Underneath the Arches
The tremendous tale of Helen, David and Goliath
In the last few months, I’ve had a lot of travel time which means a lot of time to read (train) or listen to music or podcasts (car).
Which is how I came across this: The People vs. McDonald’s
At first, I couldn’t see how this story could be carried over multiple episodes but by the sixth instalment, I was bemoaning its imminent end.
I briefly mention the amazing double act of Helen Steel and David Morris in Food Fight – though I was really only capturing the headlines. Like the court case at its centre, the series goes well below the surface, digging way deeper than McDonald’s had expected.
In a nutshell…
In 1986, members of London Greenpeace, published a leaflet entitled ‘What’s wrong with McDonald’s?’
It claimed McDonald’s was exploiting workers, destroying rainforests, torturing animals, and selling and promoting food that made people sick.
McDonald’s went on the attack – the company arguing the claims in the leaflet were untrue and defamatory. They demanded a public apology and an immediate block on publication and distribution of the leaflet.
Steel, a gardener, and former postman Morris – both on benefits at the time – refused.
The ensuing trial of McDonald’s Corporation vs Steel & Morris (the 'McLibel Two') was the longest in English history. McDonald’s hadn’t ever thought it would go to court – let alone draw huge media attention that shone a spotlight on its dodgy modus operandi, sparking other protests against the company.
The case propelled issues of obesity, diet-related chronic disease, rainforest destruction, predatory advertising to children, animal cruelty, worker exploitation, plastic pollution – and the role of large corporations driving them – into the mainstream.
It’s a story packed with intrigue and incident -- including a key role for a young barrister who decades later became prime minister and covert ops on the part of a shady state-run outfit called the SDS.
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In the mid-80s, Steel and Morris were part of a London Greenpeace group that protested outside McDonald’s London headquarters, distributing this leaflet.
The activist group held regular meetings. The fact that they occasionally attracted new people, didn’t raise suspicion – the more support the better.
Some of these enthusiastic new members however turned out to be private investigators hired by McDonald’s to spy on Greenpeace. As part of this, they were tasked with finding the addresses of the more active members, including Steel and Morris. One of them did this by offering to mail baby clothes to Morris’ infant son.
A few days later, both Steel and Morris were ‘doorstepped’ and served libel writs. These were SLAPP writs – strategic litigation against public participation – designed to scare them away. The intention was not to bring them to court, it was to stop the leaflet and quell further protests. The big chill tactic.
McDonald’s knew that under UK libel law, there was no recourse to legal aid for the defendants and they knew Steel and Morris were poor. ‘Cease and desist’ would surely work…they thought.
But they had underestimated them. The couple refused to back down.
Enter a young barrister who for years had been infuriated by the unjust UK libel law. He agreed to provide Steel and Morris with pro bono legal support. His name – Keir Starmer.
Under this libel law, incontestable evidence was required to prove the truth of the leaflet’s claims. Steel and Morris had just three weeks to assemble evidence and witness statements. This was the pre-internet early 90s – they had a fax and a phone. Many long distance calls over scratchy lines to the US, Brazil, Costa Rica and other countries followed.
Three weeks later, the couple presented the judge with a list of 65 witnesses on a scrunched sheet of A4 paper. The McDonald’s team was stunned, arguing the list was not acceptable. The judge said he would accept it even if it had been written on the back of a sugar packet.
Campaigns and benefit gigs were organised to raise funds to keep the leaflet in circulation.
The judge decided the case would be heard by him alone, deeming a jury incapable of understanding scientific evidence. After four years involving 28 preliminary hearings, the case was set for June 1994.
It lasted three years. Over 313 days of evidence and legal back-and-forth, there were many bizarre statements including McDonald’s claims that
dumping waste was a benefit because it would fill in hazardous empty gravel pits
Coca-Cola was nutritious because it contained…water
64 days of the trial was devoted to nutrition – interrogating the evidence that high fat, salt, sugar was unhealthy. The most heated exchanges concerned McDonald's claim (contained in their 'Nutritional Guide') that 'every time you eat at McDonald's you'll eat good, nutritious food'.
Its executives explained that 'nutritious' simply meant that the food 'contained nutrients' !
