Guy who coined the term 'Vegan' 95 this year

[Guest guest]

Guy who coined the term 'Vegan' 95 years old this year

!

 

http://www.foodsforlife.org.uk/people/Donald-Watson-Vegan/Donald-Watson.html

 

 

 

Interview with Donald Watson - Vegan Founder

 

Donald Watson formed the word vegan from the begining

and end of " vegetarian "

and founded The Vegan Society in November 1944.

 

 

 

DONALD WATSON

 

 

 

Born: 02/09/1910

 

 

 

Where: South Yorkshire, UK

 

 

 

Invented Word 'Vegan'

 

 

 

Founded Vegan Society in 1944

 

 

 

Occupation: Woodwork Teacher

 

 

 

Vegetarian for over 80 Years

 

 

 

Vegan for over 60 years

 

 

 

 

 

Interview with Donald Watson founder and patron of The

Vegan Society by Vegan

Society Trustee and Author of The Vegan Passport

George D. Rodger on 15

December 2002. First published in The Vegan Summer

2003 Edition. This extract

from

www.worldveganday.org

 

 

Q: Where and when were you born?

A: I was born on 2nd September 1910 at Mexborough in

South Yorkshire, into a

meat-eating family.

 

Q: Tell me about your childhood.

A: One of my earliest recollections is of holidays on

my Uncle George's farm

where I was surrounded by interesting animals. They

all " gave " something: the

farm horse pulled the plough, the lighter horse pulled

the trap, the cows

" gave " milk, the hens " gave " eggs and the cockerel was

a useful " alarm clock " -

I

didn't realise at that time that he had another

function too. The sheep " gave "

wool. I could never understand what the pigs " gave " ,

but they seemed such

friendly creatures - always glad to see me. Then the

day came when one of the

pigs was killed: I still have vivid recollections of

the whole process -

including the screams, of course. One thing that

shocked me was that my Uncle

George,

of whom I thought very highly, was part of the crew. I

decided that farms -

and uncles - had to be reassessed: the idyllic scene

was nothing more than Death

 

Row, where every creature's days were numbered by the

point at which it was

no longer of service to human beings. I lived at home

for 21 years and in the

whole of that time I never heard a word from my

parents, my grandparents, my 22

uncles and aunts, my 16 cousins, my teachers or my

vicar on anything remotely

associated with any duties we might have to " God's

Creation " . On leaving

school, I went to be an apprentice woodworker with

another uncle. When I was 21,

 

and due to become a craftsman, we found ourselves in

the economic slump of the

early 1930s and I discovered that craftsmen could

become woodwork teachers by

qualifying through the City and Guilds. With a bit of

trouble I managed it and

liked the job so much that I never tried to get any

kind of promotion.

 

Q: You are 92 years and 104 days old as of today. To

what do you attribute

your long life?

A: I married a Welsh girl, who taught me a Welsh

saying, " When everyone runs,

stand still " , and I seem to have been doing that ever

since. That must be

part of the answer, because so many people are running

towards what I see as

suicide, performing habits that everyone knows are

dangerous. I've always

accepted

that Man's greatest mistake is trying to turn himself

into a carnivore,

contrary to natural law. Inevitably, I suppose, within

the next ten years one

morning I won't wake up. What then? There'll be a

funeral, there'll be a

smattering

of people at it and, as Shaw forecast for his own

funeral, there'll be the

spirits of all the animals I've never eaten. In that

case, it will be a big

funeral!

 

 

Q: When did you first become a vegetarian?

A: It was a New Year Resolution in 1924, so I haven't

eaten any meat or fish

for 78 years.

 

 

Q: Tell me about the early days of the Vegan Society.

 

A: In the two years before we formed a democratic

Society, I literally ran

the show. From the response that I had - thousands of

letters - I feel that if I

 

hadn't formed the Society someone else would have done

so, though it might

have had a different name. The word " vegan " was

immediately accepted and became

part of our language and is now in almost every world

dictionary, I suppose. I

can't help comparing our attractive quarterly magazine

with my humble " Vegan

News " which I produced at great labour. Normally I

spent a whole night

assembling the various pages and stapling them

together. I'd limited the number

of

rs to five hundred because I couldn't cope

with a bigger number.

Compared with democracy, dictatorship has obvious

advantages. In the early days

of

" Vegan News " I could do everything my own way. I don't

think I could have

survived if I had had to write to the few people

concerned and ask for their

opinion. I had no telephone and no motor car - I could

only hope that they would

see

my point, until I handed over the work to a committee.

 

 

Q: How does your veganism relate to any religious

beliefs you may have?

A: I never had very deep ones. I've never been clever

enough to be an atheist

- an agnostic, yes. Some theologians think that Christ

was an Essene. If he

was, he was a vegan. If he were alive today, he'd be

an itinerant vegan

propagandist instead of an itinerant preacher of those

days, spreading the

message of

compassion. I understand that there are now more

vegans sitting down to

Sunday lunch than there are Anglicans attending Sunday

morning service. I think

that Anglicans should rejoice at the good news that

somebody at least is

practising the essential element in the Christian

religion - compassion.

