There was another guy operating the conveyor belt; he’d press a pedal, the belt moved forwards, and the animals would move closer to two guys who stood at the end of the restrainer with knives. Those sheep, the last thing they saw when they went from the stun box onto that restrainer, after a life of grass and fields and wind – the last thing they saw was blood. The last thing they heard was screaming agony as their children’s throats were hacked at. Because that’s what it was: sheer brutality. They were hacked to death. If those knives were sharp then I’m Matthew McConaughey. Those sentient animals, those gentle creatures that feel fear, that feel pain, ended their lives in terrified agony under the strip lights of that terrible, miserable place. They became nothing but flesh. All that agony, all that fear would become meat that would be discarded if it went off or else picked at by fussy kids around a Sunday dinner table.
That wasn’t even the worst thing I’ve seen. I’ve seen pigs – animals that are well more intelligent than dogs – living in dark metal pens, chewing the flesh of their dead babies. I’ve seen turkeys used as footballs; chickens swollen with growth hormones having their beaks ripped off with pliers; baby goats having their horns burned to stumps with no anaesthetic. I’ve seen men driving tractors into limping mother cows who have just had their newborns taken off them. I’ve seen dairy workers queuing up to take turns punching a day-old calf in the face. Fish – sentient animals capable of pain and fear – torn out of the sea and suffocated to death, either by lack of oxygen or else crushed under the weight of their dead.
All of this horror, this misery, this fucking agony so we can eat milk and eggs and cheese, and so you can eat deep-fried chicken nuggets and chippy dinner.
That’s why I do what I do.
That conveyor belt, those screaming sheep and lambs. That’s where it all started for me. Those voices never left me. Those cries for help. That’s why I’ll never stop.
Welcome to Six Stories.
I’m Scott King.
This is episode four.
In this series we’ve been discussing the death of vlogger Elizabeth Barton in March 2018. So far, we’ve begun sketching out a rough picture of Elizabeth from those who knew her. Universally adored; Elizabeth Barton was also philanthropic, as was highlighted last episode. Elizabeth’s #givingmondayback hashtag trended on Twitter the week after she died, and searching for it now you’ll find a huge amount of people following in her footsteps, posing for pictures of themselves giving food to the homeless. She planned to set up a charity – the Elizabeth Barton Tower Foundation – but sadly she was never able to. It would have made a huge difference in the town.
Elizabeth was murdered and decapitated by Solomon Meer, George Meldby and Martin Flynn during the ‘Beast from the East’ 2018 cold snap. It is becoming increasingly clear that a toxic mix of jealousy on the part of Solomon Meer and perhaps unrequited adoration from the other two could have been the motivation for this savage killing.
Recently, however, a message was scrawled on the wall of the Barton family house: ‘Who locked Lizzie in the tower?’ I am wondering if perhaps that message is not questioning who killed Elizabeth Barton, but why?
Today we are going to look at Elizabeth through the eyes of someone who knew her before she became Ergarth’s favourite vlogger. We’re going to get a glimpse of life with Elizabeth before she began ascending the steps to celebrity. I want to know what made Elizabeth, what motivated her and perhaps gain some insight into what lay beneath the veneer she presented in her videos. Ergarth is a small town and people don’t often move away. This gives me the perfect opportunity to scrutinise what, if anything, has not been said about this case, that has perhaps been buried. Perhaps I’ll be able to shine some light on the festering resentment that Elizabeth bred in her killers. We’ll see.
Jason Barton is Elizabeth’s younger brother. He has never spoken to the media before about what happened to his sister. He was living at the other end of the country at the time Elizabeth died. Jason did not return for his sister’s funeral, and he has so far refused to take part in any documentaries, interviews and news reports.
‘Because I want to’ is his answer when I ask him why me and why now?
Our interview does not take place in Ergarth. We’re a long way south, at the headquarters of an organisation called Justice for the Voiceless. In Bristol to be exact. Justice for the Voiceless are a group of activists who are dedicated to try and expose, he tells me, the ugly, hidden face of animal cruelty in the meat and dairy industry. It seems like both siblings had causes they liked to fight for.
Justice for the Voiceless often targets slaughterhouses and, despite the distance, decided to make an example of Flynn’s Meats in Ergarth. In 2017, their investigation led to the conviction of a number of Flynn’s staff on charges of animal cruelty.
—We didn’t get any of the Flynns though. That’s what we wanted. The workers, to be fair to them, were only the heads of the weeds. We wanted the roots.
I wonder if this was part of Martin Flynn’s motivation for helping murder Elizabeth Barton. It’s certainly possible. However, the undercover investigation was not mentioned in the trial of Meer, Meldby and Flynn, and it seems that Jason Barton’s involvement in it was not common knowledge. It’s a tough opener, but I ask Jason whether he feels his actions against Flynn’s Meats had any part in what Martin Flynn subsequently did.
—Nah; no one knew I was involved. I made sure of that. I didn’t want it to be about me, anyway. It wasn’t for me. It was for those mams and kids, those animals. They were the important ones.
You see, people don’t want to hear it. They don’t want to know about the terror and the agony that these creatures endure. They want to put their hands over their eyes and their fingers in their ears, and keep consuming cos they ‘couldn’t possibly give up cheese’.
