Helen and David v McGoliath
Review by Jim Green
McLibel: Two Worlds Collide
SBS, Tuesday February 22, 8.30pm
This documentary recounts the McLibel story — the David and Goliath court battle between two London-based environmental activists and McDonald's.
In 1994, five activists from London Greenpeace (not connected to Greenpeace International) were threatened with libel suits over the contents of a "What's Wrong with McDonald's" leaflet. Three of the five activists apologised to McDonald's and agreed not to circulate the leaflet, but Helen Steel and David Morris went to court in what proved to be the longest trial in English history.
Some of the eventual judgment was highly critical of McDonald's. It was, in the eyes of the presiding judge, proven that McDonald's exploits children, propagates misleading advertising and is responsible for cruelty to animals.
The judge agreed that McDonald's is "strongly antipathetic to any idea of unionisation", pays low wages, helping to depress wages across the industry, makes workers work hard, with no guaranteed hours and often inadequate breaks and that the company's workers are sometimes forced to work unlawful hours.
On other issues the judge ruled in favour of McDonald's, concluding, for example, that workers are not treated "badly" as stated in the offending leaflet.
For their sins, Steel and Morris were ordered to pay £60,000. They appealed the verdict and won further ground. The appeal judges ruled that it was fair comment to say that McDonald's employees worldwide "do badly in terms of pay and conditions", and true that "If one eats enough McDonald's food, one's diet may well become high in fat etc., with the very real risk of heart disease".
The payout was reduced from £60,000 to £40,000, which mattered not since Steel and Morris never intended to pay the money. McDonald's have never pursued it. Nor has McDonald's pursued an injunction to stop Steel and Morris from circulating the leaflet.
The documentary is worth seeing just to see the expression on the face of the McDonald's executive at the press conference following the court verdict.
"We are, as you can imagine, broadly satisfied with the judgment given this morning", he began — such a blatant lie that he ought to have been dragged straight back into court to answer for it. Channel 4 news in the UK described McLibel as "the biggest corporate public relations disaster in history".
The story has a fairytale quality about it — the David and Goliath theme, the private investigators hired by McDonald's to infiltrate London Greenpeace (leading to an affair between a genuine activist and one of the McActivists), the former Ronald McDonald actor likening Ronald to a propaganda minister in the Third Reich.
SBS's publicity department promises dramatic recreations, directed by Ken Loach, of key moments in the courtroom trial, interviews with key witnesses, and much else besides.
However, it's a very low-brow, low budget documentary, produced by OOPS, One Off Productions. Helen sitting on a train, Dave's six-year-old child brushing his teeth, and so on. The documentary is even slower if you know the story, which so many people do.
But it's probably for the best that McLibel hasn't got the Hollywood treatment. What comes through clearly is the time, money and stress invested in the campaign and the court case by Steel, Morris and their supporters.
Like many other corporations, McDonald's has a track record of using threats of defamation suits — known as strategic lawsuits against public participation or SLAPPs — to extract apologies from, and more importantly to silence, its critics. Defamation laws — in Britain, Australia and elsewhere — encourage corporations to SLAPP their opponents. The odds are heavily stacked in favour of corporations.
McDonald's spent an estimated £5-15 million on the trial, whereas Helen and Dave and volunteer supporters raised just £30,000 pounds to pay for witnesses to attend the trial and for court costs. McDonald's had a team of barristers working on the case whereas Steel and Morris were denied legal aid. The judge refused to adjourn the case when Steel was sick or when Morris, a single parent, had to look after his son who had a broken leg.
Against these odds, Steel and Morris won a fair chunk of the legal argument in court and of course they won a huge political victory. The legacy is that criticism of McDonald's is much less likely to land you in court. It's likely that other corporations have become more cautious in the use of SLAPPs as a result of McLibel, though it remains a common tactic.
The fairytale quality of McLibel is somewhat dispelled by data provided in the documentary. During the two and a half years of the court trial, McDonald's worldwide profits were US$3.6 billion and 6000 new McDonald's stores opened.
So the McDonald's dragon has not been laid to rest by McLibel. But that doesn't detract from the efforts of Steel and Morris and others, who have given the company a huge headache and who have made it easier and safer for all of us to criticise corporations.
The documentary does a reasonable job of outlining the McLibel issues — McDonald's impact on the environment, on its workers, on people's health, on the economy, on society.
Inevitably, some issues are glossed over. I would have liked more on the politics of the campaign.
To a considerable extent the campaign revolved around the demand for free speech — an issue which, for better or worse, radicals and the tamest liberal reformers can unite around. Some fairly conservative, high-profile liberals appeared to have attached themselves to the McLibel campaign and it would have been interesting to see their impact on it teased out.
In keeping with the free speech theme, much is made in the documentary of the circulation of several million "What's Wrong with McDonald's" leaflets during and after the trial. But to what end? What political direction for a campaign such as this?
Nevertheless, an important documentary about a relatively small but still important blow to corporate power