Day 308 - 28 Nov 96 - Page 36
1 Mr. Morris are responsible. It would be easy to
2 think: "Well, the fact sheet clearly exists and it must
3 have been distributed at some stage and, therefore, someone
4 must be responsible, and the only two people in front of me
5 are the two Defendants who both deny responsibility for the
6 campaign and therefore", you know ... (Dot, dot, dot).
7
8 The point is, we know who was responsible for running the
9 campaign from 1987 onwards. It was Mr. Gravett. He has
10 accepted that fact and gave evidence to that end. It was
11 the Plaintiffs' choice to discontinue proceedings against
12 him, because it served their purposes to obtain an apology
13 from him rather than taking the proceedings to court and
14 risking exposure of their practices. Additionally, they no
15 doubt hoped that having three co-defendants apologise would
16 increase the pressure on us to do the same. They also knew
17 that they could use the apologies and PR battle against the
18 campaign and against myself and Mr. Morris in court.
19
20 Just to say that it does not actually take many people to
21 run a campaign, and it is quite easily done with only one
22 person; particularly when, as we have seen through the
23 evidence in this case, the campaign has basically been run
24 down or has been taken up by other groups around the
25 country, and all that is really left is to answer letters
26 and arrange an annual picket at the same time and same
27 place each year. One person could quite easily do that on
28 their own.
29
30 It is clear from all the evidence that the fact sheet was
31 out of print by the time the Plaintiffs issued proceedings
32 in this case, and that there was no intention to reprint it
33 in the form that it was then in. So, I would remind you
34 that it was also the Plaintiffs' own choice to leave the
35 proceedings so late in the day, not to issue writs until
36 1990, when, on their own evidence, they were aware of the
37 fact sheet in 1986, 1987.
38
39 Just really to say that without proof of specific
40 individual acts of consent or encouragement to publication
41 of the fact sheet, we should not be held responsible for
42 its distribution just because we are the only people who
43 have ended up in a full-blown trial against McDonald's.
44
45 Just, really, we do not think that this case should be
46 considered in isolation. The proceedings were brought
47 against us as part of a long running attempt by McDonald's
48 to stamp out the voices of its critics. This court has
49 heard evidence about the numerous threats of legal action
50 that have been made by McDonald's against its critics,
51 ranging from big organisations to small campaigning groups;
52 and over 50 examples have been referred to during the
53 course of this trial alone of McDonald's trying to silence
54 its critics. In our view, this goes to show that
55 McDonald's had an improper motive in using the UK libel
56 laws against us, namely, censorship, and that that should
57 be taken into consideration when assessing the whole trial
58 and the evidence in the trial and in assessing the
59 Plaintiffs' claim for an injunction in damages.
60
