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McLibel at 20
Yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the 1994-97 trial of Dave Morris and Helen Steel in the British courts was "unfair." Better known as the McLibel 2, Morris and Steel were sued for libel for handing out leaflets in front of McDonald's restaurants detailing the company's various ugly practices. Very, very long story short, the two defended themselves, made McDonald's look like an incomparable bully, won a measure of success in the court's ruling that many of the leaflet's statements were true, but ultimately lost the libel suit itself.
I don't have much legal background in the US and even less in the UK (read: none and none) but I do know that the UK libel laws are maybe the most draconian around, not the least of the reasons being because the burden of proof in a UK libel trial is shifted to the defendant. So Morris and Steel took their case against British law to the ECHR and the court came back with an "unfair" verdict against the government. Let's hope this means the beginnings of reform, as the suit was a huge embarassment for everybody but Morris and Steel.
The trial garnered an enormous amount of press coverage in the UK, but I remember being at a loss to find a word about it in the US while it was in session. I'm assuming this decision will also be less than a blip on our screens, especially considering the administration's want of late to reduce the class action lawsuit to the level of a parking violation. Still, I can't help but be monumentally impressed with what Morris and Steel have done almost completely on their own. If you're not familiar with the whole story, it's a fascinating read.
Posted by Matt Ransford on 02/16/2005 | Permalink
Comments
It is unfortunate that there aren't many places to learn about McLibel in the American media. It's a very interesting case. However, I disagree with the idea that it makes everyone but Morris and Steel look bad.
I saw the documentary that aired on either the BBC or Link TV and I thought that the two were frustratingly undereducated about their subject. It looked like they were doing this simply because it made them feel good to have power in the face of a more powerful multinational corporation - I can understand that frustration, but it doesn't mean that they are in any way correct. For example, the point at which Helen Steel said that she thought that it was immoral to keep a chicken in a cage, to me, showed that she didn't know anything about the subject, because my family raised chickens when I was young, and we kept them in a coop with a yard to run in. At which point they pecked the hell out of each other (they establish a pecking order of dominance and the lowest one on the order gets many of its feathers pecked off) and they, I believe, were in substantially more discomfort than if they were separated from one another by cages.
And if you looked at the profitability of farming, you would see that farmers don't make a whole lot of money to do extremely labor intensive and somewhat financially risky work. So asking them to put in much larger cages would be unreasonable, unless they were to be paid more for their chickens, something that could be decided by the consumers.
I think that a better form of activism would be to give consumers a choice - inform them of places that feature free range or organic chickens and encourage them to choose those places, and if they choose McDonald's instead of those places, the blame should be placed on them.
Posted by: Cody Wilmer | Feb 18, 2005 9:43:32 AM
It is unfortunate that there aren't many places to learn about McLibel in the American media. It's a very interesting case. However, I disagree with the idea that it makes everyone but Morris and Steel look bad.
I saw the documentary that aired on either the BBC or Link TV and I thought that the two were frustratingly undereducated about their subject. It looked like they were doing this simply because it made them feel good to have power in the face of a more powerful multinational corporation - I can understand that frustration, but it doesn't mean that they are in any way correct. For example, the point at which Helen Steel said that she thought that it was immoral to keep a chicken in a cage, to me, showed that she didn't know anything about the subject, because my family raised chickens when I was young, and we kept them in a coop with a yard to run in. At which point they pecked the hell out of each other (they establish a pecking order of dominance and the lowest one on the order gets many of its feathers pecked off) and they, I believe, were in substantially more discomfort than if they were separated from one another by cages.
And if you looked at the profitability of farming, you would see that farmers don't make a whole lot of money to do extremely labor intensive and somewhat financially risky work. So asking them to put in much larger cages would be unreasonable, unless they were to be paid more for their chickens, something that could be decided by the consumers.
I think that a better form of activism would be to give consumers a choice - inform them of places that feature free range or organic chickens and encourage them to choose those places, and if they choose McDonald's instead of those places, the blame should be placed on them.
Posted by: Cody Wilmer | Feb 18, 2005 11:25:14 AM
It is unfortunate that there aren't many places to learn about McLibel in the American media. It's a very interesting case. However, I disagree with the idea that it makes everyone but Morris and Steel look bad.
I saw the documentary that aired on either the BBC or Link TV and I thought that the two were frustratingly undereducated about their subject. It looked like they were doing this simply because it made them feel good to have power in the face of a more powerful multinational corporation - I can understand that frustration, but it doesn't mean that they are in any way correct. For example, the point at which Helen Steel said that she thought that it was immoral to keep a chicken in a cage, to me, showed that she didn't know anything about the subject, because my family raised chickens when I was young, and we kept them in a coop with a yard to run in. At which point they pecked the hell out of each other (they establish a pecking order of dominance and the lowest one on the order gets many of its feathers pecked off) and they, I believe, were in substantially more discomfort than if they were separated from one another by cages.
And if you looked at the profitability of farming, you would see that farmers don't make a whole lot of money to do extremely labor intensive and somewhat financially risky work. So asking them to put in much larger cages would be unreasonable, unless they were to be paid more for their chickens, something that could be decided by the consumers.
I think that a better form of activism would be to give consumers a choice - inform them of places that feature free range or organic chickens and encourage them to choose those places, and if they choose McDonald's instead of those places, the blame should be placed on them.
Posted by: Cody Wilmer | Feb 18, 2005 11:25:49 AM
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