Posted Wednesday, November 4, 1998

	FOR THIRTY-FIVE years author David Irving has kept a private diary. It has proven useful in countless actions. For the information of his many supporters he currently publishes an edited text in his irregular newsletter ACTION REPORT. THE SKETCH, left, is a detail from an unflattering cartoon published in The Guardian in 1977 when it reviewed David Irving's book Hitler's War. He purchased the original from artist David Smith, from whom FOCAL POINT commissioned several skilfully executed caricatures.
FLIGHT TO GERMANY (FRANKFURT) FOR SPEECH IN KASSEL. RETURN 27th. AY 27, 1978   9 --10 A.M.  SPOKE TO about 500 members of the (right wing?) Gesellschaft für freie Publizistik [Association for Free Journalism] in Kassel. Had splitting headache all yesterday, including night, and this morning, sweating badly, probably flu, but spoke very well, despite all that, using hardly any notes except as illustration for seventy minutes. Given ovation at beginning, another two ovations at the end, and frequently interrupted with applause and laughter. Invented in middle of the speech the idea -- "Freilich weiß man nicht immer, ob eine gewisse Handlung eine Widerstandshandlung oder eine Schlamperei darstellt. Denn: manche Widerstandshandlung war eben eine Schlamperei, und manche Schlamperei wurde hinterher als Widerstandshandlung hingestellt!"[1] Roars of laughter and applause. They paid DM 1000 for the speech, plus expenses, which is that much more than the Fabian Society ever paid me, incidentally.[2]  © David Irving 1998.
Notes: "Admittedly you can't always tell if any given action was an act of resistance or a bit of bungling. Because many an act of resistance was badly bungled; and many a bungle was afterwards claimed to have been an act of resistance." In May 1977 Mr Irving had addressed the left-wing Fabian Society at Cambridge at the invitation of the then young Robert Harris (later the famous author of Fatherland), giving him a boisterous audience of a 1,000 students, the biggest audience Harris ever presided over there.

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