McLibel Two win 15-year legal aid battle

DAVID MORRIS and Helen Steel, who became known as the McLibel Two, and who were sued 15 years ago by fast-food chain McDonald’s and lost, were celebrating yesterday after they won their claim that the trial was an unfair fight.

The trial is estimated to have cost the fast food giant €15 million. The European Court of Human Rights found the British legal system breached their right to a fair trial and freedom of expression.

Mr Morris and Ms Steel were refused legal aid as it was not available under English law when McDonald’s issued a writ over leaflet allegations challenging the firm’s working practices and its food quality. After the trial - the longest civil or criminal case in English legal history - the law was amended to offer legal aid in libel cases in exceptional circumstances.

Mr Morris and Ms Steel were celebrating the end of a 15-year legal saga triggered by their part in distributing anti-McDonald’s leaflets outside a McDonald’s branch in Charing Cross, central London. They were back there yesterday with a banner: “Celebrate 20 years of global resistance to McWorld.”

Mr Morris, 50, said: “We are elated. It is a total victory in terms of the ruling. The Government will have to change the law.”

Ms Steel, 39, now a trainee electrician, said the battle had been “exhausting” and a “complete nightmare” but it had been important to defend the public’s right to criticise powerful organisations.

The David-and-Goliath saga was triggered when McDonald’s objected to the six-page leaflets entitled What’s Wrong with McDonald’s. High Court judge Mr Justice Bell ruled that McDonald’s had been libelled, though he said the leaflet was true when it accused the firm of paying low wages to its workers, being responsible for cruelty to some of the animals used in its food products, and exploiting children in advertising campaigns. The case is thought to have cost the fast-food giant €15m and was described as “the biggest corporate PR disaster in history.”

McDonald’s would not comment on the case, saying it had not been involved in the human rights action.

But a statement declared: “It is important to note, though the so-called McLibel case came to court in 1994, the allegations related to practices in the 1980s.”