Day 305 - 25 Nov 96 - Page 21


     
     1        leaflets to a public meeting for distribution or any other
     2        matter, indeed (sic).
     3
     4        So, not only were the general inquiries, answering of
     5        letters, up to individuals, what they put in and what they
     6        did not put in -- and who knows what people put in and did
     7        not put in -- but even McDonald's own agents have accepted
     8        that they were not told what to put in and they were not
     9        checked, what they did put in.  Maybe if they had have been
    10        checked, Mr. Gravett might have taken out the London
    11        Greenpeace fact sheet and said, "Hey, you should not have
    12        put that in because we need them for specialist inquiries."
    13        So their admission on putting in the fact sheet does not
    14        imply that is what other people were doing.
    15
    16        It is clear from what Mr. Gravett and Ms. Laporte said that
    17        they put in whatever they felt like when they dealt with
    18        specific inquiries.  We have their evidence to go on.
    19
    20   MS. STEEL:   I just wanted to make some points, general points
    21        to start off with, about the evidence given by the inquiry
    22        agents or spies.  Mr. Pocklington, Mr. Bishop and Mr. Clare
    23        all said that they had been given descriptions or
    24        photographs of us to look out for at the meetings.  That
    25        that should be borne in mind when considering their
    26        evidence overall, because if they were specifically looking
    27        out for us and what we said, then the fact that there are
    28        not actually any admissions at all in the evidence --
    29        sorry, not any admissions -- the fact that there is not any
    30        evidence from them at all that we encouraged people to
    31        distribute the fact sheet or that we distributed the
    32        fact sheet ourselves is even more noteworthy, because they
    33        were looking out for that.
    34
    35        There is one exception to that, which is the evidence of
    36        Mr. Clare, which I am going to come on to later, who we are
    37        basically saying was totally discredited as a witness for
    38        several reasons.  He claimed that we had admitted producing
    39        the fact sheets -- well, all the anti-McDonald's leaflets
    40        -- which, apart from anything, would be impossible, and
    41        the Plaintiffs have accepted it is not true.  But it may
    42        well be that he decided to make all these so-called
    43        admissions because he was told that we were the people to
    44        look out for, so he just invented a story to fit with what
    45        he had been asked to find.
    46
    47        Just going on to general points that were made in the
    48        evidence of the witnesses.  There was an assertion somehow
    49        that because I had organised the agenda on one or two --
    50        I do not really remember how many occasions it was, to be 
    51        honest -- but, basically, we would say that whether or not 
    52        I organised the agenda or whether or not anybody organised, 
    53        whoever organised the agenda is basically irrelevant,
    54        because, as we heard from everybody who gave evidence,
    55        effectively, the way the agenda was organised was by
    56        somebody taking a scrap of paper, writing the word "agenda"
    57        on the top, plus a few standard items which were obvious
    58        reports of the previous week and coming events, and then
    59        passing the agenda around for everybody to put down
    60        whatever they wanted to bring up.  So, there is absolutely

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