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Posted Friday, July 20, 2001

Below: David Irving arrives at the Court of Appeal, ignoring Professor Lipstadt's banner-waving supporters
Irving outside high court

Friday, July 20, 2001

Irving loses Holocaust denial appeal

Staff and agencies Friday July 20, 2001

CONTROVERSIAL historian David Irving today faces possible bankruptcy proceedings after losing his appeal against a high court libel ruling which branded him a "Holocaust denier".

The court of appeal in London upheld last year's judgment against Mr Irving, saying that American academic Deborah Lipstadt had been within her rights to accuse him of denying the Holocaust.

Mr Irving had sued Prof Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin, for libel over her 1994 book, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. He said the book had destroyed his livelihood and generated waves of hatred against him.

Giving his judgment in the libel case 15 months ago, Mr Justice Gray said that 63-year-old Mr Irving had, for his own ideological reasons, deliberately misrepresented historical evidence and portrayed Hitler in an unwarranted favourable light. In the 333-page judgement, he described Mr Irving as a Holocaust denier, falsifier of history, a racist and an anti-Semite.

Last month, Mr Irving's counsel, Adrian Davies, argued that the author had never said that the killing of the Jews was "in any way excusable". He added that Mr Irving's work must be assessed in the context of what was reasonably available to him at the time he was writing books such as Hitler's War, which was published in the 1970s.

Giving judgement today, Lord Justice Pill said that Mr Gray was "fully entitled" to find that Prof Lipstadt and Penguin were not guilty of libel. He said: "Where we have been invited to consider evidence in detail, it does not in our judgment diminish the soundness of the judge's conclusions." Mr Irving was not in court for today's announcement. He was said to be busy promoting sales of his new book on Winston Churchill.

The historian had faced a £2m bill for legal costs after the libel trial and admitted that he had no money to appeal. Last year he embarked a fundraising tour in the US and funded his appeal with the help of contributions from supporters.

Today the court ordered that he make an interim payment of £150,000 to the defendants.

Mark Bateman, a solicitor for Penguin, said: "The only comment that we can make is that it is a very predictable outcome. It is a shame that we have been dragged through the court of appeal when there was really no issue in Mr Justice Gray's judgment -- his judgment was sound."

Mr Bateman added that the £150,000 would have to be paid within 21 days or bankruptcy proceedings could be instituted against Mr Irving.