Day 308 - 28 Nov 96 - Page 27
1
2 Finally, on page 33, we talked about the Working For Big
3 Mac pamphlet. I think somewhere in the case, I cannot
4 remember, we put the document where they had referred to
5 trying to suppress the production of a play in Scotland
6 called Jimmy McBurgers about the conditions in the
7 fast-food industry for workers. It was a youth production,
8 and they used the retraction from transnationals who wrote
9 Working For Big Mac, when they wrote to the people who had
10 done the play, getting them to cease production of their
11 play, and then I put to him that Harriet Lamb had
12 retracted, or had said that she stood by the Working For
13 Big Mac, she was the researcher, retracted her apology or
14 their apology, or whatever, in the witness box she did so.
15
16 The point being they continue to circulate, Mr. Preston
17 knows that they are circulating documents attacking us for
18 distributing lies. "The basis for these must be lies", he
19 says, "is because other people have apologised". We have
20 clearly shown either that apologies were extracted under
21 false pretences, for example on the rainforest issue, and
22 here we have the apologies to do with the employment issue,
23 Harriet Lamb said that she stood by what she had said in
24 The Guardian article and in the Working For Big Mac
25 pamphlet, and yet despite all that McDonald's continue to
26 circulate the press releases when even Mr. Preston's weak
27 and pathetic basis for justifying the word 'lies' has been
28 completely removed because it is clear absolutely why we
29 should take no notice whatsoever of any apologies given to
30 McDonald's, certainly not the ones that have been referred
31 to. I have nearly finished.
32
33 Day 248, page 10. This was about, you remember, the
34 photographs in the McDonald's UK Annual Review, which
35 showed -- the actual issue of those photographs, the actual
36 content is not important. It just basically showed that
37 the report attached to it was deceptive, because the
38 photographs had been clearly taken at different times, when
39 it was pretending to be a continuous process. He accepted
40 that the photographs could be inaccurate, but only after
41 enormous pressure on that -- the point being that they were
42 deceptive and that he did not want to accept it until it
43 was really impossible to say otherwise.
44
45 Then he was asked, at line 44: "You are completely
46 100 percent biased and loyal to the company that pays your
47 salary?"
48
49 Answer: "I am loyal, yes."
50
51 "And biased?"
52
53 Answer: "No. I think I can separate truth from fiction,
54 truth from stories."
55
56 Then he thinks he is not sure about that.
57
58 If I just say one more thing on his evidence. Day 247,
59 page 31, at the bottom of the page, is where he says that
60 Behind The Arches -- he says that Grinding it Out was a
