have
worked until 4:15 a.m. again. Uploaded the first half of
the new
.pdf version
of Hitler's
War without
links.
Work all morning on
the Lipstadt trial documentation. Davenport Lyons acting
for her publishers fax a letter asking to see again half
a dozen videos from my files, of me speaking in
Christchurch, New Zealand, and other locations; I reply
that I have no objection -- they collect them around noon
-- but I have myself never viewed them, as I have no VCR.
I shall invite Mr Justice Gray when the time comes
to view, without exception, the entire video in each
case, not just whatever sentence the defendants may pluck
out of context for their purposes.
Charles G.
phones, will lunch me at White's on Wednesday, is writing
an article for a broadsheet on the Lipstadt trial; he has
been put up to this, he says, by T. I suggest to
C. that she take a couple of hours this afternoon to
visit Court No. 13 to see the opening of the Hamilton
v Fayed libel action: George Carman QC in
action.
2:25 p.m. Aer Lingus
plane to the Irish Republic. At Cork airport thanks to
security measures I have taken there are no problems.
Stephen Vaughan, the UC Philosophical Society
auditor meets me there with a couple of toughs. They
drive me to Jury's Hotel. At six p.m. they return, with
Aisling Dwyer, the Phil.'s brainy young deputy
auditor, for supper. She's studying Law. We discuss the
formalities of tonight's debate; the opposing speaker is
deputy chairman of the debating society -- no historian
had shown himself willing to oppose me. Lügner
und Feiglinge. The "scholars" all refuse to
debate.
The topic is "Myths of
World War II." I propose to talk about Real History, the
kind that is based on real sources, like air photos and
decrypts, rather than the shakier, shifting-sand sources
of the "eye witness evidence" variety. What the decodes
tell us about Hitler's role; and what for that
matter the German decodes tell us of British wartime
plans (November 1940) to invade the Irish Republic. Those
files are still closed in the Public Record
Office!
There have been loud
calls from all the usual suspects to ban this evening's
debate; Mr Vaughan tells me however he has received
secret support from many notable authorities however,
including Prof. John A Murphy, the now retired
éminence grise of University College who
phoned him this evening and told him to "go for it." It
is a free speech issue, and they realise it. Brave man;
brave men.
Everybody is
astonished that Vaughan has got this far with the
project. Hitherto everyone pointed to the 1983 Trinity
College Dublin riot as grounds not to invite me (that was
when 500 Jews -- as I was told next day, having been
trapped inside the debating chamber myself --
materialised from nowhere and barricaded the building
until 3 a.m., inflicting painful material damage on its
historic facade). They and the Traditional Enemies of the
Truth.
Vaughan warns me that
this afternoon the city has begun filling with
demonstrators however, and I see posters everywhere with
my name in bold type and no doubt unflattering epithets
attached. I wonder who pays for the printing of these
posters! None of the fine journalists ever asks such
obvious questions. He says somebody has also hired
omnibuses to bring demonstrators from Dublin and other
cities.
I reassure him that
during this run-up to the trial the traditional enemy
have so far behaved impeccably, so as not to be
wrongfooted; there was not even a vestige of problems
during the recent American tour. Today it seems however
other forces are at work, not entirely under their
control.
Aisling tells me that
the university library has most of my books listed on its
computer inventory, but that a check of the shelves shows
that all are "missing"; another familiar trick -- in
Australia in 1987 I actually saw the leaflets circulated
by the country's leading Jewish organisation to the
librarians confidentially asking them to remove all works
by me from college libraries. I wish I had kept a copy at
the time. I give these students copies of my latest books
to donate to the college library.
Her father is a
retired Garda (police) officer, who spent his life
fighting crime but has now retired, sickened of the
lawyers who had repeatedly got acknowledged murderers off
scot-free on legal technicalities. So she may never
actually go into the Law, it has gained such a bad name.
I commiserate, though admit to her that some of my best
friends are lawyers. She is the first of three Irish
girls I meet this evening who are all studying Law, and
none of whom ever intends to put it into
practice.
As
the meal draws on officials come to the restaurant with
increasingly dire reports on the worsening public order
situation in the city centre. Mobs of Marxist rioters,
bent on personal injury and violence, are barricading the
centre, searching for me, and keeping the rest of the
audience from entering University College. Some 200 have
entered so far and are trapped inside, the rest are
trapped outside. The opposing speaker has been badly
manhandled. Busloads of agitators are pouring in. Three
have come from Dublin. Who is paying, who is
paying!
