Reclaiming our lives
for Workshop #5 on Land and Ecology.
A discussion paper (ponencia) by Paul Gravett of London Greenpeace
for presentation at the Struggles for Land and Ecology mesa of the
Second Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against
Neoliberalism
(Paul Gravett - paul@londonaa.demon.co.uk)
1.Introduction. I will briefly look at the main themes
surrounding the topics in this paper.
2.Greenpeace (London). An introduction to who we are
and what we stand for.
3.Land. An examination of land ownership and
exploitation in Britain.
4.Food. How the modern food industry (agribusiness)
exploits us and the planet.
5.The comeuppance. The threat to our health from modern
farming.
6.McDonald's and McLibel. How a vast corporation has
tried to censor its critics.
7.Revolutionary Ecology. The beliefs which lay at the
heart of our fight to save the world.
8.What next... A list of some of the groups mentioned
and others you can contact.
Introduction
As we reach the end of this century we can look back on the
enormous changes that have occured over the past 100 years. Anyone
alive in 1900 would find unrecognisable what we take for granted
today. The motor car had just been invented and claimed its first
victim (a woman killed in south east London in August 1896), but only
a handful were on the roads and most people had never seen one. The
first flight by powered aeroplane was still three years off.
Electricity and telephones were a rarity, the preserve of the
well-off, and radio and television were years away. Newspapers were
the main source of information.
Britain was at the beginning of the consumer age. William
Lever founded his empire on Sunlight soap in the 1880s and his
company became the first to use packaging to sell its products. In
order to feed its demand for natural resources, especially vegetable
oil for magarine, he went abroad and developed the first plantation
economies in Africa. When Lever Bros amalgamated with a Dutch
company, Uni, it became Unilever, the first major multinational food
company. Its exploitation of underdeveloped countries in Africa, Asia
and South America was the blueprint for what is now known as
neocolonialism.
This was the second major stage in capitalism's evolution -
the first was industrialisation - and we are now witnessing the
third: globalisation. Whereas under neocolonialism the underdeveloped
world was used as a source of cheap raw materials for markets in
western Europe and north America, under globalisation the whole world
becomes a market. Capital is switched between nations and continents,
wherever the rate of profit is higher. Older industrial economies
such as Britain, America and Germany find themselves being left
behind as the new, lean economies of the Pacific rim attract
investment.
Neoliberalism is the ideological infrastructure of
globalisation. There is little 'new' in neoliberalism, however, as it
is a return to that ideology's eighteenth and nineteenth century
roots. Free markets, individualism, small government (except in
certain key areas such as policing and defence) are the building
blocks and the results are expressed in the new vocabulary of 1990s
political economy: downsizing, flexible labour markets, structural
adjustment, etc. Workers, even affluent middle class ones, now find
job security is a thing of the past as investment flows towards where
labour costs are lowest. The poorest sections of society face the
removal of social security safety nets and introduction of workfare
schemes.
In keeping with the theme of this paper, land and ecology, I
shall be looking at how agriculture and the food industry in Britain
are organised to serve the interests of multinationals and the profit
system. This inevitably leads to gross exploitation of people,
animals and the environment and is interwoven with the loss of our
connectedness to nature. The vast majority of people in this country
do not experience any meaningful bond with the natural world, even
those who live in the countryside. Their relationship to nature is
mediated by cultural constraints, for example the motor car,
television, work. They see the environment as being separate from and
outside of themselves. Herein lies the importance of ecology, which
is about the interdependence of all forms of life, and I shall
examine the revolutionary implications of this view of the world. But
first...
Greenpeace (London)
Or London Greenpeace as it is more usually known has its origins
in the radical anti-nuclear and anti-war movement of the early 1970s.
Groups using the name 'Greenpeace' sprung into life across the globe
to oppose French nuclear tests in the pacific. They were autonomous
anarchistic entities. The London group worked closely with the
Australian and New Zealand groups to organise marches and pickets of
French embassies In 1973 it coordinated an international walk from
London to Paris and picketed the French Embassy in London throughout
1973 and 74.
