For Noël Sweeney, the animal rights movement is the defining moral crusade of the 21st century. In 'Albatross', he challenges readers to confront how we treat those without a voice, and to recognize the structural cruelty we’ve normalized – in abattoirs, zoos, factory farms and trophy hunts. Sweeney draws haunting parallels between speciesism, sexism and racism — arguing that the same impulse to dominate the powerless underlies all three. 'Animals are the underdog’s underdog,' he says. 'We treat them badly because we can'.
MILAN PERERA: Noël Sweeney, a barrister, poet and lifelong advocate for animal rights poses a question with moral weight: is our treatment of animals “the albatross hanging around the neck” of modern civilization?… Renowned for handling serious legal cases ranging from murder and armed robbery to discrimination and animal cruelty, returns with a new poetry anthology — Albatross: An Anthology of Animal Rights Poetry. The book compiles three of his earlier collections into one compelling compendium, weaving together legal insight and lyrical protest.
Not just an authority on legal texts — with his textbook ‘A Practical Approach to Animal Welfare Law’,… Sweeney is also a bona fide poet, deeply inspired by the metaphysical visions of William Blake. Like Blake, whose writings challenged the cruelties of slavery and injustice, Sweeney’s work bridges the moral gap between the human and non-human worlds…
In Albatross, he challenges readers to confront how we treat those without a voice, and to recognise the structural cruelty we’ve normalised – in abattoirs, zoos, factory farms and trophy hunts.
His writing, both verse and prose, strikes hard. Sweeney draws haunting parallels between speciesism, sexism and racism — arguing that the same impulse to dominate the powerless underlies all three. “Animals are the underdog’s underdog,” he says. “We treat them badly because we can”…
Sweeney believes the only path to real change lies through law. “Rights,” he says, “run with life itself. Living without them is simply being shackled by birth.” While ecologists and environmentalists raise awareness, the legal system still regards animals as property — protected by welfare standards, perhaps, but denied personhood or the right to exist for their own sake.
He cautions against settling for “animal welfare” reforms — bigger cages, more humane slaughter — when what’s truly needed is legal recognition: the right to life, protection, and respect. As he points out, it was legislation that once denied women legal personhood and Black citizens basic testimony rights — all now overturned by shifts in law. The same evolution, he believes, must come for animals…
For Sweeney, the animal rights movement is the defining moral crusade of the 21st century — no less urgent or transformative than the fights for abolition, civil rights or suffrage. The question he poses is simple, but weighty. “If we treated animals with kindness,” he reflects, “children would grow up seeing them as different, but equal. Every action we take is a step toward justice — for those with no human tongue, but who feel pain just the same”. SOURCE…
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