However, they like it when we expose what’s really going on. That’s what’s so fucking weird about it. They’ll sign an online petition to have CCTV in all abattoirs, to stop live exports, but they still want to eat flesh, drink milk from a tortured mother that was supposed to feed a baby animal. It’s fucking weird.
I’m interested to know how Jason’s views on animals began. From the little I know about him, he seems very unlike his parents and sister. A black sheep is perhaps not the best choice of words.
Jason Barton utilises every inch of the space we speak in – a bland and basic room in the Justice for the Voiceless offices, usually used for strategy meetings. We sit opposite each other at a large table surrounded by folding chairs. Jason sometimes sits but most of the time he paces, up and down, back and forth. I wonder what his reason is for agreeing to this interview. A cynic might say that he’s made himself available to me to gain a platform – to get more exposure for his cause perhaps? Jason is young, but he’s articulate and focused. There’s a fierce intelligence behind his words, which come at me in rapid bursts.
—The first time I saw animals being killed like that was at Flynn’s Meats. I was only little, like – eleven, twelve, something like that.
—How did a boy that age manage to get inside an abattoir?
—I know, right? You see, I was a wanderer as a kid. I could never keep still. I was always getting in trouble at school for messing about, climbing things, running round. I didn’t go round beating people up or owt like that. But I’ve got ADHD. Schools can be good about that, but they can be fucking stupid about it too. Depends on the school. Let’s just say West Ergarth Primary thought that shutting a kid with ADHD in a room by himself was the best way to understand such a fucking complex issue. This is what happens when your government treats teachers like shit. You get shit teachers.
Anyway, like I say, I used to wander, and I used to do it at night. It was the only way I could sleep. Mam and Dad, I used to drive them spare. Imagine being home after a long day at work and your kid is bouncing off the walls until bedtime. They used to get me to go into the garden and see how many laps of it I could do in a minute, try
ing to wear me out.
I used to wake up at around three a.m. and I was just awake. The house was dead quiet and still, and I was good at sneaking. The back door that led out into the garden always had a key in it, so I just slipped it into my pocket and went off wandering. Not far; I wasn’t running away, just wandering round the area. It was like magic out there at that time. There was never anyone about. It was like being in a dream, all the silent suburbs, closed curtains, the damp of the dew. I loved it.
It was when I thought I saw … well … I saw something weird, that’s all. Something I couldn’t explain. That’s when I stopped walking the streets.
—What did you see?
—Ah, it was nowt; I was just a kid with an overactive imagination. Scared the shit out of me, mind. It was … like, it was just a person I suppose, but they looked all wrong. I was by the closed-up entrance to Ergarth Dene – behind the old cricket pavilion. I reckon it was a junkie or something, but she … she just didn’t move right.
—I’m not sure I know what you mean?
—Neither do I really. It was like, she was walking but it was all jerky, like stop-motion animation. All wonky. She was pale and rake-thin, and her mouth … man, that mouth. She’ll have been a crackhead or something. It was like all her teeth were all broken but she was coming at me, straight at me. I started backing off, then I was running and I could hear behind – it sounded like bare feet on the pavement, and her breath all wheezy and whistling. I was shitting myself!
—Did she catch you?
—I didn’t look back. I ran back home, hopped the garden fence, straight up the fucking wall and into my bedroom. I could see the Vampire Tower from up there – far off in the distance. And I remember being able to see this big, black thing flying towards it, like … like … well I dunno what it was like. I was just a kid.
I got under those covers and I stayed there. I was freezing, deep inside my body. I can still remember it…
—In your fingers and toes, right?
—Right. Ergarth-style cold. I didn’t sleep a fucking wink. After that I just stayed in my room at night; ground my teeth, climbed the fucking walls. Kept my curtains closed. Tried not to look out at that tower. Eventually though, it got too much and I had to go somewhere.
—Was this when you went to the abattoir. Flynn’s Meats.
—Yes. I had to move, had to walk. So I started going out again, but I avoided the streets – I just crept in the shadows like a fox or a rat or something. And then I started wandering across the fields. I made sure I went west – the opposite direction to the Vampire Tower. It’s beautiful once you’re out of Ergarth. I mean, anywhere’s beautiful compared to that shit-hole. But it was genuinely pretty out there with no one about and the sun’s just sort of creeping into the sky. I was wandering along the road, by the dry-stone wall, and I suddenly smelled this smell. It’s hard to describe; like burned hair and rot. If you live in Ergarth, you know that smell is coming from the abattoir, but I didn’t really understand what the abattoir was, so I just followed my nose.
There’s all these signs outside the abattoir telling you to stay out and that there’s guard dogs, but that’s bollocks. I just walked in. It was a fucking shit-tip back then; it still is. Old machinery rusting away, puddles, piles of rubbish. There’s this huge, grey, spiky fence around the outside, but they don’t even lock the gate. So I just walked in. I climbed up this drainpipe on the side and I was on the roof. The smell – fuck it was hideous. That’s when I heard the screaming – it went through me like a blade. And of course when I found this hatch thing on the roof that was unlocked, something inside me was begging me not to, but I had to look.