The group was formed out of the 'Greenpeace Broadsheet',
published as a supplement to Peace News of 9th July 1971. This was
one of the first modern declarations of alternative ecological
thinking from a British group, and it began with quoting the first
Digger manifesto of 1649. The Diggers were a collection of landless,
unemployed labourers who at the time of the English Revolution
occupied areas of unused land in different parts of England. They
were viciously suppressed by landowners and Oliver Cromwell's army,
but not before their spokesperson Gerrard Winstanley had issued A
Declaration to the Powers of England and all the Powers of the World.
In it he wrote:
'The work we are going about is this, to dig up George's
Hill and the wasteground thereabouts, and to sow corn, and to eat our
bread together by the sweat of our brows, and lay the foundations of
making the Earth a common treasury for all, both rich and poor, that
every one is born in the land, may be fed by the Earth his mother
that brought him forth, according to the reason and rules in the
Creation. The question of land ownership and control of natural
resources remains as crucial for oppressed peoples today as it did
for the diggers 350 years ago. As the Broadsheet said: 'We
have to start taking the future into our own hands. More and more
people are moving in this direction. It is not of course enough to
concentrate on putting our own house in order while neglecting
direct action against the larger political/business concerns. These
continue to destroy our environment in many ways, from the concrete
swathes of motorway madness to mercury discharges in our waterways,
and they must be confronted. In other words, personal action should
inevitably lead to local community action. The bureaucracies of
organisation will break down to a human scale once again, the
Community will reassume greater importance than the state, husbandry
will replace industry, and craftmanship, mass manufacture. As we lose
the idea that Man must assert domination over nature, we will forget
that man used to dominate over man' (and woman! -1997 addendum).
These sentiments, expressed right at the start of the group,
would I suggest provide a working blueprint for all its activities
over the next 25 years. While always working on local issues - saving
green spaces from 'development', for instance - we have never lost
sight of the global perspective. In the 1980s London Greenpeace
campaigned against the financial heart of the industrial death
machine, the City of London, in the the Stop the City actions of 1983
and 84. Thousands of people descended upon the 'square mile' as it is
known, defying police intimidation to voice their disapproval at the
powerful institutions trying to control our lives and are wrecking
the planet. In the second half of the decade we confronted two of the
biggest food multinationals - McDonalds and Unilever - and the
international capitalist system represented by the major banks, the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Before coming to the central themes of this document - land
and food - I should clear up any confusion that may arise over the
relationship between London Greenpeace and Greenpeace International.
As I said earlier we were the first Greenpeace group established in
Europe in 1971, and many more were set up in other countries. In 1977
the Vancouver Greenpeace Foundation established its branch in Britain
but the supporters of London Greenpeace at that time decided they
wanted to retain our independence. Over the years Greenpeace
International has become part of a multinational environmental lobby,
whereas London Greenpeace has stayed close to its anarchist roots.
There is no animosity between the two organisations; we recognise we
have taken different routes, but are working for the same goal.
Land
The question of land and who controls it goes right to the core of
the current social and ecological crisis. Land is the prerequsite of
everything else - all forms of so-called 'development', food
production, housing, etc. Whoever owns it then has the power to
exploit it. One of the first acts of colonialism was to deprive the
indigenous populations access to land, but governments were only
replicating what what they had first done to their own peoples. In
Britain from the 13th century onwards landowners began dispossessing
peasant farmers, enclosing the land for sheep rearing. As profits
from wool skyrocketed the pace of enclosure increased rapidly in the
16th and 17th centuries, resulting in huge social unrest and
widespread riots and uprisings that secure little if any space in
history books. The Diggers were merely the most celebrated of umpteen
different groups of disaffected landless labourers. Enclosure
continued until well into the nineteenth century (often enforced by
Acts of Parliament)and resulted in the present situation whereby
almost all land is privately owned and we are not allowed onto it
except for certain 'rights of way', which are constantly under
threat.
