Day 270 - 28 Jun 96 - Page 21


     
     1        by the defendants.  I am quite content to sit and listen to
     2        irrelevant questions, but what I am not content to do is
     3        that Mr. Morris should use this courtroom as an occasion to
     4        engage in a public relations stunt.  Does it matter in the
     5        very least bit what the group's other interests were or
     6        whether they were genuinely concerned about animals or the
     7        IMF or the poll tax.
     8
     9   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  It might matter, but I really do not think
    10        you can just ask what impression there was about the
    11        motivation of the people, unless you have got something
    12        hard to hang it on.  At the end of the day, you can say to
    13        me "look, you have had the evidence of all these inquiry
    14        agents who said this topic and that topic, quite apart from
    15        McDonald's, was discussed".  And if you want to argue that
    16        motivation is relevant in a particular way, you can say
    17        that gives you some indication of what the motivation of
    18        the group is.
    19
    20        If you give evidence yourself, you will presumably tell me
    21        what your motivation was insofar as you accept, if you do
    22        accept in your evidence, that you were involved in an
    23        anti-McDonald's campaign.
    24
    25   MR. MORRIS:  I am quite happy to drop the issue of motivation
    26        and the Plaintiffs should drop their application that we
    27        are motivated by malice.
    28
    29   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  My complaint about your question, if I use an
    30        everyday phrase, is it is far too airy fairy just to say
    31        what impression did you get about the motivation.
    32
    33   MR. MORRIS:  Well, the Plaintiffs have not got any, have not
    34        called any evidence or pleaded any particular about the
    35        motivation of the defendants, and if they are going to say
    36        that our involvement in the group in general, you know,
    37        must be some kind of motivation because the group was
    38        campaigning about it in this kind of way, then I do not
    39        know what their case is.  They have not got any case on
    40        motivation.
    41
    42   MR. JUSTICE BELL:  Just forget that because I do not want to
    43        enter into debates about what evidence there is and there
    44        is not at this stage.  Just ask another question.  But what
    45        you want to elicit from the witness is particular things
    46        she saw or heard and then, in due course, you can ask me to
    47        draw this inference or that inference from it.  What I am
    48        not interested in, quite frankly, is people's impressions,
    49        one person's impression about someone else's motivation.
    50 
    51   MR. MORRIS:  Can you recall anything that myself or Ms. Steel 
    52        said that would indicate that we did not believe in what we 
    53        were doing or did not believe that what we were giving out
    54        was accurate, if indeed we were giving anything out?
    55        A.  That is quite a complicated question.  No, I think it
    56        was my understanding that you believed wholeheartedly in
    57        what you were doing.
    58
    59   Q.   Right.
    60        A.  And were going about it in, I would say, a peaceful

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