Day 276 - 09 Jul 96 - Page 35


     
     1        served in the summer, during the summer vacation in 1994,
     2        those were all documents which I had asked for at several
     3        pretrial hearings and which the Plaintiffs claimed were not
     4        available or were not relevant, or something.
     5
     6             All the press releases and leaflets which appear in
     7        this bundle were all given to us by journalists in the case
     8        of the press releases, and members of the public or
     9        supporters in the case of the leaflets.  But, actually,
    10        that probably does not matter seeing as McDonald's are
    11        admitting they have distributed it anyway.  The same
    12        allegations get repeated in the letters that appear in tab
    13        6 and tab 7.  Obviously, I just make all the same points in
    14        relation to them.  So, I will not go through them all.
    15
    16             In tab 7, Mr. Carson is a freelance journalist.  The
    17        letter that appears in tab 9 to George Galloway MP was
    18        passed on to us from Mr. Galloway.  And on page 2 of that
    19        letter, which is dated 3rd July 1995, McDonald's say, "We
    20        are faced with the defendants' refusal to cease
    21        publication.  We have no alternative but to demonstrate
    22        publicly that the contents of the leaflet are untrue and
    23        seek an injunction restraining them from publishing the
    24        allegations.  Further, it has never been our intention to
    25        seek damages or recover costs from the defendants."
    26
    27             Obviously, as we know, that is not true, and that
    28        claim by McDonald's has been repeated in a number of places
    29        in the newspaper and in other letters that have been sent
    30        out from McDonald's head office.  It is clear to me that
    31        the only purpose of it is to try and dissuade or deter
    32        support from us by making McDonald's sound as though they
    33        are being really reasonable, along the same lines as how
    34        they wrote to us so many times before they were reluctantly
    35        forced to take any action, and both of the things are
    36        completely untrue.  But it does not seem to stop them
    37        saying them.
    38
    39             The same statement is made on the second page of the
    40        letter in tab 10 to Ken Livingston MP, dated 6th February
    41        1996.  Obviously, that is much more recent.  Right at the
    42        bottom of the page, "It has never been our intention to
    43        seek damages or recover costs from the defendants."
    44
    45             Then on the following page - sorry, not on the
    46        following page, the next letter, which is still in tab 10,
    47        is a letter dated 7th March 1996 to Mr. Ken Livingston MP.
    48        This was given to us by Mr. Livingston, and in the fourth
    49        paragraph Mike Love, who wrote the letter, said he has
    50        enclosed a copy of our background briefing note relating to
    51        the trial, and so on.  And behind that is the copy of the
    52        libel action background briefing which was given to
    53        Mr. Livingston, which is dated 3rd of 1995 and which
    54        repeats the lie about first having written to the group in
    55        December 1984 about the leaflet that they are suing over
    56        and having written several subsequent letters.  Obviously,
    57        by this time, the Plaintiffs were fully aware that this was
    58        completely untrue, because they had received our pleadings
    59        and had been forced to admit that there was, in fact, only
    60        one letter about a different leaflet.

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