In her 1987 book, This Land is Our Land, Marion Shoard, gives
a breakdown of just who owns what land in Britain. The largest
landowner was the Forestry Commission with nearly 3 million acres,
and substantial areas were also owned by the Ministry of Defence,
water authorities, local authorities and nationalised industries. The
privatisation programme of the last Conservative government means
that much of this land is now owned by private companies or
controlled by state quangos - unelected bodies appointed by the
government .Nevertheless more than 80 per cent of land is owned, as
it has been for the last 1000 years, by private individuals. A small
number of titled families own nearly a third of all land. In
Scotland, whole islands, forests, or even mountain ranges may belong
to one individual, and if they decide to put a fence around the
entire area, to stop the rest of the population from entering, there
is nothing we can legally do about it. There are also about 120,000
miles of public footpaths and bridleways, known as public rights of
way, which are much older than roads, some dating back over 10,000
years. Landowners are supposed to maintain them and see they are
clear of obstacles but surveys by the walkers rights organisation,
the Ramblers Association, have found up to a third of routes
impassable.
A common sight on privately owned land are signs saying
'Trespassers will be prosecuted'. Until recently this was inaccurate
since trespass was not a criminal offence. It was a civil matter
between the individual and the landowner. Since the 1994 Criminal
Justice Act there is now an offence of aggrivated trespass, which was
introduced mainly to criminalise hunt saboteurs and 'New Age
Travellers'. The latter is a term applied to an eclectic collection
of people who lived a nomadic existence, travelling in convoys and
organising free festivals in places like Stonehenge. As a result of
police repression and new draconian laws their peaceful way of life,
which owed so much to the idea of 'common land', has been effectively
outlawed. The issue of land use has come to the fore again recently
with the anti-roads movement. Over 200 different camps have been set
up all over the country in opposition to proposed new roads or
expansion of existing ones. Along with the questioning of car culture
- which is itself responsible for the expropriation of vast tracts of
land - has emerged a wider critique of land ownership and
exploitation
The private ownership of land is essential to capitalism for
two reasons. Firstly it facilitates the use of land for capitalist
production; the landowner can build a factory, grow crops or graze
animals purely on grounds of profitability. In this country the
government actually pays farmers not to use their land. Left to the
market nearly all land will be 'developed', simply because there is
little profit to be made from leaving it in its natural state.
Secondly, it allows landowners and other members of the ruling class
to enjoy a refuge from the rest of society. High property values
effectively isolate members of the working class from those who weald
control over them. This leads to the steady fragmentation of
community, the growth of what is called the underclass and the
'drawbridge society', where the privileged can seek sanctuary from a
hostile world behind security cameras and metal grilles over their
windows. The poor, denied access to land, are marooned in marginal
areas: sink estates in this country, shantytowns in Asia or Latin
America.
Worldwide, the issue of land ownership and control is
paramount. As globalisation spreads corporations seek to carve up the
world in their search for resources and quick profits. The
exploitation of the Ogoni delta and its inhabitants by Shell, in
league with the Nigerian state, is just the latest in a series of
struggles occuring globally. Most receive little or no publicity but
they are happening. In Latin America 7 per cent of the population own
93 per cent of land. It's this degree of inequality and oppression
that has led to movements such as the Movimento Sem-Terra (MST) in
Brazil, which since 1984 has coordinated land occupations.and helped
those who have won land to produce food. In 1995 there were 30,500
families engaged in illegal land invasions spread over almost 150
sites throughout Brazil. They have often been on the receiving end of
brutal violence - on 17th May 1996, for instance, the military police
charged a group of 1,200 MST activists who were blockading a highway
and killed 19 of them - but the importance thing is resistance is
growing everywhere.
Redistribution of land formed the central demand of the
Zapitistas. Huge tracts of Chiapas were owned by large landowners
while the indigenous populations scratched out a living on the
mountain slopes. In Britain the situation is similar. With the vast
majority denied any access to land and homelessness growing while
hundreds of thousands of houses lay empty, squatting is a crucial
political issue as well as being one of survival for the individuals
concerned. Despite attempts to criminalise such activities, thousands
of people continue to occupy empty dwellings and even to form
communities of their own, such as the eco-village set up by the This
Land is Ours campaign on five acres of derelict land owned by the
Guinness corporation by the Thames in London.
