My friend Karl Garside, who has died aged 59 of heart disease, was an Animal Liberation Front (ALF) activist, hunt saboteur and animal rights investigator. Across four decades of direct action he was involved in more operations claimed by the ALF than any other individual, making him Britain’s most prolific ALF activist.
Karl was born in Birkenhead in Merseyside to Sheila (nee Morton), an office worker, and David Garside, an electrician. The family settled in Altrincham in Cheshire in the mid-1970s, where Karl went to Wellington Road school. In 1983, aged 17, he bunked off South Trafford College in Altrincham to take part in an invasion of the Grand National at Aintree racecourse.
