My name is Ton Dekker. I’m 84, and I’ve worked at the Meertens Institute, one of the institutes of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. I’d like to tell you about how, as a human being, I became interested in the animal kingdom. A theme which is reflected in the Holland Festival’s opening performance that you will be seeing.
In Netherlands of the 1960s, stray cats were an increasing problem. There were shy stray cats living in the garden of our institute as well, and within a year they produced 24 kittens. I couldn’t get a trap cage anywhere, so I made one myself in order to catch the animals and have them sterilised. We were able to find new owners for most of them but kept the shy, hard-to-place mother cats and some of their kittens ourselves. Because in many animal shelters at the time, it was still common practice to euthanize shy cats. After some time, we had eight cats in our flat. Which wasn’t an ideal living environment, so we bought a house with a large garden for a cat enclosure in Heiloo, south of Alkmaar. But in the 1970s, it was common practice there, too, to euthanize hard-to-place animals. My wife and I decided to stand up against this, which resulted in us, together with other sympathisers, being able to take over the board of the regional chapter of the Society for the Protection of Animals in 1979.
I became acquainted with many other animal protectors and joined the central board of the DSPA in 1980. There, I encountered other issues concerning things people do to animals, like on fur farms, in factory farming, hunting and the genetic engineering of animals. I slowly came to realise that standing up for animals must also have consequences for people’s personal lives. You can’t advocate for animals and eat your own clients. It’s said that “to protect animals is to civilise humans”. Because there was insufficient political attention for these themes, several animal protectors decided to start a political party, the Party for the Animals. The first political party in world history for non-humans, a party not primarily focussing on the interests of its own kind but that also gives animals their due place. I drew up a declaration of principle for the party, with as a starting point that, in this violent world, humans should treat animals, nature and the environment, and fellow humans as well, of course, in a loving way. The message caught on.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the Netherlands without the Party for the Animals, which inspired similar organisations throughout the world. Humans comprise only a fraction of life on earth but make the lives of countless other organisms literally impossible. And in doing so, we humans make life impossible for ourselves as well. Which would be quite a shame. The only bright side is that more and more people are beginning to realise this. Let’s hope it’s not too late and get started right now!
When watching the performance, I’d like you to keep in mind the following words of Mahatma Gandhi: “ The Greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”
I hope you enjoy the performance.