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November 15, 1999 (Monday)

London (UK) - Cork (Ireland)

 

Ihave 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.

UC riot 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 Gift of History Dept LibrM. 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?

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