 

 

Q: What do you find most difficult about being vegan?

A: Well, I suppose it is the social aspect -

excommunicating myself from that

part of life where people meet to eat. The only way

this problem can be eased

is by veganism becoming more and more acceptable in

guest houses, hotels,

wherever one goes, until one hopes one day it will

become the norm.

 

 

Q: And the other side of the coin: what do you find

easiest about being

vegan?

 

A: The great advantage of having a clear conscience

and believing that

scientists must now accept conscience as part of the

scientific equation.

 

 

Q: How important has gardening been in your life?

A: When I lived in Leicester a friend let me use an

allotment. When the crops

matured, I had to wheel them back four miles to the

other side of the city.

When I was lucky enough to get a job in Keswick, I got

a house with an acre of

garden, which was a dream come true. My compost bins

are filled with all the

weeds, grass mowings, vegetable waste from the garden,

dead leaves - no animal

manure. By the way, all my digging is done with a fork

- not a spade - to

preserve earthworms.

 

 

Q: What are your views on genetically modified

organisms?

A: As the old saying has it, if a thing seems too good

to be true, it

probably is too good to be true, and I'm sure this is

a classic example, quite

apart

from the irreversible genetic nature of what is our

basic food supply in the

future.

 

 

Q: What are your views on blood sports?

A: I think it's the bottom of the barrel. However

necessary we may feel that,

having got into this mess, we have to kill some

creatures for their own good,

to kill creatures for fun must be the very dregs.

 

 

Q: What are your views on animal experiments?

A: I said that cruel sports were the bottom of the

barrel, but I think I'll

have to move even them up one and put vivisection at

the bottom. One thing we

should always ask when we think that cruelty is

largely delegated to the people

who perform it is the simple question, if these

butchers and vivisectors

weren't there, could we perform the acts that they are

doing? If we couldn't, we

 

have no right to expect them to do those things on our

behalf. Most orthodox

medicines are tested on animals, and this perhaps is

the greatest inconsistency

in vegetarians and vegans who take orthodox medicines

- a more serious

inconsistency even than wearing leather or wool

because these are by-products of

 

industries that are primarily there to provide meat.

 

 

Q: What are your views on direct action?

A: I've never become involved in it. I respect the

people enormously who do

it, believing that it's the most direct and quick way

to achieve their ends. If

I were an animal in a vivisection cage, I would thank

the person who broke in

and let me out but, having said that, we must always

remember: is it just

possible that our act could be counterproductive? I'd

rather not say " yes " or

" no " because I don't know the answer to that.

 

 

Q: What do you consider the greatest achievement in

your life?

A: Achieving what I set out to do: to feel that I was

instrumental in

starting a great new movement which could not only

change the course of things

for

Humanity and the rest of Creation but alter Man's

expectation of surviving for

much longer on this planet.

 

 

Q: Do you have any message for the millions of people

who are now vegan?

A: Take the broad view of what veganism stands for -

something beyond finding

a new alternative to scrambled eggs on toast or a new

recipe for Christmas

cake. Realise that you're on to something really big,

something that hadn't been

 

tried until sixty years ago, and something which is

meeting every reasonable

criticism that anyone can level against it. And this

doesn't involve weeks or

months of studying diet charts or reading books by

socalled experts - it means

grasping a few simple facts and applying them.

 

Q: Do you have any message for vegetarians?

A: Accept that vegetarianism is only a stepping stone

between meat eating and

veganism. There may be vegans who made the change all

in one leap, but I'm

sure that for most people vegetarianism is a necessary

staging post. I'm still a

 

member of the Vegetarian Society to keep in touch with

the movement. I was

delighted to learn that at the World Vegetarian

Conference in Edinburgh the diet

 

was a vegan diet and the delegates had no choice. This

little seed that I

planted 60 years ago is making its presence felt.

 

 

Q: What do you think of the way the Vegan Society has

developed since you

were running it?

A: Better than expected, certainly. The genie is now

out of the bottle and no

one can ever put it back to the ignorant days before

1944, when this seed was

planted by people full of hope. Now wherever Man lives

he can have a vegan

diet. All the early work was done by volunteers. In a

way, everyone the Society

has ever paid to do the office work have all been

volunteers. Even our Chief

Executive is on a wage at the very bottom of anything

that is paid in the

commercial sector. Because we can afford nothing more.

So the Vegan Society has

always, in that sense, been supported by voluntary

labour. And we're enormously

grateful to these people because heaven knows what

would happen if they all

packed in.

 

 

Q: In what direction do you think the Vegan Society

should go in the future?

A: I hesitate to suggest anything to a movement which

seems to be going well

and spreading world wide. The edifice that survived

all attacks before we

started our work is now crumbling because of the

inherent weakness of its own

structure. We don't know the spiritual advancements

that long-term veganism -

over

generations - would have for human life. It would be

certainly a different

civilisation, and the first one in the whole of our

history that would truly

deserve the title of being a civilisation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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