Day 245 - 07 May 96 - Page 30
1 we were only represented by a City law firm and libel
2 barristers for the appeal and not for the actual trial or
3 the pre-trial hearings?
4 A. I do not remember whether I was or not.
5
6 Q. So that was another thing you did not bother to check on
7 before you authorised the publication of this press
8 statement?
9 A. What is on that statement is true.
10
11 Q. It is not true?
12 A. I am sorry, I disagree with you. It is true.
13
14 Q. Where are these barristers then?
15 A. I do not know who you talked to out-of-hours, where you
16 go now. They certainly were there at a moment in time.
17
18 Q. It is talking about the appointment of barristers?
19 A. You will have to tell me where they are at.
20
21 Q. I am telling you they do not exist as I said they did at
22 the appeal.
23
24 MR. JUSTICE BELL: This is getting a bit of an arid argument
25 now, is it not? I have got your point. You need not go
26 over it. You say that it creates the impression that you
27 had legal representation for the duration not just for the
28 appeal.
29
30 MS. STEEL: The point of that, Mr. Preston, was to dissuade
31 people from responding to appeals for money for paying
32 witnesses' fares and for things like that; was it not?
33 A. That is not true.
34
35 Q. Where it says in the next paragraph:
36
37 "The group have suggested that McDonald's used 'spies' to
38 infiltrate the group, - it is important to note that their
39 meetings were advertised as public meetings and in order to
40 establish precisely who was responsible for distributing
41 the lies in the leaflet, these meetings were indeed
42 attended on McDonald's behalf."
43
44 It appears there that you are trying to indicate that the
45 group -- I am not sure whether that is meant to refer to
46 London Greenpeace or the McLibel Support Campaign -- are
47 making it up, that McDonald's used spies to infiltrate the
48 group, are not you?
49 A. No.
50
51 Q. But you finally had to concede that actually private
52 investigators did attend meetings of London Greenpeace?
53 A. They attended public meetings, yes.
54
55 Q. What do you know about whether they were public or private?
56 A. They were advertised as public.
57
58 Q. Advertised where?
59 A. In your documents. I believe some of those documents
60 are shown in my addendums to my statement we talked about
