10 Point Summary
1. The Importance of Secondary Targeting: The campaign against Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) by SHAC demonstrates that when a primary target is resistant to direct pressure, activists can succeed by targeting the company's "secondary and tertiary" partners, such as suppliers and shareholders. By attacking these "soft targets" through decentralized, low-budget tactics, SHAC successfully isolated HLS from the financial infrastructure it needed to operate.
2. The Relationship Between Strategy and Tactics: Strategy and tactics are distinct but inseparable parts of a continuum; strategy involves long-term campaign planning, while tactics are the specific actions taken to implement that plan. Effective movements must move beyond political analysis—simply understanding what is wrong—to studying strategic principles that explain how to win against an opponent with superior resources.
3. Defining Clear Objectives: Every resistance action should have a clear, attainable goal, which may be decisive (directly accomplishing an end), shaping (changing conditions to make victory more likely), or sustaining (supporting the movement). Actions should not be random; they must serve specific purposes such as deterrence, recruitment, testing capacity, or gathering intelligence.
4. Seizing the Initiative: Successful movements must go on the offensive rather than merely reacting to the actions of those in power. Gaining the initiative allows resisters to dictate the terms of the conflict—choosing the time, place, and method of engagement—which is essential for smaller forces to defeat larger, more powerful opponents.
5. Concentration of Force and Target Selection: Resisters should concentrate their limited resources on points where they can achieve overwhelming force against a weak point in the opponent's defenses. To identify these weak points, activists should evaluate targets based on five criteria: accessibility, vulnerability, recuperability (how hard it is to repair), criticality (how important it is to the system), and threat.
6. The "Bazaar" Model of Organization: Effective resistance often utilizes a "bazaar" style of organizing—decentralized, diverse, and open-source—rather than a centralized "cathedral" style. This approach, exemplified by SHAC and early civil rights sit-ins, allows for rapid innovation, high agility, and resilience, as autonomous groups can copy and modify successful tactics without central command.
7. Simplicity and Surprise in Planning: Plans should be kept simple because complex plans rarely survive contact with the enemy or the stress of action. Furthermore, utilizing surprise is fundamental for disruption, as it allows smaller groups to exploit advantages before large bureaucracies or police forces can react.
8. Operational Security and Preparation: Successful direct actions, such as the Animal Liberation Front’s "Operation Bite Back," rely on rigorous preparation, including reconnaissance, rehearsals, and pre-planned exit strategies. Organizers must ask critical questions regarding logistics, necessary skills, potential repression, and fallback options before initiating an action.
9. "Weapons of the Weak": Historically, oppressed groups like peasants often use low-profile, "everyday forms of resistance" such as foot-dragging, sabotage, and false compliance rather than open rebellion. While these methods offer safety through anonymity and can create economic barriers for oppressors, they are rarely sufficient to effect structural change without being converted into organized collective action.
10. Strategic Failure in the North-West Rebellion: The 1885 Métis uprising illustrates that tactical brilliance cannot overcome strategic failure; while Métis commander Gabriel Dumont won individual battles using guerrilla tactics, the rebellion failed because political leader Louis Riel refused to go on the offensive. By rejecting Dumont's strategy of attacking supply lines (railways) and insisting on a static defense at Batoche, the rebels ceded their advantages of mobility and surprise, allowing the Canadian government to crush them with superior numbers.