I
wonder if Ian Kershaw, Andrew Roberts, and
their fellow-conformist historians have
these kind of troubles when they speak?
And I wonder too whose history books will
be being read in the twenty-second
century? 
|
May
14, 2004 (Friday)
London At 12:07 pm the Sussex police
email me asking me to contact them urgently about
tomorrow's function, as they have "certain
information." A minute later, there is an anonymous Jewish
caller; he cannot disguise his voice. "You
lost, scumbag, you --". Nice folks. I try to go online at twelve-twenty p.m. and get
this: "Your account is already signed on
. . . If this is not authorized, please
call 1-800-827-6364." Huh? Somebody else has opened
my AOL email account? Never mind, nothing to
conceal there. May
15, 2004 (Saturday)
London
- Arundel - London AT eleven I drive to Lady M.'s to collect her
and her friend Belinda, then to fetch Mr A. outside
The Oratory, then on to Arundel for the talk.
Beautiful sunshine in London, gradually becoming
overcast as we cross the South Downs. I last heard of Arundel -- where I have never
been before -- when on holiday as a nine-year-old
in Southsea, in the summer of 1947. That was when
the Joan Woodward murder case filled the
headlines (murders, in those pre-immigration,
capital-punishment years, were a sensational
rarity). They had found her body in the Castle
grounds. At the time, I collected all the press
reports on the search for the murderer -- my
clippings books have all, oddly, been seized along
with the rest of my archives by the official
Trustee in May 2002. The police knew who Joan's
murderer was but could not nail him, and it was
never resolved. My three passengers are like schoolchildren on a
summer outing. We stop for a coffee at a gas
station; the forecourt is in uproar at the new gas
prices, 81p a liter (about $5 a gallon, up one
percent). The Asian proprietor explains in his
thin, reedy voice that his machine does not work;
my passengers vanish for half an hour towards
different patisseries and cafes, before I can stop
them. M. has not seen green fields for years; wants
to see furrows. A. lectures her that farmers
plough and sow in the winter, not late spring. I am
a townie now, would not have known that either. A look at the map reveals how crazy H. or his
local people are in fixing Horsham as the
rendezvous point -- it is a good 40 miles from
Arundel. The meeting point should be within walking
distance of the lecture! Before we enter Arundel,
hideously late, I removed all visible signs of my
ownership of the car -- the Westminster permits,
etc., -- to the puzzlement of my rather naïve
passengers; I explained the logic behind such
thinking ahead. 
WE arrive in the town centre at three, to find the
Norfolk Arms already besieged by the enemy rabble,
and every window on the first floor crowded with
young people hanging out to watch the sport. I
drive straight past, and park opposite the
Castle.
A., having drunk a lot of fashionable bottled
water al the way down here, pronounces that he has
to go for a less fashionable pee; Belinda walks
smartly downhill to check out the Arms; Lady M.
meanwhile phones the Arms receptionist, who informs
her after a whispered conversation elsewhere, that
there is no meeting booked there today (a lie), and
they had never heard of the "William Cobbett Club"
etc. Well they banked its cheque, they will find.
Quoi de neuf. What else is new. I suggest that we drive straight back to London,
as H. has not vouchsafed the identity of the
alternate location to me. On his return twenty
minutes later, A. says he has spotted H., but he
went for his urgent pee first and when he emerged,
no doubt adjusting his dress, H. had vanished. Not
helpful. Belinda struggles back up the castle hill to the
car fifteen minutes later, and has to sit in the
back seat puffing for five minutes before she can
even speak. She has spoken to a helpful young
"nazi", as she says, and there he is coming up the
hill even as she speaks. I instruct her lock her
door and window, and we will be out of here -- even
without A. and Lady M. "No," she reassures me. "He
is one of ours." He doesn't look like one of mine. He has a black
motorbike crash helmet, a ring in one ear, and the
slightly pink, puffy features of a homo. And no, he
doesn't know where the alternate location is, nor
does he even know H., which seems odd me. Before
departing, he evidently made a note of our car's
license tag. The two others now return. The hotel has
cancelled the booking. They agree with me to return
to London at once. It is not an easy town to exit
from, we do a circuit, over two river bridges and
back to the High Street, and park opposite a police
station five hundred yards from the Norfolk Arms.
They go off for one last look for H., while I have
a cold drink in The Hart. Shortly none other than H. turns up. This pub,
the Hart, is in fact the alternative location, and
how did I guess. I did not, and I am not pleased,
as I know from experience that there is going to be
no meeting of any kind today. I want to return to
London, right now. H. starts deliberating on the source of the leak
-- he says the mob went charging off from the
meeting point at Horsham railway station car park
even before the last people had arrived there. He
swears that he did not notify Tony H. of the
location, who is my chief suspect. John O. shows up, looking much grayer and older
than when I saw him twenty years ago; he probably
thinks the same of me. Clarendon Club days. He lost
his job as a school teacher some years back, for
the usual reasons, -- a belief in Real History --
and now has a bread-delivery round. O. helps me
load the few boxes of books up into the upstairs
room at the back of the pub, and sets up chairs.
