The "McLibel" Case Should Terrify You
The longest civil trial in British history pitted a part-time bartender and an unemployed ex-postal worker against McDonald's. The defendants, Helen Steel and David Morris, faced a $20 million legal team with the pro bono assistance of human-rights attorney. At issue was a couple of hundred copies of a pamphlet that made various allegations against McDonald's. Some of those allegations were later found to be correct by the court; some were determined to be libel. McDonald's eventually won the case, although by the time they did so neither defendant had a penny to pay the $120,000 judgment.
This all sounds like some typical hippie stupidity, right? Except for one thing: the "McLibel" pamphlet was written by undercover police officers.
The "Special Demonstration Squad" of the London Metropolitan Police targeted and infiltrated various protest groups from 1968 to 2008. The London Greenpeace clique was one of the many groups successfully infiltrated by the squad. According to the Guardian, it has now been revealed that at least two of the pamphlet's primary authors were undercover cops.
Bob Lambert, an SDS officer, wrote the pamphlet under his "cover identity". That pamphlet would later prove to be a hammer that McDonald's used against members of Greenpeace. Another officer, John Dines, appears to have assisted Helen Steel on the pamphlet.
Because he was boning her at the time, apparently.
Bob Lambert, meanwhile, was sleeping with four different Greenpeace girls, one of whom wound up having his child. Both Dines and Lambert disappeared from Greenpeace and returned to the SDS after the "McLibel" case got started.
So let's recap in plain and alarming terms.
Greenpeace is minding their own business, presumably.
Two cops come along and start nailing every woman they can.
Then they author a libelous pamphlet
Which is then used to attack Greenpeace and mortify two core members
And then they magically disappear, facing no consequences and, in fact, being rewarded for their efforts
Leaving their victims and a child behind.
This sort of thing has been done before --- Cointelpro, anyone? --- but that doesn't excuse the fact that it was done here. These cops infiltrated an organization that they now admit was completely peaceful, and they ravaged the lives of its members. They didn't stop any crimes --- they committed them. They didn't protect the public --- they deceived and impregnated the public. They didn't bother to confront the bad guys in court --- because they were the bad guys. They simply disappeared.
As a father, I'm particularly disgusted by Lambert's decision to abandon a child. This kid thought his (or her) dad was dead or disappeared for over a decade. Who knows how many nights that child spent alone, fearful, worried about the terrible fate that had befallen an imaginary parent who was busy climbing the ladder in the civil service just miles away? What purpose did that serve, exactly? There should be a word beyond "reprehensible" that covers bringing a child into the world and making that child's life a nightmare so the brilliant progress of your career is not interrupted. Mr. Lambert spent six years of that career later as an "Islamophobia" expert, reaching out to British Muslims to "engage them in the community". But he never engaged with his own child. I suppose there was no percentage in it.
It's easy to count at least seven victims here --- the two defendants, the four women Lambert knocked off, the child --- but what about McDonald's? Sure, it's just a Giant Evil Corporation(tm), but was any purpose served by the pamphlet? Were the British people protected by it? If so, why didn't the British Government take ownership of the pamphlet, rather than letting the associates of the cops who wrote the thing take it in the proverbial colon for over a decade? And if not, why didn't the British Government intervene to prevent unnecessary use of the courts?
Worst of all, this episode displays an astounding cavalier "us and them" attitude on the part of the London Metropolitan Police and its employees. That attitude is poison to a society, to put it mildly. The minute the police start to view themselves as an entirely separate group of people and not a working part of a society, anything at all becomes possible, from the idiocy of using the word "civilians" as a term for non-cops to broomstick rapes and the like. The first step to atrocity is dissociation.
Democracy doesn't work if the existing powers that be in government misuse their power to stifle opposing voices. This is true whether we're discussing the FBI going after Martin Luther King or the IRS going after Tea Party organizations. We need open discourse in this country. It is essential. We cannot depend on the actions of individuals to stem the tide of increasing government power --- for every Frank Serpico, there's probably ten Bob Lamberts, right? --- so we need institutional attention, from the courts, the watchdog organizations, and a better, braver media, to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
If the British Government would like to reassure its citizens, it could start firing everyone involved. And then it could take back payments for child support out of Mr. Lambert's bank account.
Then they could have him reimburse Steel and Dennis for their expenses.
Then, finally, perhaps Mr. Lambert could reimburse McDonald's for their expenses.
By working as a fry cook.
And wearing a sign informing the public what he'd done.
Until his debt was paid, or he died in the attempt to pay it.
It would be a good first step on the road back from tyranny, I think.