Day 306 - 26 Nov 96 - Page 43
1 one that people were handing out. Anyway, carrying on, he
2 said that at this stage I was not holding the banner, that
3 I was talking to another woman and that I had my back to
4 him. He said that we both turned round and walked two to
5 three steps towards the wall, to the holdall, on top of
6 which were some more leaflets. He said these were
7 certainly of the type complained of because the top
8 page was the very distinctive cartoon and the heavy print.
9 At this stage he was six to seven yards away, and if you
10 look at day 250, page 47, line 59 he admitted that he could
11 not actually see into the holdall so he did not know what
12 leaflets were in there. So the only time that he could
13 have seen the leaflet was at the point when they were taken
14 out of the bag.
15
16 And carrying back on with day 250, page 41, we held up a
17 leaflet and said "The leaflet looked like that", and he
18 said, "Yes, it had that cartoon on the front". So there he
19 is identifying it by the cartoon, which, as we know,
20 appears on the A5 leaflet and it appears on the Veggies
21 fact sheet too. So the point being that it is very
22 dangerous to make the assumption that it would have been
23 the fact sheet which is the subject matter of this libel
24 action, particularly bearing in mind that Mr. Nicholson was
25 working on the assumption that there was only one leaflet
26 in circulation.
27
28 He then said that I moved to the edge of the pavement and
29 was now 30 to 40 feet away from him and that he watched me
30 for five minutes, looking to see whether or not I showed
31 any indication of taking a leading role or directing
32 things, and he actually said that he did not see that and
33 in his opinion I had kept myself very much to myself.
34
35 He said on day 249, page 17, line 25 that the holdall would
36 have been roughly where the girl was bending down in
37 photograph 10. I would like to point out that she does not
38 actually look massively -- she does look different to me,
39 but she does not look that different and it may be that it
40 is that photograph that Mr. Nicholson is remembering when
41 he recalled this event of me bending down to take leaflets,
42 because in the photograph this other woman is bending
43 down. And Mr. Nicholson actually did confirm that the
44 supplementary statement that he wrote was written in which
45 this was mentioned for the first time, was written after he
46 had looked at the photographs that had been taken and also
47 after he had seen the videos of all the other different
48 pickets as well. So in reality, he is not remembering
49 something from the event; it is like a false memory, or
50 something that, a photograph that is stuck in his mind
51 or...
52
53 He then described about where I was standing, handing out
54 leaflets. He accepted that to hand out leaflets to the
55 public I would have been facing the road. That was day
56 250, page 42, line 28. And since Mr. Nicholson gave
57 evidence that he was in the car park I would therefore have
58 had my back to him and he would not have had a clear view
59 of what I was doing and of any leaflets which he says were
60 in my hands, and it should be borne in mind as well that