Five minutes later he returns with the doleful news
that a handful of our audience has trickled down
the road to this location, and that the mob has
followed them. Ten of the latter come pounding up the stairs,
ignoring O.'s polite requests to desist, and
demolish the room and its contents, while I am held
in a corner. I stand there alone, arms folded. I
suggest to this gaggle of thugs that if they would
like to take their seats we can have a debate and
see if there are in fact any differences between
out views on, say, Iraq. An unwashed young woman
straight out of Eastenders shrieks, "We
aren't here to debate!" Another of their number has
come into the room, which is in turmoil; this man,
perhaps an asylum seeker from an asylum, has a
leather jacket with studs and a Mohican haircut
with the hair glued up in vertical spikes, King's
Road style, coloured alternately pink and orange.
This caricature of a punk looks even more gross
than that toll-booth attendant on the Massachusetts
turnpike two years ago.  He
and his mates pen me into the corner. While their
ringleader, a tall burly man of about 35,
[**** passage omitted
for legal reasons ****] with a seeming impunity which encourages three
or four others to join in, four or five of them
frantically destroy every book and video tape
(Cincinnati 2002) on the table. Their paymasters have told them this is the way
to hurt me, and folks like these believe everything
their paymasters say. The Board
of Deputies of British Jews and its front men
and their front men and accomplices. Ringleader pushes forward within inches of my
face, raises his fist with two fingers
outstretched, makes as if to jab me in the eyes
(almost: he knows the law, as a constable
later says), and screams, "If you were younger
you'd be on the floor by now." "With a dozen of you
and one of me," I suggest, "that does sound
very brave."
FROM Chicago to Portland to Copenhagen, and now
quiet little Arundel in Sussex, these adorable
people, these supporters of Deborah Lipstadt
and the people like her, all follow the same
washing-list of instructions, issued by the same
sinister folks, and don't seem to realize it. I see
the young man in the black motorbike helmet and
earring arrive half way through the affray, and --
still penned in -- I ask him to call the police. He
looks at me blankly and joins in the destruction.
My thoughts on him were right. John O. makes the
call. He finds A. in the bar, calling the local
police number on a cell phone; it is not answering,
he says. I tell him to use 999. Some of the thugs have foolishly congregated on
the roadbridge half way between here and the Arms.
The police have now arrived, and make arrests. It
is going to prove a costly afternoon for some.
Outside, I see Marjory and James T., the former a
cripple in a wheelchair, and a handful of others I
know. I apologise for the wasted afternoon. Somebody tells me that our car, though parked
completely anonymously two hundred yards away, has
had its tyres slashed and its doors vandalized.
That will please Budget. The police confirm that
they are holding some of the thugs in jail, and
take a statement from me. Will I aid a prosecution?
Not a difficult decision. Even as the constable is
taking down the statement, a handwritten note in
quavering block capitals arrives on his desk: it is
from a resident in the building overlooking the
car, number 13 Causeway Court, a Mrs Goldhagen; she
has witnessed the vandalizing of the car, and gives
a good description of the man with, as she puts it,
"the black top." No doubt she did not spot the
earring from her vantage point. Around six pm the tow-truck arrives and takes
the car to Gatwick airport, where Budget has its
repair center. I am fitted out with a new one, of a
different make, and return to London. Bente asks
diffidently what kind of an afternoon it was, as in
Had a Good Day at the Office Dear?, and why am I
wearing a different shirt. "It was okay," I say,
and go downstairs to shampoo my head as thoroughly
as I can. Because who can say that one of these
queer folks and thugs was not HIV-positive?  Around
eleven p.m., a sergeant from Arundel police phones,
asking urgently for the whereabouts of the damaged
good (books, videos); I say we have them bagged up,
but perhaps already discarded. She asks, what
became of the bag, they need the items as evidence
against those who have been arrested (fingerprints
etc). They also want the shirt I was wearing for
DNA tests. This much I anticipated (tho' the
brainless thugs evidently did not) and the police
laboratories are welcome to it.
I wonder if Ian Kershaw (left),
Andrew Roberts and their
fellow-conformist historians have these kind of
troubles when they speak? And I wonder too whose
history books will still be being read in the
twenty-second century?   
Where
David Irving speaks next-
David
Irving invites public to identify woman
ringleader of affray in Sussex
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