Day 311 - 06 Dec 96 - Page 32
1 indeed. By and large, when they very occasionally cropped
2 up I have drawn your attention to them in case you want to
3 answer them and, in fact, I have done so with regard to
4 this.
5
6 MR. MORRIS: Yes, I know, and that is helpful. The point is if
7 I do not deal with it now I am not going to-----
8
9 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not going to let you deal with it now,
10 we must follow the normal procedure. You can perfectly
11 well make a note of this and deal with it next week.
12
13 MR. MORRIS: I just cannot, there is just too much to deal with
14 and I cannot do it at the time, I cannot deal with it.
15
16 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Sit down, Mr. Morris. If you try you can
17 deal with it perfectly properly.
18
19 MR. MORRIS: I can't, you know, I am just exhausted with this
20 case. I would like to deal with it now while I have it on
21 my mind.
22
23 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I am not going to let you do that. I do not
24 accept it. I want Mr. Rampton to carry on with his
25 submissions.
26
27 The last matter I have was to what extent I can treat
28 Mr. Clare's evidence as reliable?
29
30 MR. RAMPTON: There is no doubt that he made some errors, the
31 principal one of which I see is putting Ms. Steel at a
32 meeting when to all intents and purposes, I entirely
33 accept, she is in the Outer Hebrides; Barrow, I think it
34 was. So much the better for her. Howsoever, as
35 your Lordship well knows, because a young man makes
36 mistakes does not mean that the whole of his evidence needs
37 to be rejected. It never does mean that, and the approach
38 which the Defendants have adopted, not only to his evidence
39 to but to the evidence of 99 per cent of our witnesses, it
40 is what I might call the approach which first the year law
41 student might adopt.
42
43 Everybody knows who has had any experience of litigation
44 that witnesses make mistakes. You do get, and one has to
45 accept this, the occasional dishonest witness. You
46 sometimes get witnesses who are so unreliable, though
47 perfectly honest, that one has to say to oneself, 'Well,
48 frankly I can do without that witness'. Mr. Clare is one
49 of those witnesses who made mistakes, and there are lots of
50 others throughout the evidence in this case, but the reason
51 why his evidence is important is, in particular, for that
52 one meeting at which Morris admitted to having produced the
53 anti-McDonald's material.
54
55 The reason why that is relied on, apart from the fact that
56 it was made many years ago before these proceedings were
57 issued, is that it chimes exactly with what, unprompted,
58 outside this case, Mr. Morris said in his Haringey
59 affidavit. It is too much of a coincidence to be
60 dismissed.
