- Campaigns -

Freedom of speech...

Posted by: Gideon Hallett. ( n/a, UK ) on May 26, 1998 at 10:40:18:

In Reply to: narrow minded biggots posted by colin boxall on May 26, 1998 at 10:19:56:

: yea, so you don't like macdonald, so? Why make it a personal crusade to slag off the highest employer of teenagers in the world just because you dont like burgers? pages like this are really annoying, they allow narrow minded biggots to express their conceited shallow views to the public. So i dont like apples, do i write a page slagging off everyone that eats granny smiths - no i dont - its called freedom of choice!!

You seem to be unaware of the issues here. In the 1980's, a London-based green anarchist group called London Greenpeace produced a leaflet called "What's Wrong with McDonald's?" - a criticism of the fact that McD's was treating it's workers poorly, promoting an unhealthy diet and generally misleading the public with its advertising. This would probably have gone unnoticed, except that McDonald's immediately went into Paranoid overdrive.

They hired spies to infiltrate the group, burgled the London Greenpeace office, tried to use the police to get information on the group and then issued a libel writ against 5 members of London Greenpeace. Three apologised, but Helen Steel and Dave Morris refused to, feeling that they were telling the truth and had nothing to apologize for.

The case was spectacularly one-sided, as can be seen by looking around this site. It also lasted 313 days, becoming the longest-running civil trial in English legal history (check the 1998 Guinness Book of Records). Nonetheless, at the end of it, the judge ruled that McDonald's were guilty of cruelty to animals, that they exploited children and that they were responsible for helping to keep wages low in the fast food industry.

This Web site (as I unnderstand it) was set up to counter the climate of fear in the press that McD's generated. Since, during the trial, McD's would have issued libel writs against any paper foolish enough to go into detail about the evidence being revealed in court, McSpotlight was set up, to give people the real events going on in the trial. That's why this page exists. As a defence of free speech against narrow-minded bigots. Like McDonald's.

Gideon.




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