 A
crowd of thousands listens on October 23, 2003
[full
picture report]
Speech,
Thursday, October 23, 2003 MY dear Hungarian friends.
Patriots, freedom lovers, and veterans of the
historic fight for freedom conducted by the
Hungarian workers and students in October
1956. Let me address these few thoughts to you. And I
apologise that Hungarian is not among the several
languages that I have picked up along my lifetime
of writing history. I am David Irving, a British historian. I have
spent forty years researching, writing, and
publishing the Real History of what happened in
Europe this last century. - The great tragedies.
- Not what the governments would like
us to believe, but what really happened.
I wrote the English language history of the 1956
uprising. The biggest publishers in Britain,
Germany, Italy and France published the
book.
WHEN I look back, my interest in Hungary began
when I was a university student in London in
October 1956. As an idealistic eighteen-year old student, I
joined the huge protest marches, as thousands
marched through the streets of London to protest
against the failure of the British Government to
support the insurrection. I stood in Trafalgar Square one day and thrilled
as Aneurin Bevan, our great Labour leader,
thundered at our prime minister Anthony Eden
for his treachery. But Britain, France, and Israel, were more
interested that week in launching a criminal war of
aggression in the Middle East, in Suez. The British
betrayed the Hungarian uprising. Through Radio Free Europe the United States and
the CIA encouraged the uprising, and then they
betrayed it too. How little times have changed!  In my view it was that year, 1956, which marked
the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire of
terror. And for that, we in the western world thank
the heroism of the thousands of Hungarian workers
and students who fought the tanks of the Russian
army, and the firepower of their own
Soviet-controlled secret police, first with their
bare hands and then with the puniest weapons. After this bloody setback, the Soviet
imperialist beast tried only once or twice more to
impose its will on a foreign country. In 1980 they
invaded Afghanistan and - the ordinary Afghan
people took back their country from the invaders.
Let the American imperialists now take note. I think the Afghan freedom fighters drew their
inspiration from the Hungarians. But let us not
also forget the Poles, and the East Germans, who
first tried to throw out the Red Army, in 1953.
 IN
1981 I published my book, Felkelés,
the first history of the Uprising to appear in the
western world. The Hungarian Freedom Fighters
Association in London awarded to me a medal for
this!
Köszönom! The lesson that my
book revealed was this: No matter how strong the
enemy, no matter how ruthless the government, the
will of the ordinary people can prevail. In the
long run. The final page in the history of your uprising
was written in 1989, when the Hungarian people
helped East Germany to liberation. Your
contribution was vital. You, and not the
governments in London or Washington, are the real
champions of freedom. But let me utter another warning here. Others
speak of "governments" I speak of the "people". But who is really behind the government of your
country, or of mine, or of Germany, or Australia or
any other? We live in an age where Big Business alone calls
the shots. Big Business has replaced the "Big
Brother" of George Orwell. A Big Business which invisibly crosses frontiers
and state boundaries. A Big Business which operates
silently along digital cable lines and optical
fibre networks. A Big Business for which money is
the only goal, and greed is the ruthless driving
force. A Big Business which honours no flag, and is not
answerable to electors at the ballot box. It is an enemy which is no less insidious than
the visible enemy which the Red Army and its tanks,
and the AVO and its guns, presented in 1956. Is not "Europe" today evolving into just the
same kind of huge monolithic empire which Moscow
tried to create in the last century?
But there is a difference. In the Kremlin, and
in the puppet Hungarian government which Moscow
appointed, you could always recognize the faces of
the enemy: Rakosi, Gerö, Farkas, Revai! But the
corrupt and countryless men who rule from Brussels
have no faces. They have no ideology. They have no
national culture to protect. They have only an
agenda. So my message to the brave people of Hungary
today, on this historic anniversary, is this.
Remember the men of October 23. Do not betray the
national ideals and the human values that they
fought for.  Do
not fritter away the fruits of their victories.
Fight for your own nation and your history. The world learned from Hungary's example in
1956. Shine forth as an example again! - [Photos
of David Irving's October 2003 Hungarian
tour]
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