Outside a McDonald’s on a grey day in Walsall, there’s a group intent on saving animals—one conversation at a time. With their unapologetic Black Country accents and the persistence of righteous evangelists, they offer leaflets and vegan food samples to anybody who will listen. They are all smiles, even as a group of mocking teens wave burgers in their faces. This is Walsall Animal Action, bringing militant veganism to the streets of the West Midlands.
I sat down with Yvonne Thomas in a cosy Walsall café to learn more about their mission. Wearing a black hoodie with WAA printed on it, and with a beaming smile, Yvonne set me at ease straight away. She’s been the group’s leader for six years, and her experience shows through in her calm, reasoned persuasiveness. I’m a vegetarian, but by the end of our conversation I found myself reconsidering my own choices. “Dairy is just as scary,” Yvonne says. Her stories of cruelty and injustice to animals left me devastated.
Along with the rest of WAA, Yvonne takes inspiration from figures like Juliet Gellatley, founder of animal rights charity Viva!, and Australia-born activist Joey Carbonstrong, who describes himself as an “ex gang member who turned his life around and is now a vegan animal rights activist.” Carbstrong in particular has been known to use eye-catching tactics that get him in trouble. He and six other activists were arrested in 2024 for occupying part of a sausage factory, what he called a “gas chamber,” where carbon dioxide is used to stun pigs before they are slaughtered.
For Yvonne, the mission is clear. Everything WAA do is for the animals and for our planet. “All animals want to live,” she tells me. There’s no denying that. Yet millions are being killed every year in the UK, as well as around the world. More than 900,000 pigs were slaughtered just this March alone, according to the UK’s Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board.
Yvonne can pinpoint the moment when she became a vegan. On a childhood visit to Shugborough Hall’s model farm, seeing a distressed calf separated from its mother forced her to reconsider the dairy industry. Cows have to be regularly pregnant in order to produce milk, but calves are usually taken away soon after birth. Not everyone has an epiphany like Yvonne’s, though. Part of WAA’s job is to spread the word to curious meat-eaters—and to vegetarians like me.
