The second consequence was that later in 1992 the
same people started a world-wide campaign to halt my
global lecture tours, on which I depend for income. I was
physically assaulted in England; I was arrested and
deported from
Canada; I was banned
from Australia, South Africa, Germany,
Italy, and other countries.
All this is, of course, of not the slightest professional
interest to you. What follows however is :
Lawyers acting on my behalf began a painstaking process of
extracting from the governments of those countries the files
of data that they had been given to persuade them to ban me.
In Canada, we used the Access to Information Act. In
Australia, we used forced Discovery after libel actions
started by me against five newspapers and journalists. We
found evidence of data being wilfully and recklessly
supplied by the Board of Deputies
of British Jews, a very powerful and wealthy
London-based private (i.e. non government) organisation to
foreign embassies in
London and to their contacts and agencies in those countries
-- i.e. outside the United Kingdom. (A glance at the Board's
registration under your Act will confirm that this alone is
prima facie evidence of the commission of an offence).
The data thus disclosed are defamatory and untrue in the
extreme: [. . .] At present I am undertaking legal
manoeuvres to smoke the Board out and to oblige it to admit
authorship of the documents -- which bear all the hallmarks
of having been updated regularly on a database. [. .
.]
I put the Board on Notice in September [1995] under
the Act, asking to see copies of their data on me. I warned
that I was "acting on information received." The Board
asserted that they had no data on me which were covered by
the Act. This is most improbable. In writing, I invited the
director who signed the letter, would you be willing to
swear to that (denial) in an affidavit? He did not reply,
and after a reminder flatly refused ("the
answer is no.")
I am proceeding warily. When I have taken my inquiries as
far as I can, I shall approach you again, if I may, to
discuss what, if anything can be done. I shall wish to
(a) seek the enforcement of the
disclosure provisions of the Act,
(b) seek sanctions against the Board for any
offences found to have been committed; and
(c) ultimately seek redress and compensation
for the world-wide damage that their unfair trafficking
in defamatory and untrue data has inflicted on me.
I am now approaching you again, as anticipated. I was
anxious not to do any injustice to this Data User, by acting
prematurely. The situation has however clarified somewhat
since the above letter was written; I have issued High Court
proceedings under the Defamation Act 1952 against the Board
of Deputies of British Jews; lawyers acting for them have
confirmed in writing that their clients wrote the
lengthy report, but when I again approached the Board
and gave notice under the Act to see all and any data which
they hold on me as defined under the Act, they again wrote
to me denying that they hold any such data that relates to
me.
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David Irving 1998