MONTPELLIER’S decision to abandon its work on Oxford University’s new laboratory is a victory for terrorism. The company was engaged in legitimate business and it has been frightened off continuing with it by threats from animal rights activists. It is not the first company to be so appallingly bullied out of doing business and, given the success of the tactics this time, it will almost certainly not be the last.

The Government will say, as it did in the wake of the war waged against Huntingdon Life Sciences, that it will not countenance such behaviour and that it will stick up for the rights of companies to carry on their lawful activities. Words, however, will not be enough to comfort directors faced with the prospect of danger to their staff or their families.

Huntingdon lost its commercial banking and broking facilities as the activists did their worst and was only able to survive courtesy of an emergency account provided by the Bank of England. Montpellier’s role as terrorist target prompted the resignation of a new non-executive director, who claimed not to have been aware of the problem when he agreed to join the board.

Ironically, yesterday’s news that the company had decided it had no option but to bow to the bullies and abandon work on the Oxford contract came as the Government announced its latest crackdown on crime. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, declared that his five-year plan would “put the interests of the law-abiding citizen first”.

One might have thought that the Home Office would have taken it as read that it should be putting the interests of the law-abiding citizen first and have been doing so for the last seven years without needing a raft of new policies to do so. But headlines rather than action are what Government initiatives are meant to achieve.

According to the Conservatives’ researchers, the Home Office has not been inactive in tackling crime under New Labour. It calculates that it launched 154 crime initiatives in the period between June 2001 and June 2004 alone. Some of them sound remarkably similar to what was being trumpeted yesterday. Promises to tackle persistent anti-social behaviour have been regular events.

Yet nothing has stopped the thugs who do not want Oxford University to have a new laboratory from bringing work on the project to a halt. Last night neither GlaxoSmithKline nor AstraZeneca was prepared to comment on the issue, indicating that companies involved in the pharmaceutical industry would prefer to avoid the issue of vivisection rather than risk intimidating the terrorists.

Montpellier is not a large company. The science laboratory contract was an important one for it. The terms on which it has cut short its involvement are not yet clear. Perhaps the Oxford authorities decided that they did not want to be held responsible for holding the company to the contract if it would result in those involve being subjected to danger.

Yet the university maintains that it is determined to proceed with the laboratory. If it finds a contractor to undertake the work, it is imperative that the Government provides the protection that it will merit. Instead of announcing more empty initiatives, it should see that the terrorists who use animal rights as an excuse for illegal behaviour are hunted down.

If we do not stand up against the tactics being employed against Montpellier, it will be a crime against business and those who invest in it.

Choppy waters for flotations

INVESTMENT bankers may have short memories and taller stories but institutional investors are not in the mood to be talked into paying high prices for IPOs. Sir Richard Branson might like to think that Virgin Mobile merits a higher rating than Vodafone but why JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley should have gone along with that view is a mystery.

The weekend brought the predictable posturings about Sir Richard being prepared to pull the float rather than reduce the price but that only added to the indignity when last night the price range was scaled back. And this was no mere tweaking. Where so recently the bankers were happy to set 285p as the top of the range, they have now conceded that the market would not even come within 6 per cent of the bottom of the range.

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