Day 308 - 28 Nov 96 - Page 08
1 issue.
2
3 The pleading at F, that I talked to the meeting about the
4 preparation by Paul Gravett of the new anti-McDonald's
5 leaflet, I cannot remember specifically what was said about
6 this event. I do recall asking Mr. Clare about this, and
7 his notes only said that I reported that Mr. Gravett was
8 doing a pamphlet. That may have been because somebody
9 asked -- if I said it at all, which you cannot rely on
10 because it is from Mr. Clare, who is completely
11 unreliable -- if I said it at all, it may be that somebody
12 said: "What is going on with X, Y, Z", and because I had
13 heard Paul say previously that he was doing a pamphlet,
14 I just reported that. It does not mean that I had a
15 leading role in the campaign.
16
17 Pleading G is just ridiculous. It is asserted that
18 I addressed the meeting about letters received by the group
19 which are not even about McDonald's.
20
21 Pleading H is completely ludicrous, that because I lived in
22 the same house as Mr. Morris and Mr. Clarke (who was
23 another defendant), that I must, therefore, be a leading
24 member or have a leading role in the campaign. I mean,
25 apart from the fact that it was inaccurate -- because, even
26 by Mr. Pocklington's own recollection of the matter,
27 Mr. Morris was not living in the same house as me at that
28 time -- even if we were all living in the house, so what?
29 You know, the fact that you live in the same house as
30 somebody, when there are six or seven other people living
31 there as well, it just does not mean anything; and it is
32 just an example of how desperate and how baseless the
33 Plaintiffs' claim is.
34
35 Obviously, I do not want to take up time going through all
36 of this, but I reject all the other pleadings that they
37 have set out, basically for the reasons that I went through
38 when I was going through the publication evidence.
39
40 MR. JUSTICE BELL: Yes.
41
42 MS. STEEL: I just make the point on page 4: this is about
43 Mr. Morris, but it says: "The Second Defendant took a
44 leading role in the campaign against McDonald's", and they
45 are relying on his regular attendance of Greenpeace London
46 meetings in 1990; and they actually only quote four dates,
47 which could hardly be said to be "regular" by anybody's
48 standards. I think that is another example of how baseless
49 their claim is.
50
51 For all the rest of the pleadings in that particular
52 document, I would just like you to bear in mind all the
53 things that I have said throughout the publication
54 evidence.
55
56 In the voluntary particulars of the Defence to
57 Counterclaim -- and, again, I am not going to go through
58 the whole of this, because it would just be very repetitive
59 if I did -- which was served on 10th March 1995, the letter
60 referred to on page 6 at number 7A, a communication dated
