By IPS Correspondents
LONDON, Jan 17 1999 (IPS)

When two dogged penniless British campaigners this week took their case against the American food giant McDonald’s to the Appeals Court, they reopened a debate on the increasing use of libel laws by transnational companies’ armies of lawers, to silence their critics.

“The ever-increasing power of transnational corporations in society and their lack of accountability is giving rise to serious public concern and criticism,” said appellant Dave Morris, a single parent and a former postman.

“A whole movement is growing up of people concerned to challenge that power,” he added.

The move by Morris and co-appellant Helen Steel, a one-time garderner and minibus driver, is a sequel to a famous libel case – dubbed ‘McLibel’ and, at two-and-a-half years, Britain’s longest ever- which they lost in November, 1997.

The libel action had been brought by McDonald’s, which had challenged the contents of a leaflet distributed by the two. It was called ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s? Everything they don’t want you to know.’

However, though McDonald’s won most of the decisions, including the duo’s claim that the multinational destroyed the environment and poisoned its customers, the judge ruled that McDonald’s does “exploit children,” is “cruel to some animals” and “pays low wages.”

The food chain has neither contested those parts of the ruling that went against it nor sought to extract from the duo the 60,000 pounds (96,000 dollars) awarded it.

However, Morris and Steel’s decision to appeal on 63 points of principle and fact, including freedom of speech and abuse of process, has focussed attention on two underlying aspects of the case: Britain’s restrictive libel laws, which are said to favour the wealthy, and concern over threats to freedom of speech.

John Vidal, environment correspondent of the respected national daily, The Guardian, and author of a 1997 book called ‘McLibel: Burger Culture on Trial’, said British ournalists are increasingly aware of the “enormous powers of large companies.”

“When I wrote the book, I was very worried. I was aware…that large companies can muck up your life and tie it up in legal knots. It was an ever-present threat,” Vidal said.

At the same time, Vidal said, he felt there was less likelihood of McDonald’s taking on “a journalist and a publisher” – Macmillan – than campaigners such as Morris and Steel.

One of the reasons that McDonald’s could bring its libel case against the two campaigners is thought to be Britain’s antiquated libel laws, which are widely seen as weighted against toward the plaintiff.

Not only do British libel defendants face huge costs, but they have to prove the truth of their statements without the use of ‘secondary evidence’ such as press releases or photographs. They can only use ‘primary sources’ such as witnesses and official documents.

This meant that Morris and Steel, who had based their leafletted allegations, among others, on World Health Organisation information, had to prove before the British judge that the information provided by the United Nations agency was correct.

In contrast, in the United States the First Amendement to the constitution guarantees freedom of speech and -in spite of growing threats by companies to slap libel suits- it is thought to be extremely difficult for libel actions to actually succeed in court.

According to lawyer Geoffrey Bindman, who has recently been involved in attempts to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to Spain to face trial for human rights abuses, “libel law is often used to suppress publication of information which the public ought to know.”

Malcolm Smart, director of Article 19, a nongovernmental organisation, said he believed libels cases “could have an intimidating effect — a chilling effect — on activists.”

“In this particular (McDonald’s) case, it would seem they were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. And they drew attention to an allegation that may have reached far less people if they had adopted a less litigious approach,” Smart added.

There have been many more instances that have contributed to journalists’ reported sense of insecurity about writing articles about transnational corporations.

In a relatively mysterious incident in September, 1998, all copies of an edition of the well-known radical magazine, The Ecologist, were pulped by its printers, who gave no reason for doing so.

The issue was on genetic engineering and was titled The Monsanto Files -after the biotechnolgy transnational corporation of the same name.

After Monstanto denied having to do anything with the pulping, the magazine’s co-editor Zac Goldshmith said, “The fact that Monstanto had nothing to do with the decision to pulp is, if anything, more scary than if they had made some kind of legal threat. It goes to show what a powerful force a reputation can be.”

The issue, which runs a series of articles that are highly critical of genetic engineering and Monstanto, was subsequently printed by another printer. “We exhausted our print-run,” an Ecologist journalist said.

It was prefaced with an open letter to Monstanto Chief Executive Officer Robert Shapiro, which said: “Biotechnology, you tell us, is ‘a matter of opinion’ -do you really believe we should hear them all?”

The libel law in Britain facilitates what activists in the United States call Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation or SLAPPS, according to British commentators Julian Petley, a lecturer in media studies at Brunel University, and Andrew Rowell, author of ‘Green Backlash -Global Subversion of the Environmental Movement.’

“It could convincingly be argued that the major political forces in the world today are no longer national governments but transnational corporations,” Petley writes in a forthcoming issue of Index On Censorship, a well-known magazine on freedom of expression issues.

“In such a situation, and especially given large companies’ increasing willingness to resort to SLAPPs and other ‘chilling’ tactics, is it not time that their legal arsenal was depleted? Would not taking away their much-abused ability to exploit our oppressive and archaic libel laws be an excellent place to start?” he adds.

Michael Griffin of Index on Censorship said, “the close collaboration between governments and transnational corporations, particularly in Britain, gives tremendous grounds for concern at a time when the same corporations have long arms which reach into the newspapers and magazines which are supposed to keep us informed.”

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