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
