Day 306 - 26 Nov 96 - Page 43


     
     1        one that people were handing out.  Anyway, carrying on, he
     2        said that at this stage I was not holding the banner, that
     3        I was talking to another woman and that I had my back to
     4        him.  He said that we both turned round and walked two to
     5        three steps towards the wall, to the holdall, on top of
     6        which were some more leaflets.  He said these were
     7        certainly of the type complained of because the top
     8        page was the very distinctive cartoon and the heavy print.
     9        At this stage he was six to seven yards away, and if you
    10        look at day 250, page 47, line 59 he admitted that he could
    11        not actually see into the holdall so he did not know what
    12        leaflets were in there.  So the only time that he could
    13        have seen the leaflet was at the point when they were taken
    14        out of the bag.
    15
    16        And carrying back on with day 250, page 41, we held up a
    17        leaflet and said "The leaflet looked like that", and he
    18        said, "Yes, it had that cartoon on the front".  So there he
    19        is identifying it by the cartoon, which, as we know,
    20        appears on the A5 leaflet and it appears on the Veggies
    21        fact sheet too.  So the point being that it is very
    22        dangerous to make the assumption that it would have been
    23        the fact sheet which is the subject matter of this libel
    24        action, particularly bearing in mind that Mr. Nicholson was
    25        working on the assumption that there was only one leaflet
    26        in circulation.
    27
    28        He then said that I moved to the edge of the pavement and
    29        was now 30 to 40 feet away from him and that he watched me
    30        for five minutes, looking to see whether or not I showed
    31        any indication of taking a leading role or directing
    32        things, and he actually said that he did not see that and
    33        in his opinion I had kept myself very much to myself.
    34
    35        He said on day 249, page 17, line 25 that the holdall would
    36        have been roughly where the girl was bending down in
    37        photograph 10.  I would like to point out that she does not
    38        actually look massively -- she does look different to me,
    39        but she does not look that different and it may be that it
    40        is that photograph that Mr. Nicholson is remembering when
    41        he recalled this event of me bending down to take leaflets,
    42        because in the photograph this other woman is bending
    43        down.  And Mr. Nicholson actually did confirm that the
    44        supplementary statement that he wrote was written in which
    45        this was mentioned for the first time, was written after he
    46        had looked at the photographs that had been taken and also
    47        after he had seen the videos of all the other different
    48        pickets as well.  So in reality, he is not remembering
    49        something from the event; it is like a false memory, or
    50        something that, a photograph that is stuck in his mind 
    51        or... 
    52 
    53        He then described about where I was standing, handing out
    54        leaflets.  He accepted that to hand out leaflets to the
    55        public I would have been facing the road.  That was day
    56        250, page 42, line 28.  And since Mr. Nicholson gave
    57        evidence that he was in the car park I would therefore have
    58        had my back to him and he would not have had a clear view
    59        of what I was doing and of any leaflets which he says were
    60        in my hands, and it should be borne in mind as well that

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