Day 308 - 28 Nov 96 - Page 33
1
2 The other thing about malice is that -- I have not got time
3 to go through this now, but it has to be malice on the part
4 of an individual legally -- that is referred to in that
5 Eggar v. Chelmsford case, which I referred to on the first
6 day of the submissions about publication -- that they would
7 have to prove malice for each of us, and they cannot just
8 do it on the basis which they are alleging, for example, of
9 a leaflet produced by London Greenpeace, which we will not
10 accept as a basis for malice of the group as a whole
11 anyway, but it certainly would not be evidence of malice of
12 us on our part individually.
13
14 As Mr. Morris said about McDonald's trumpeting that they
15 have obtained apologies from our three original
16 co-defendants, and their use of that in the documents under
17 scrutiny in the counterclaim to try and discredit myself
18 and Mr. Morris for fighting this case, I would remind you
19 that on day 272, page 44, Mr. Gravett -- who was originally
20 the first defendant in this action -- explained that he
21 made the apology to McDonald's because the advice we were
22 given at the time was that it was unthinkable to fight a
23 libel case on your own without Legal Aid, without financial
24 resources and without any legal representation. He goes
25 into more detail about the reasons, if you look at that
26 page of the evidence. He does actually specifically
27 state: "I did not apologise because I thought the leaflet
28 was lies." So there is absolutely no basis for assuming
29 that we thought that they apologised because the leaflet
30 was untrue, because we were well aware of the reasons why
31 they apologised.
32
33 The other thing in relation to malice on our part is just
34 to remind you of my evidence. Now, there are two
35 references to this -- well, there is probably more, but
36 I will not read out the two that I have got to hand. But
37 day 277, page 50, Mr. Rampton was asking me about whether
38 or not I would stop at anything to see McDonald's smashed,
39 and I said that, no, I have always believed it was
40 important to put out the truth. The other one is on day
41 278, page 13. It was a similar sort of line of
42 questioning. I pointed out that people do not want to
43 attack McDonald's or other multi-nationals and, therefore,
44 invent criticisms about them in order to do that; that
45 people who are campaigning against multi-nationals, they
46 are doing it because, firstly, they see what
47 multi-nationals are doing to the world and they do not like
48 what they are doing, and they want to expose what those
49 multi-nationals are doing to the world; and it is that way
50 round.
51
52 Also, as I pointed out right at the end of my evidence, it
53 is about putting forward positive alternatives to the way
54 society is run and the way multi-national corporations
55 dominate current society. I did also say on this page,
56 page 13, that I did believe that the fact sheet was true.
57
58 I mean, obviously, I would prefer to have spent longer
59 going through malice. But I think it is pretty clear
60 anyway, that there is just no way that anybody can say we