London Greenpeace celebrates this diversity of struggle
wherever it is found. Over the years our supporters have been
actively involved in the squatting movement and campaigns to save
natural spaces under threat by 'development'.
Food
It isn't surprising that with land availability being so unequal,
there is massive inequality when it comes to access to food. The
'world food crisis' is so well documented I do not need to discuss it
at length here. Hundreds of millions survive on the margins of
malnutrition and starvation, ecking out an existence largely because
they are denied sufficient land to grow food or because they are paid
wages too low to buy it. This situation has not arisen by accident,
it is the inevitable consequence of the worldwide production and
distribution of foodstuffs for profit, not need. The poor need food
just as badly as the rich but because they lack 'purchasing power', -
ie money - the market does not take them into account.
The world food trade is dominated by huge multinational
corporations such as Nestle, Unilever, Dalgety, Cargill, and
McDonald's. Business is zextremely profitable. Unilever is the third
biggest British company, only the petrochemical giants Shell and BP
are larger. These companies have fashioned a system based upon the
gross exploitation of people, animals and the environment in order to
satisfy their greed for global expansion. They have turned production
and consumption into a highly advanced and profitable industrial
process. Instead of food grown locally for the needs of communities,
reflecting their cultural diversity, we have complex industrial
processing of raw materials into commodities for the global
supermarket.
Globalisation has always been integral to the food
multinationals. As far back as the 1970s the Financial Times
reported: New markets for British made ice-cream, sausages
and frozen foods are being promoted by Unilever in the
up-country regions of Sierra Leone and Liberia...deep freezes at
retail outlets in villages, replenished by van from
refrigerated supplies shipped in from Liverpool or London...for
Birdseye and Walls products...shipped to Matadi and then railed
400 km up-country to Kinshasa. Some of the goods are then
distributed to other regions in aircraft. The global reach of the
food multinationals is astonishing. McDonald's now claims to be
feeding 35 million people each day in 21,000 restaurants in 101
countries. A new branch opens every three hours. The appetite for
expansion is undiminished. In 1995 they moved into ten new countries
and are currently expanding in China, the biggest market of all.
Through a $2 billion advertising budget they persuade customers that
to eat a McDonald's is good, wholesome and modern. Standardisation is
the key: a Big Mac will taste exactly the same wherever in the world
it is eaten, be prepared in the same way in restaurants that look
identical. A new homogenous culture is being created, a future where
food looks and tastes the same, where meals are bought prepackaged,
pre- cooked. We don't grow food anymore; it comes from factories
wrapped in polythene, tasteless but antiseptic and, er, safe...?
After its discovery in 1939 the insecticide DDT was hailed as
one of the wonders of modern science. But it does not easily break
down in the environment, instead accumulating in the body fat of
those who consume it. Insects coated with DDT are eaten by birds who
in turn may be eaten by predators. When enough insecticide has
collected, the animal dies. Contaminated grass is eaten by cows,
which then pass on some of the pesticide in their milk. This
accumulates along with DDT from vegetable residues and in meat.
Mothers can even pass it on to their babies through breastfeeding. In
1962 Silent Spring by Rachel Carson was published, the title
referring to the wholesale massacre of birds from pesticide
poisoning, hence no birdsong. This book was perhaps the first to
alert the public to the environmental crisis and it also warned that
the nature of food production had changed decisively. Modern science
and industry had intervened in the traditional food trade.
The years after World War II saw governments in developed
economies such as Britain and the USA adopt strategies to encourage
their populations to eat certain foods, especially meat, dairy
products and eggs. This diet was considered the highest in the
vitamins that pre-war people lacked, and was vigorously promoted as
the modern healthy way to eat. The growth in the 'affluent society'
from the 1950s onwards saw the consumption in saturated fats and
animal proteins skyrocket. With increased demand came a new form of
husbandry known as factory farming. The traditional farmyard and
smallholding was replaced by huge windowless sheds containing
thousands of animals. Egg laying hens crammed five to cage, unable to
spread their wings or even turn around, their beaks chopped off to
prevent them pecking each other - battery farming. In 1960 only about
20 per cent of eggs were produced in this way but by 1984 the figure
had risen to 96 per cent.
