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
