Day 283 - 21 Oct 96 - Page 06
1 business practices. It is only, in our view, because they
2 could not bring such a case in the USA and they felt the
3 laws would be favourable to them.
4
5 On the eve of the trial, McDonald's issued 300,000 - I am
6 not going to go into the appendix yet, leaflets and press
7 releases attacking their critics, in particular London
8 Greenpeace and the defendants for distributing lies.
9
10 If I can just say something about London Greenpeace. The
11 original Greenpeace group in Europe formed in 1971. They
12 have been distributing educational material on a wide range
13 of relevant issues to do with the environment and social
14 matters, and campaigns, and because of the widespread
15 nature of the fact sheet and the denunciation of that as
16 lies -- and I am going to demonstrate a bit later on today
17 that all the matters in the fact sheet were in the public
18 domain and emanate from others, not from London Greenpeace,
19 who only brought together and sympathised with what was
20 already in existence in the public domain from a wide range
21 of campaigning and educational organisations and experts.
22 But by denouncing that as lies they were basically
23 declaring war on their critics, and if they were to get a
24 judgment McDonald's would hope that an atmosphere of
25 intimidation over dissent and criticism of their
26 corporation would then exist in this country, and a message
27 would be sent worldwide. That is one of the reasons we
28 fought so hard throughout this case, and we are going to
29 continue to fight for our right to express our reasonably
30 held genuine beliefs.
31
32 London Greenpeace, as one of the earliest environmental
33 groups in Europe, involving a wide range of campaigns and
34 concerns, quite unusually in some ways for an environmental
35 group concerned with such a broad range of issues as can be
36 seen in the fact sheet. Here we have really two worlds
37 colliding in this courtroom because McDonald's is a symbol
38 of a wider system, and London Greenpeace and the ideas
39 which we have been defending in court are a symbol of an
40 alternative point of view, and this conflict of ideas and
41 beliefs and ways of living is occurring all over the world
42 wherever people are standing up to corporations and those
43 who are in power.
44
45 McDonald's have criticised, attacked, made submissions in
46 pleadings against the continued distribution of leaflets by
47 campaigners, by supporters, by McDonald's support
48 campaign. They have criticised the Mcspotlight Internet
49 site and the fact that people have pledged to carry on
50 distributing leaflets whatever the verdict in this trial,
51 but if we consider that McDonald's has not ceased its
52 advertising, has not ceased promoting itself and no doubt
53 will certainly use its experienced and highly resourced PR
54 departments throughout the world to project what they
55 consider has happened in this case to the public, then it
56 is obvious that members of the public involved in
57 campaigning groups, whatever, who are concerned with this
58 case are bound to seek to put over their view of McDonald's
59 and of this case. And that can only be a good thing. It
60 is providing a public service to enable the public to have