As the label 'factory' farming suggests, animals are treated
like objects from which as much profit as possible should be
extracted. Little consideration is paid to their feelings, despite
the fact we know they are sentient and intelligent creatures. Dairy
cows, for example, are turned into milk machines. Impregnated by
artificial insemination, they produce ten times as much as their
calves would have drunk had suckling been allowed to continue (calves
are removed from their mothers after only a few days, to the distress
of both). The average natural lifespan of a dairy cow is 20 years,
but three quarters are killed before the age of eight due to being
'burnt out'. Male calves are usually reared for the veal trade. Until
1990 in Britain this meant the notorious veal crate, where the animal
was imprisoned in a two foot wide box, often tethered as well, and
deprived of water and solid food. A diet based on EC surplus skimmed
milk was fed to the calves, who normally spent their lives in
semi-darkness until slaughter at 14 weeks. Public outrage led to this
system being banned in Britain in 1990, but up to 300,000 calves were
exported to Europe to end up in similar conditions every year until
the trade was banned a result of the BSE crisis.
Other species mainly reared under intensive conditions include
pigs, turkeys and rabbits. For all farmed animals rearing is not the
end of their suffering; they then have to face transportation and
slaughter. There is no time limit to the length of journeys. Chickens
are grabbed by gangs of catchers and stuffed into crates. Up to 7,000
birds can be carried in one lorry load, with about 25 per cent
suffering broken bones as a result of rough handling. About 1 per
cent of broiler chickens die during transit (5 to 6 million per
year). The slaughter process itself is brutal and bloody. Even were
it to work precisely according to the book it would still cause
enormous distress to the animals concerned. In practice though,
piece-rate working in abbatoirs means getting the maximum numbers
killed in as short a time as possible. Scissor-like tongs placed on
both sides of the sheep's or pig's head to stun it with electrical
current are not applied long enough to render it unconscious. Poultry
hung upside down on a moving shackle-line often miss the electric
water bath designed to stun them before their throats are cut. Many
reach the scalding tank (boiling water to loosen their feathers)
whilst still alive and conscious.
In Britain about 800 million animals are killed for food
annually, of which about 200 million are not 'humanely' killed even
by the inadequate standards of our law. There are now over 3 million
vegetarians, with millions more reducing their meat intake, and about
100,000 vegans, who eat no animal products at all. Public awareness
of issues such as factory farming as led directly to an upsurge of
support for the animal rights movement. There are now hundreds of
local and national groups opposing the exploitation of animals, from
respectable national bodies such as Compassion in World Farming to
illegal groups like the Animal Liberation Front, who rescue animals
from farms and vivisection laboratories. In 1995 thousands of
protestors blockaded ports in southern England to stop calves and
sheep being exported abroad.
Animal cruelty is not the only reason why people stop eating
meat. It is now recognised that a diet based on animal protein is
extremely wasteful and unecological, as ten times as much land is
required to feed a meat eater as a vegetarian. About 30 per cent of
all the grain produced worldwide is fed to livestock, yet on average
it takes ten pounds of vegetable protein to make one pound of edible
animal protein. In Britain 90 per cent of grain is fed to farm
animals. Many underdeveloped countries whose populations suffer from
malnutrition allow huge areas of land to be grazed for cattle, most
of which end up in hambugers. High protein crops such as soya are
exported from Brazil to be fed to cows in industrialised nations for
fast food outlets. Worse still multinationals are encouraging
intensive farms to open up in poor countries in Asia and Latin
America, touting them as an answer to indigenous food scarcity. This
is the madness of a system based on coporate greed and profit.
The Comeuppance
While the adverse affects of modern food production were only
being felt by animals and overseas populations, the majority of
people in countries like Britain could afford to shut their eyes to
the truth and believe the farming lobby's lies that they had cheaper,
cleaner and more nutritious meals than ever before. By the 1980s,
however, there were unmistakable signs of trouble ahead. Animals are
routinely dosed with antibiotics to combat diseases that spread
quickly under unnatural intensive conditions, and as a result some
strains of salmonella are 'multi-resistant' to the commonest
antibiotics. Cases of food poisoning from salmonella in the UK
doubled between 1981 and 1987. The bacteria lives in poultry and
livestock and was spread in contaminated chickenfeed, leading to the
worst outbreak in 1988 that cost 26 lives.
