Day 274 - 04 Jul 96 - Page 12
1 Q. I will read through it and if there is anything you want to
2 correct or clarify then stop me at the end of the paragraph
3 and say so, otherwise I will ask you to confirm it at the
4 end of the statement.
5
6 "Statement of Jane Laporte. I attended London Greenpeace
7 meetings between the time of October 1988 to October 1990.
8 I would go to meetings to find out about forthcoming events
9 and to meet up with friends using London Greenpeace partly
10 as a London-wide information network.
11
12 "Within a few months of attending meetings I got to know
13 the group's history fairly well as well as the background
14 of the campaigns and the people involved. This was due to
15 a large amount of time spent explaining the history and
16 background of items under discussion if there was anyone
17 new present so that everyone would be able to understand
18 and become involved in the discussion".
19 A. Yes, that is not a large amount of time, but a
20 comparatively large amount of time of the whole of the
21 meeting was taken up with that.
22
23 Q. "Meetings were supposed to start at 7.30 p.m. but often
24 people would arrive gradually in ones and twos and start
25 chatting. There was no one chairing the meetings nor were
26 there any "lead persons" and so it would usually be at
27 around 8 p.m. that someone would try to get the meeting
28 started and organise the agenda by rifling through the box
29 of scrap paper for a blank page. Next, they would write
30 "agenda" at the top with numbers down the left hand side
31 for separate discussion points. The first few items would
32 almost always be "introduction", "office/letters",
33 "reports" and "coming events". We would try to get people
34 involved with the group by changing the person who took the
35 minutes each week.
36
37 "People would not necessarily attend every weekly meeting,
38 some would only attend the monthly meetings at
39 Endsleigh Street" -- sorry -- "some would only attend the
40 monthly public meetings at Endsleigh Street. Others would
41 maybe only get involved in the run up to the fayre. A
42 problem often encountered in trying to organise campaigns
43 was that almost everyone coming along to meetings would
44 also be involved with other groups and could regularly
45 disappear for a month or so without anyone knowing in
46 advance.
47
48 "At the monthly meetings at Endsleigh Street anyone was
49 welcome to place leaflets of an ecological/libertarian
50 nature in the centre of the table. Although these meetings
51 were supposed to be public meetings sometimes there would
52 only be people there who we already knew and who had been
53 involved with the group in the past. Dave Morris was not
54 coming to the meetings regularly throughout 1989 to 1990.
55 From what he said when he did attend or phoned up, this was
56 firstly due to his involvement with his local poll tax
57 group, but then his son was injured and Dave spent a
58 considerable amount of time looking after him.
59
60 "Dave was certainly never "heavily involved" with the