Steel asked Dr Sidney Arnott, McDonald 's expert witness on cancer if it was
'reasonable' to say that 'a diet high in fat, sugar, animal products and salt and low in fibre, vitamins and minerals is linked with cancer of the breast and bowel and heart disease'.
Arnott replied:
'If it is being directed to the public, then I would say it is a very reasonable thing to say. But if it is directed towards the scientific community, then I think one would be a bit more careful in the language which one is using.'
Morris then pointed out:
'That is actually a quote from the London Greenpeace Factsheet which is the subject of the libel action.'
Another big fight was on the packaging dumped outside its stores. McDonald’s insisted that if each of the one million daily customers brought a soft drink, no more than 100-150 cups would be discarded on the street. He was then shown photographs of 27 items of McDonald's litter on a stretch of pavement outside a single store.
McDonald's vice-president was asked about a 'recycling' project in Nottingham before admitting that the waste collected in the bin had been dumped, not recycled. All waste ended up as litter on the streets or in landfill, apart from one small pilot scheme in Manchester.
In August 1994, McDonald's asked Steel and Morris to settle, out of court. So long as they committed to never criticise the company in public, and stop the leaflet, the case would be dropped.
They refused.
Four of the private investigators who had infiltrated Greenpeace meetings testified in court for McDonald’s – but one turned. Fran Tiller who had done a nutrition course, while spying for McDonald’s, testified against the corporation.
More followed. The defendants quoted a statement by an actor who had originally played Ronald McDonald:
'I brainwashed youngsters into doing wrong. I want to say sorry to children everywhere for selling out to concerns who make millions by murdering animals.'
At the dawn of the internet in 1996, the McLibel Two’s support network launched www.McSpotlight.org
The judge took months to reach a verdict. Judgement day was set for 19 June 1997. In a report over 900 pages long, the results were mixed but Steel and Morris had successfully defended half of all claims in the leaflet, including those on animal cruelty and exploitation of children.
As Helen Steel said – the real loss would have been if we hadn’t fought it.
The case had backfired for McDonald’s – what had been intended to chill future claims ended up chilling the corporation itself.
As the podcast wound down, the words of Thom Yorke in Just (recorded in 1995 as the case was being heard) kept playing in my head:
‘You do it to yourself, you do…you and no-one else’
Two years after the verdict, Steel and Morris sued the police after it emerged that private investigators from McDonald's had been provided with information from the police national computer that had helped them bring the libel case in the first place.
In 2005, a documentary film, McLibel, was made and has since been viewed by over 25 million people. The leaflet is going strong, in 27 languages, distributed worldwide and downloadable off the web.
This seemed to be the end of the podcast…but there was a sinister twist.
In the midst of the courtroom drama, Helen Steel's boyfriend John Barker had disappeared.
At this point, the story moves into a very dark space. John Barker wasn’t his real name – it was the name of an 8-year old boy who had died years ago. Steel’s boyfriend had assumed a dead child’s identity when he was recruited to the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) – a secret undercover unit of the British police tasked with infiltrating activist groups.
In 2016, twenty years after he’d disappeared, Steel tracks him down to Australia and confronts him (real name – John Dines) at Sydney airport as he is waiting to welcome new recruits from India to be trained in the dark arts. It’s mindblowing.
A final bizarre footnote was the revelation that some of the Greenpeace leaflet had actually been written by Dines.
Fast forward three decades….
Earlier this year, a BMJ Investigation by Sophie Borland reported on how McDonald’s continues to challenge local council attempts to stop it flooding their high streets with fast-food outlets, claiming their stores promote ‘healthier lifestyles’
Customers could walk or cycle to their restaurants – the company elaborated – they could order salad and coffee and the kids could use the climbing frame (invariably situated next to the exhaust pipes of the cars lining up, engines running, at the drive-by window.)
Decades on from ‘The Leaflet’, local fights continue…
And in the month when the global plastic treaty talks broke down, the toxic relationship between Big Food and Big Plastic continues to thrive. A recent Lancet review highlights how plastic pollution has worsened with 8,000Mt now clogging up our land and water, leaching into soil and our bodies. In the UK alone, 1.7 billion pieces of plastic packaging are thrown away every week – many originating from McDonald’s which is second only to Coca-Cola in polluting power.