Day 146 - 03 Jul 95 - Page 03
1
2 My Lord, I do not know if your Lordship's correspondence
3 file is here, the letter to which I referred a moment ago,
4 10th March 1995. A copy was, in fact, sent to your
5 Lordship. It concerned the use to which we perceived, and
6 still perceiving -- or, I should say, misuse -- the
7 Defendants are making of the transcripts for which
8 McDonald's are paying.
9
10 MR. JUSTICE BELL: I thought it was being kept up-to-date and
11 letters were being put in, but I go straight from
12 24th February to 21st March for some reason.
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14 MR. RAMPTON: I will supply your Lordship with a copy now. This
15 is a spare. If I could just ask your Lordship to read that
16 to yourself before I say anything more?
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18 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
19
20 MR. RAMPTON: My Lord, there was no response to that letter save
21 perhaps this, that following the letter there was a lull in
22 the provision of disinformation by the McLibel support
23 campaign about the proceedings of trial. That lull
24 recently came to an end. It has started up again chiefly
25 by use of what your Lordship may well know about something
26 called Internet. It has started up again both in this
27 country and in the United States.
28
29 I am going to pass up to your Lordship, if I may, a recent
30 printout from Internet which we have recently received from
31 the United States. My Lord, I do not ask your Lordship to
32 read the whole of it; it is very, very tedious work. We
33 apologise for the quality of the copy, but it is a copy of
34 a fax from, as your Lordship can see at the top, the United
35 States. The date on the first sheet is 19th June. Whether
36 the next date a few lines down is 6th, 26th or 16th I do
37 not know, because it might have been cut off.
38 My Lord, on the second page there is a passage headed:
39 "Evidence on McDonald's employment practices". The third
40 sentence of that read: "The following is a bulletin on the
41 evidence of Sid Nicholson, Vice President of McDonald's UK,
42 former Head of Personnel. He was questioned for seven
43 days" etc. Then on the third page one comes to the nub of
44 it: "McLibel support campaign" and the address is given --
45 it is an address which is familiar to us, of course, and to
46 your Lordship -- weeks 32 to 23, 26th April to 5th May
47 1995, "Sid Nicholson on employment practices". There is in
48 square brackets a summary -- I hesitate to call it a
49 "history" -- leading up to this point. Then beneath that
50 are these words: "All quotes are taken directly from the
51 court transcripts."
52
53 I do not ask you to read what the people who compose this
54 document have written about the evidence in the case, but
55 I will say this and, if it were a matter of dispute, I am
56 certain that I can make it good. It is the most one-eyed
57 one sided biased account of court proceedings that I have
58 ever seen, certainly. One only has to glance at the
59 headings, "No pay, no guaranteed hours, exploiting young
60 workers, no overtime pay, pressure to boost profits,