Another even more deadly bug that has appeared recently is
E.coli0157. Only discovered in 1982, it is known as the burger bug
because it appears in hambugers not cooked all the way through. The
bacterium lives in the intestines of cattle but can pass to raw meat
through contamination in the slaughterhouse as the quick throughput
of animals leads to spillage. Late last year an outbreak of E.coli
poisoning in Scotland claimed 21 lives. Studies have shown that the
spreading of animal manure on pasture land and recycling of animal
remains has led to the rise in incidence of the disease, but the meat
industry has resisted efforts to reduce the risk.
The most famous food scandal of all is undoubtedly BSE, or mad
cow disease. This arose from the unnatural practice of feeding offal
to cows, such recycling of animal remains being common because so
much waste is generated by factory farming. The first case was
reported in 1985 but the public weren't protected by a ban on cows
with the disease entering the food chain until November 1989. Over
the next few years the government and the food industry issued bland
reassurances that British beef was safe, there was no risk of humans
being infected, or even infected meat entering the food chain,
despite evidence showing cross- species contamination and loopholes
in the law that was supposed to protect consumers. In fact this was a
new disease agent, not a virus or baterium but a rogue protein
molecule called a prion about which very little was known. In March
1996 the government was forced to admit a likely link between a new
form of the human brain disease, CJD, and eating beef infected with
BSE. The meat industry was rocked to its foundations and a worldwide
ban on British beef exports followed. It is still too early whether
to say whether there will be just a few cases of CJD or we are at the
start of a major health crisis.
And another may be just around the corner. Genetically
modified food. The chemical industry giant Monsanto has manipulatd
the genetic code of the soya bean and inserted viral and bacterial
DNA into the plant's genes, to make it resistant to the herbicide
that the company also manufactures. Three-fifths of all processed
food contains soya products and although only 2% of soya grown last
year was genetically modified, it is mixed with ordinary soya so it
is not possible to know whether you are eating it. In Britain foods
containing genetically modified ingredients do not have to be
labelled. The industry claims it is safe because the products have
been approved by the 'relevant authorities'. But these were the same
'authorities' who in the past approved DDT, thalidomide and
BSE-infected cattle, with serious effects on human health and the
environment.
The danger to our health from BSE, E.coli and salmonella is
real and frightening but even that is dwarfed by enormous changes in
the average Western diet which have led to the epidemic growth in
illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and
diabetes. They are directly linked to a diet high in animal fat,
salt, sugar and chemical additives, and low in fibre, vitamins and
minerals; just what the average person in 'affluent' countries such
as Britain eats every day and what global food corporations are
introducing into other parts of the world. For them highly processed
food equals big profits, for us it means poor nutrition. Tackling
this problem is going to be difficult. These companies are powerful
and ruthless, as one small group of London anarchists discovered.
McDonald's
In the mid-1980s London Greenpeace confronted one of the world's
biggest food multinationals, the McDonald's corporation. McDonald's
was singled out not only because of its size but because it spent a
fortune promoting itself as a fun place to eat and symbolised
everything we hate: corporate greed hiding behind the happy smiling
face of a clown. The first day of action was held in January 1985 and
it was decided to make 16th October - United Nations World Food Day -
a Worldwide Day of Action against McDonald's. The campaign really
took off. London Greenpeace has only ever been a small group with
perhaps 15-20 people attending regularly at that time, and in keeping
with its anarchist principles it saw itself as a catalyst encouraging
people to start local campaigns. Soon we began receiving reports from
all over the country and abroad and since then the Worldwide Day of
Action has become an annual event.
A special factsheet was written entitled What's Wrong with
McDonald's - Everything they don't want you to know. This foldout
six- sided leaflet contained everything then known about the
company's practices; much of which was common knowledge already in
the public domain, but for the first time collected in one place.
