rarely have nine short words enshrined a reform so massive, the achievement of which would bring a new world and new men to inhabit it.

Why do we believe we should live without exploiting animals? To put the question in another form, why was such a doctrine formulated?

The final if not the immediate answer is a revealing one, for it demonstrates the truth of the claim that veganism is not a mere side-shoot in human evolution, but a central extending growth of considerable significance.

Veganism owes its birth to the fact that at the deepest point within us we believe impregnably in freedom—particularly perhaps those who were born and bred in these traditionally freedom-loving islands.

Freedom to live our own lives in our way, according to our own inward light, is fundamental to our view of life itself. It is in the light of this concept that we find the true significance of the vegan reform. Only when we see it as a doctrine not of restriction (as those who oppose it mistakenly believe), but of freedom, do we fully comprehend it.

The simple fact is this: that at rock bottom, veganism is the most recent of the periodic surges which have marked the tide of freedom ever since history began. It is distinguished from its predecessors by virtue of the fact that it brings a quite new and distinctive feature into the long fight for liberty; it has driven the tide of freedom beyond what has hitherto been held to be its natural boundary — the concept of the free man. Until the advent of veganism, comparatively few men regarded the animals as being either worthy of or entitled to the right to be free, and probably fewer still realised the impressive effect which the granting of such a right would have upon the freedom of man himself.

The real, the indelible significance of veganism is its devastatingly logical demonstration that by denying to the animals the right to be free, man keeps locked against himself the gateway to his own further pursuit of happiness.

To believe in the right to be free means inevitably that we grant that same right to others. If we fail in this, we deny the principle itself. We thus make of Orwell's 1984 a logical possibility and the slavery of one man to another a justifiable act. To put it in another way, the law of freedom — which is also the law of love — knows no limits. Because in his mind man has excluded the animals from its operation, he has set arbitrary limits upon it, and in so doing has reaped what he has sown — a severe limitation upon his own progress. It is upon this factor, this little recognised bar to the upward growth of man, that veganism throws such a ruthless and revealing light.

When we turn to the question of how veganism came into the world we find an excellent example of the indirect approach which the forces of destiny sometimes adopt.

The mundane fact is that the seed of veganism grew out of a year's argument in the correspondence columns of The Vegetarian Messenger about the moral case against the use of dairy produce by vegetarians. At the end of the correspondence, a handful of vegetarians decided they would like to form themselves into a "non-dairy" group within the Vegetarian Society. But the Society declined and suggested that these few members should set up an organisation of their own. Thus was the Vegetarian Society the unwitting handmaid of destiny, for the direct result of its action was the formation of the Vegan Society in November, 1944.

The new society was not long content with being merely "non-flesh, non-dairy, non-egg, non-honey". Commodities such as fur, leather and wool joined animal food as being "non-vegan". There was an early attempt to get at the root of what is wrong with the relationship between man and the animals; to deal with the cause rather than its almost uncountable effects. However, not without some years of internal stress and strain was the society able to be precise about what it wanted to do. It made up its mind finally on November 11th, 1950, when it agreed in a special general meeting that what it wanted to do was end the exploitation of animals by man.

Between 1944 and 1950 the inner and true meaning of veganism was held "in solution", undefined and incompletely recognised. The "non-dairy" motivation was from the start clearly insufficient as a final meaning; it was in fact no more than the trigger-movement that impelled a new and profound truth into the world. In 1950, when the meaning of veganism became generally apparent, it was formulated into a simple phrase which was inserted into the society's constitution.

Since 1950 there has been no doubt as to its meaning. The short definition quoted in the early part of the article is amplified by Rule 4 (a): "the Society shall seek to end the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection and all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man."

Although prior to 1950 there was a good deal of argument as to what veganism in fact was, one thing was never in doubt: the impelling power behind the movement was, and remains, compassion for the animals, arising out of their treatment at the hands of man. It was compassion that led the first handful to band together in 1944 and it is compassion that provides the motive power to-day.