Auckland, New Zealand, Friday-Saturday, July
23-24, 2004 [Write to the NZ Herald's Editor:
] David
Irving comments: STEVEN SEDLEY? Name rang a bell. Oh
yes, that was the Lord Justice of Appeal
in London in 2001 who refused me leave to
appeal against the Judgment
in DJC Irving vs. Lipstadt, a refusal
which was upheld in two subsequent
actions, to the pleasure of his friends in
the Jewish community. Small world, isn't it?
Steven Sedley's seem to be as thick on the
ground as John Smiths here in England or
Istvan Kovacs or Tibor Szabos in
Hungary. English Sedley's views
seem to overlap those of NZ Sedley's 100
percent too. See the profile
in our dossier on the Lipstadt Trial. In my closing
address I happened to use his words:
". . . And those rights
include the right, as Lord Justice
Sedley recently put it in another
Court in this building, of any person to
hold to, and to preach, unpopular views,
perhaps even views that many might find
repellent." He was an original
member of the leftwing Cloisters Chambers
founded by D N Pritt, KC, the UK's
leading communist lawyer. Incidentally,
the last time I was in NZ I spoke to a
small gathering in Lower Hutt, of people
freely attending: nobody died, and there
were no disturbances._ | Irving and
free speechIN
PRINCIPLE I wholeheartedly agree with your
editorial and with Voltaire that "Freedom of speech
means that within established legal boundaries,
differing views must be heard". But this needs to
be qualified. It does not mean "arguments devoid of
credibility". Lying to promote an evil agenda exceeds the
acceptable limits of free speech. As you correctly
say, David Irvings views have been utterly
discredited, but he is not just a misguided scholar
who reappraised the events of the past and drew a
valid but different conclusion from others. He manipulates historical evidence for a
political end. The history of the last century
shows the enormous harm people who use bad
scholarship and bad science can
do. [*] Steven Sedley, Lower Hutt. [* Website comment:
Iraq?] [Write to the NZ Herald's
Editor:
] [Presumably the NZ Herald does not
claim copyright in the above letter]
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