McDonald's were accused of producing unhealthy food, misleading
advertising that exploited children, treating their workers badly,
the 'torture and murder' of millions of animals, and destroying the
environment, especially tropical rainforest cut down for cattle
ranching. With an eye-catching cover of a leering cartoon cowboy
capitalist hiding behind a Ronald McDonald mask, the factsheet was an
instant success. Though popular it was expensive to print and was
handed out in public only once, on World Day 1986, but copies were
sent to anyone who requested it and soon other groups were using it
make their own leaflets.
In early 1987 London Greenpeace produced a smaller A5 size
McDonald's leaflet and henceforth this was the one that was always
handed out on demonstrations organised by us. Around this time we
became aware that the company was threatening groups and publications
who criticised it with legal action. The list included national
newspapers like The Guardian, the World Wildlife Fund, trades unions
and small organisations such as the Transnational Information Centre,
who published a pamphlet about McDonald's, Working for the Big Mac,
and was quickly threatened with a libel writ for saying the company
was anti- union and paid its workers low wages. The group could not
afford to fight the action and had to be disbanded. A vegan catering
campaign based in Nottingham, Veggies, had been reprinting the
factsheet for a long time. McDonald's threatened them but after
agreeing to amend their version slightly (changing a few words to do
with killing animals and the destruction of rainforest), the action
was dropped. London Greenpeace told groups who felt intimidated to
follow Veggies example, but we stuck by the factsheet as being
accurate.
In September 1990 five people involved in London Greenpeace
received writs for libel. McDonald's alleged 16 different libels in
the factsheet, pertaining to every criticism made of them. They sued
five individuals because London Greenpeace is not a limited company
and hence cannot be sued as an organisation. In order to gather
information on the five they hired 'security firms' to send spies to
meetings. From October 1989 to the spring of 1991 there were seven
different investigators used. At some meetings there were as many
spies as bona fide supporters and the spies themselves admitted to
answering letters, and helping on stalls. One in particular played a
leading role in the group, helping to organise the 1990 London
Greenpeace Fayre and taking part in anti- McDonald's protests,
including one outside the company's head office. She even had a
relationship with someone in the group.
Once the writs were served on us it soon became obvious what
we were up against. Legal aid is not available in libel trials, yet
none of us were working or had any money. We were given a few hours
free legal advice which amounted to: give up and apologise
(McDonald's said they would drop the action if we apologised in
writing). Libel law in Britain is probably the most repressive
anywhere. We would have to prove every laim was true, not by quoting
articles or leaflets but by going to primary sources. This would
entail getting witnesses from around the world or finding evidence in
original official documents. Even then we were told it was unlikely
the case would ever come to court due to the complex legal
proceedures; our defence would be struck out at a pre- trial hearing
and we would be liable for costs running into tens of thousands of
pounds. As we had no assets we would be bankrupted. In other
countries such as the USA, McDonald's would not have been able to sue
us without proving that we knew the factsheet was untrue. That's why
although there were groups making similar criticisms throughout the
world, McDonald's chose to fight the case in Britain; they realised
that is where they would stand the best chance of winning and a
victory would send a message to their critics everywhere. In essence
this action was about the right of ordinary people who care about the
world to criticise vast, faceless corporations.
Under immense pressure myself and two other defendants made an
apology. We reasoned that it was no more than a tactical withdrawl.
None of us really wanted to be occupied by the anti-McDonald's
campaign anyway, we had moved onto other areas. Dave Morris and Helen
Steel decided not to back down, however, and despite what at the time
must have appeared overwhelming odds they have fought the case
through 28 pre-trial hearings and then a two and a half year trial,
the longest English legal history. The odds have been stacked against
them from the start: McDonald's used one of the top firms of
solicitors and the most senior libel barrister in the country. They
even argued successfully that there should be no jury, because
ordinary people could not understand the complex evidence on
nutrition. So it will be left to the judge alone to decide whether
libel was committed and his verdict is expected in June 1997..