Jason then describes some of the slaughter he saw at Flynn’s Meats. You heard it once … I don’t particularly want to hear it again, either.
—That changed me. That changed something inside me, and it became my life to try and help animals. I just wanted to do something about it, you know? I thought I was going to be the next Greta Thunberg. I still want to be. She’s fucking great. I love how people fucking hate her because she’s right. All these pissed-off old white guys getting butt-hurt because they’re being schooled by a fucking sixteen-year-old. I love it. She’s a fucking hero!
It troubles me slightly that Jason has not yet mentioned the brutal death of his own sister. I am not here to judge him for this or dictate how people are allowed to feel. I do think I should bring up the subject, though. There’s no natural way to lead up to it. But I’ll try.
—What were things at home like when you were that age?
—They weren’t great but who can really put their hand on their heart and say they had a fantastic childhood?
—Now’s your chance, if you don’t feel you’ve been heard.
—I didn’t have a bad childhood. I wasn’t abused. My parents … they just weren’t there a lot of the time really. They both worked and they both had a social life. That was their whole vibe – ‘having kids isn’t going to stop my social life’ sort of thing, you know?
—They weren’t present; or they weren’t emotionally present?
—They were … distracted I reckon. Like, they’d hurry us off to bed and go out or leave us with babysitters – various girls from round the area. I honestly didn’t know who was going to pick me up from school most days. Mam just forgot once. She was too busy having lunch with her friends – which means drinking a load of wine with a load of insufferable old Tory gossips. You know those NIMBY types? They hate wind turbines spoiling their view of the countryside and don’t care that without wind turbines, there’ll be no fucking countryside.
—It doesn’t sound great.
—Don’t get me wrong; we got a lot of stuff. It wasn’t like we didn’t have stuff.
—Stuff?
—Toys, games, TVs, consoles. I had all the best ones, the PlayStation, the Xbox, and a big TV in my room. So, like I say, it’s not like we wanted for things. And if my parents were away for a weekend, we knew that they’d make up for it with presents. It was good, really. That’s probably why I’ve, like, rejected all that sort of thing now and try to live for the day, you know, live in the moment. Sorry, you were asking about the wandering?
—That’s right. Do you think your circumstances had much to do with it?
—Probably. I was just trying to be seen, trying to get them to notice me, I suppose.
—I’m guessing it didn’t work.
—You’d be correct. What they noticed was what we won. What we achieved. That just wasn’t me, though. That was all Elizabeth.
There’s a tense silence. Jason sits down in a chair and stares past me into the middle distance. His shoulders rise and fall, swift and sharp.
—She did all the after-school stuff: the clubs, the sports, all that. And she was the best at everything – always bringing home medals and certificates and shit. Mam and Dad loved all that, bragging about her to their friends.
—What about you?
—What about me? I wouldn’t do any of that stuff, so they tried to give it to me instead. Footballs; I had about a hundred. I just used to boot them into next door’s garden to piss them off. So Dad set up a punch bag in the garage, a proper boxing one, hung it from a chain in the ceiling; got me some gloves.
—That sounds positive.
—Yeah, but then he just left me to it, like; didn’t do it with me, and that was all I wanted. Mam just bought me more and more computer games to keep me quiet, keep me out of trouble. She said if I was up in my room doing that, then I wouldn’t be out causing mayhem. They bought me a guitar as well but didn’t ever show me how to play it. I think they thought I would become this musical prodigy or some shit. But that wasn’t me. That was Elizabeth.
—Were you close with your sister, Jason, when you were younger?
—Not really, no. We just stayed out of each other’s way to be honest.
—Can you give me a snapshot of life in your household when you were little?
—I dunno what go
od that’ll do. What does that have to do with anything?
—It’s your truth. That’s what’s important.
Jason twists in his chair, his arms unconsciously wrapping around himself.
—You see, we have a problem here. I don’t imagine you’ll want to broadcast what I’m going to say.
—What makes you think that?
—Because it doesn’t fit. But if you’re brave enough to put out the stuff people don’t want to hear, fair fucks to you, I suppose.
I’m aware that I’m being goaded. But Jason has controlled the narrative up to now so I’m going to let him continue.
—Tell me what you want to say.
—OK, fine. I have memories, but you’re not going to like them. You may not even believe them.
—Everyone should be heard, that’s what I believe.
—Yeah. I’m sorry, of course. Look, I know about what happened to you. Man, that must have fucked you up. I suppose … your story is a story that no one expected. And so’s mine. But I don’t want to be a fucking celebrity or anything, OK?
—It’s your story I want to hear. That’s all.
—So, I remember when I was a kid – I dunno, six, seven? Me and my sister used to go downstairs on a Saturday morning to watch TV. Elizabeth was about ten and she always got to choose what we watched. That was just how it was. The big TV was downstairs and the big, leather sofa. It was better to watch TV in there. Elizabeth had a DVD of this old kids show from the nineties, Maid Marian and her Merry Men, and we loved it. She loved it. She would watch the same episode over and over again, for weeks. I still know the fucking dialogue off by heart.
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