McD's is Going Down. posted by Richard Seymour

Heidi Klum is lovin' it. Jennifer Aniston is lovin' it. Ashlee Simpson (whoever she is) is lovin' it. But Britons aren't loving that horse shit: profits are way down and they're closing branches. On top of that, some McDonald's workers are getting organised and taking strike action. They've been caught telling porkies about what they put in their Freedom Fries. To wit, there's glutens in there and about three times more fat than they had 'thought'. Some much for Ronald the health guru.

Perhaps the worst news for McDonald's of late is the entry of the new updated McLibel film into UK cinemas, and its DVD release. You probably know some of the story already: two ordinary working class activists named Dave Morris and Helen Steel were served with writs instructing them to cease making negative claims about McDonald's working practises, unhealthy food, cruelty to animals and environmental destruction. A group they had been working in was infiltrated by five Private Investigators on the pay of McDonald's, who went to extraordinary lengths to extract details about the activists. Five writs were served: having received two hours of legal aid and been told they stood no chance, Morris and Steel decided to go to court. The biases loaded into the legal situation were extraordinary: they were allowed no legal aid, and there was to be no jury (for juries have a strange way of reaching eminently sensible decisions in such matters). Instead, a solitary old git (to put it another way, a judge) presided over the proceedings, and managed to steer almost advantage possible to the already super-funded, massively over-manned McDonald's legal team. Morris and Steel had to represent themselves, and when they asked what procedures they were obliged to follow, the judge had the cheek to inform them that if they didn't know, they should seek legal aid. Despite the grotesque unfairness of the proceedings and what appears to be hideous bias on the part of the trial judge, McDonald's couldn't escape some rather scathing criticisms. And while the judge tried to assert that it was unfair to describe McDonalds' working practises as 'bad' even though they were union-busters, the work was exhausting and the wages so low as to depress wages across the industry, that was thrown out on appeal. The judge also tried saying that it wasn't fair to describe McDonald's' food as potentially leading to heart disease, breast and bowel cancer, that too was later thrown out. You can read the court transcripts here.

Even the hugely biased verdict on the day brought huge cheers for the McLibel Two as they walked out of court, while a McDonald's representative issued a greasy, sweaty, nervous statement in a lonely press room regarding their basic 'satisfaction' with the verdict. The sight of the heaving mound of manicured blubber sweating beneath his suit as he tried to claim that McDonald's was happy with having been found to be culpably guilty of cruelty to animals (pace footage of the chickens dangling upside down, trembling and then squawking as their are heads chopped off by Mme McGuillotine, and thousands of unwanted chicks rolling off to be gassed), union-busting, low-pay, unethical advertising, and so on reminded me of the joys of sadism. Even better was Helen Steel explaining to the media and a packed hall of activists that they wouldn't be paying any damages, and nor would they be shutting their faces. "We're not paying them £60,000, they don't deserve it, and aside from anything else we haven't got any money." The company did not dare to pursue the cash, nor did they seek to reinforce any injunction against the 'libel'. Which is why, the day after the verdict, McDonald's stores across the world were surrounded by bands of leafleters. Subsequently, Morris and Steel took on the entire UK legal system at the European Court of Human Rights and got a verdict saying that major aspects of the trial contravened European human rights legislation. Worth noting that throughout the trial, McDonalds' tried to bribe them. Money in a suitcase in exchange for an end to the trial and total silence from the pair. Nothing doing. Worst mistake McDonalds' ever made.

I think it's unlikely that Morris and Steel could have seen this through if it weren't for their socialist convictions. These are evident throughout the documentary: the story is about capitalism, and what it is doing to people and planet. Commentary from the two key protagonists, as well as from Eric Schlosser, Jeremy Corbyn and Michael Mansfield provides the ideological context, while it is hard to resist seeing in the crowds of demonstrators outside the courthouse or various branches of McDonalds a foreshadowing of what would come to be to the anticapitalist movement. On top of which, criticism of the company which would frequently have led to apologies from newspapers in court beforehand is now mainstream. The efforts of Morris and Steel created a market for such books as Fast Food Nation, Fat Land, and documentaries like Supersize Me, and I daresay contributed to the will to produce them in the first place.

More here.