For McDonald's the case has proved a public relations
disaster. The trial has uncovered a mass of information about the
inner workings of the company and on every count Dave and Helen have
been vindicated. McDonald's own witnesses have admitted in court that
many of the critics allegations are true. Media interest has been
phenomenal. Whereas few journalists would dare say anything even
slightly critical of the company, they now feel able to report the
truth. Anything said in court can be repeated without fear of libel,
but more importantly people everywhere feel less intimidated by the
bullying threats of large corporations. A website called McSpotlight
has been set up on the internet and accessed millions of times. Dave
and Helen have struck a mighty blow for free speech. And in a
marvellous twist of fate they are suing McDonald's themselves, for
calling them liars in a leaflet issued just before the trial began.
Most important of all, though, is the struggle against McDonald's and
other corporations has exploded as people become incensed at at their
attempts to stifle opposition and over 2 million anti-McDonald's
leaflets have been handed out in the UK alone since the writs were
served. Protests and campaigns against McDonald's continue in 25
countries. Aware they are losing in the courtroom and on the streets,
McDonald's have tried to come to an out of court settlement, but
Helen and Dave refused. The movement is clearly unstoppable.
Revolutionary Ecology
Resistance to globalisation, as expressed in the anti-McDonald's
campaign and others now going on throughout the world, takes many
forms. What unites them all - from Chiapas and the Zapitistas to the
anti-roads protests in Britain - is a concern for protecting local
interests. Usually this centres around land and our need for food,
clothing, homes and other necessities. Governments and corporations
are trying to deprive communities of their local autonomy by
integrating them into a global marketplace, where decisions are made
hierarchically and people become mere passive consumers of
commodities pumped out by multinationals spending billions on
advertising to sell us the next new- improved product we cannot live
without.
At the heart of the struggle is the awareness that unless we
take control of our lives we will not be able to save ourselves, or
the earth from ecological destruction. The term 'ecology' was first
used in 1873 by a German scientist Ernst Haeckel to describe the
interrelationships between organisms and their environment. These
interrelationships are called an ecosystem. Within an ecosystem
diversity is the key to stability; the greater the number of species
supported by an environment the more likely the ecosystem is to
survive. Globalisation is a threat to diversity, whether cultural,
social or ecological. The cancerous spread of the free market's cash
nexus undermines traditional communities not founded on materialistic
values, for example tribal or indigenous peoples who live in a close
interrelationship to their environment. They are often forced from
their land so it can be turned over to the production of cash crops,
monocultures such as tobacco, coffee or beef from cattle. Hence loss
of cultural diversity inevitably means the loss of ecological
diversity. In the new global supermarket uniformity and
standardisation will be the dominant characterisitcs.
The Second encuentro is a coming together of people and groups
opposed to the new global consensus of neoliberalism.. It is a
celebration of many diverse strands of resistance and such diversity
is by its very nature ecological, but it is also an opportunity to
explore our interdependence. All struggles for a world based on
cooperation and sharing, for small communities against large
institutions, for free self-expression of our creative potential, for
alternative ways of living, for human and animal liberation, for the
chance to live in dignity and in harmony with nature...these are all
struggles for ecology. Ecology is freedom and diversity -and it is
revolutionary!
What next...
I hope you have found this paper informative and thought
provoking. Here are the details of some of the groups mentioned, and
others you may be interested in.
Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group, BCM 1160, London WC1N
3XX. Animal Rights Coalition, PO Box 339, Wolverhampton, WV10 7BZ.
01902 711935. Earth First! Action Update, PO Box 9656, London N4 4YJ.
0171 5619146. Genetics Forum, 3rd Floor, 5-11 Worship Street, London
EC2A 2BH 011 6380606 Hunt Saboteurs Association, PO Box 2786,
Brighton, Sussex BN2 2AX. 01273 622827. London Greenpeace/McLibel
Support Campaign, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX. 0171 7131269.
McSpotlight: http://www.McSpotlight.org. Website for info on
McDonald's libel case. Reclaim the Streets, PO Box 9565, London N4.
0171 2814621. Anti- roads/car group. This Land is ours, BoxE, 111
Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RQ. 01865 722016. Vegan Society, 7 Battle
Road, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, TN37 7AA. )1424 427393