The whole gang, the
whole greasy spectrum of the extreme Left is there. A
burly man is assigned to me as an armed bodyguard --
Pat Enwright, one of the city's best plain clothes
police officers. He does not let me out of his sight for
the rest of the evening. My praise for the Gardaí
this evening is vast. Many of them are violently
attacked, headbutted and punched by the rioters, and one
has a finger nearly bitten off, as they fight to protect
free speech.
The word is that the
mob has now seized all the vital street intersections,
effectively cutting off access to the college, and that
they are carrying out repeated attacks on the police, who
are replying with baton charges. I tell my companions
that it is plain to me that this evening is off, and half
an hour later it is confirmed: the police have asked that
the debate be cancelled to avoid damage to life and
property.
One of the burly men
assigned to me says that the mobs are liberally sprinkled
with "sectarians," but he does not explain the word. He
wonders where on earth they have come from.
The real trouble
makers are the Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist
Party, the Anti-Nazi League, and the Sinn Féin.
My
father was
married in this city -- then still part of our Empire --
in 1920, as a Royal Navy officer, with a loaded pistol in
the back pocket of his wedding suit, "against the Sinn
Feiners", he explained to me when I was a child. Seems
they're still a problem. I wonder what the odious
Gerry Adams has against me: other than that he was
banned from Australia under the notorious Lex
Irvingius introduced in 1994 to keep out us people of
"bad character"! The High Court will soon be learning
quite a bit about real bad characters,
methinks.
During the evening the
Garda has me checked in and out of three different hotels
in succession to ensure my safety. I end up at Jury's Inn
on Anderson's Quay -- I can safely identify it now, as I
shall never stay there again. RTE come to film an
interview for the evening news: an icy, hatred-filled
young man primed with all the right questions by the
leftist traditional enemy. I give him a robust response,
and the interview goes onto his editor's electronic
"spike."
A young couple of
reporters from UCC's University Examiner also
interview me, and are more favourably taken: how
refreshing it is to deal with journalists who have still
not been soured by the realisms of the world of ink, and
the money-flow which controls the way it
thinks.
Everything extra-mural
in the Irish Republic educational system is incidentally
funded by the big breweries. Maintaining strict
neutrality, I have a cider with the students in a bar
afterwards. Their girlfriends are all stunningly
beautiful: must be something in the local water (or in
their case, beer). There is a lot of smoking still in
this small country however.
Before retiring for
the night I ask them to tell their fellow students that I
shall return as soon as possible, and at my own expense,
to address them. The people who paid for this evening's
riot cannot do it a second time at short notice, in my
experience.
It is a matter of
principle. The main RTÉ evening news bulleting
shows the ugly scenes as students are frustrated in their
attempts to hear me speak; and the angry, stern-faced
outsiders, many of those interviewed speaking with
Dublin, not local, accents, saying that I have to be
silenced somehow. The placards visible are those of ANaL,
"No Free Speech for Nazis." Unless I am mistaken the
Nazis pursued similar policies towards people they did
not like.
November
16, 1999 (Monday)
Cork (Ireland)
- London (UK)
Up before dawn. The
FM96 radio station broadcasts an hour long interview with
me. The Societlaist Worker whom they pone loyally
"refuses to debate": with Mr. Irving. Meinetwegen.
I buy two newspapes. The Irish Times
reports
the riot
neutrally, the Cork Examiner has a front-page
headline reading "LECTURE
BY RACIST ABANDONED AS RIOTERS CLASH WITH
GARDAÍ." I
assume the
story is about
somebody else and do not bother to read it.
An awful breakfast at
the Jury's Inn, cold and slimy with totally indifferent
hotel staff to serve it. Coffee from the same baisse
cuisine. I suspect the breakfast has been rewarmed
from yesterday's leftovers -- rather like the way
"scholars" write their history books: rewarming
yesterday's leftovers. Increasingly slimy and
unappetising, and there is no reason why anybody should
tolerate it.
Back in London, 150
emails are waiting for me including one from
M.
at Durham University. There are three copies of
Lipstadt's libellous book in the university library. None
was ordered by the library however, as his inquiries have
ascertained; all three have been donated by a mysterious
body identified only by the ornate bookplate which is
gummed inside as "Gift of the Friends of the History
Department Library." There is no such library at the
university, and never has been. Way to go! If they have
given three copies of this libellous artefact to every
college and university in the kingdom, it has cost
somebody a fortune: where does the money come from, once
again?
