McLibel

Last night, we watched Storyville on BBC4, which was about the McLibel case. In case you weren’t aware, in 1990, McDonald’s restaurants sued several environmental campaigners for libel after they distributed leaflets condemning McDonald’s for a range of things including poor treatment of employees, deceptive advertising, exploiting children, animal cruelty and health concerns; McDonald’s were at the time often in the habit of using libel threats to get the mainstream media to retract damaging statements about them. However, in this case, they had picked the wrong people to attack.

Helen Steel and Dave Morris refused to apologise and instead faced up to McDonald’s in court – with no legal aid or legal representation. This became a notorious David-and-Goliath story, because UK libel laws require the defendent in the case to prove that everything they said was true (and so the person who actually doing the suing has very little work to do). Eventually, the “McLibel 2” lost their case, although they actually were found to have lacked proof for only a few of the statements they had made. And this despite having spent less than 0.2% of the money on the case that McDonald’s did. Of course, despite winning the case, it was a huge PR disaster for McDonald’s and probably helped to foster the general anti-fast-food movement we have today (including the 2004 film Super Size Me).

The interesting thing about the programme was the way that McDonald’s totally failed to understand the motivation of its opponents. They tried to settle with them at one point, offering money for silence. However, Steele and Morris wouldn’t accept that unless McDonald’s apologised to everyone it has sued or threatened to sue, and promised not to sue anyone in the future for similar actions. Of course, McDonald’s wouldn’t do that – and, tellingly, couldn’t seem to grasp that money wasn’t the issue. They had simply grabbed onto a tiger’s tail, all unknowing, and started the longest trial in British history. Even in winning the case, they didn’t gain anything – Steele and Morris couldn’t afford to pay the £40,000 damages awarded by the Appeals court, and McDonald’s never attempted to collect it. Worse even than the money, though, was the loss of face and the huge increase in public awareness of how fast-food chains (not just McDonald’s) run their businesses and affect our society and the wider world.

Also interesting was the final section of the programme, which recounted the pair’s battle against the UK Government in the EU Court of Human Rights, where they argued that British law contravened their human rights by denying them legal aid – UK law allows legal aid for the defendent in any case except libel. This, they argued, effectively let companies intimidate ordinary people, who couldn’t afford to defend themselves. And they won.

pax et bonum

Article posted at 11:35am on 15 April 2005
Category: Musing, Politics, TV, General