David Irving Legal Actions (February 2000)

Libel Action between DJC Irving v Penguin Books Ltd and Deborah Lipstadt witness statements (index) Browning, Christopher Evans, Richard Longerich, Peter Van Pelt, Robert Jan to daily transcripts Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 [To browse the corresponding endnotes in a separate panel, point at this magic link ] Closing Speech by David Irving Part IV In England a parallel campaign was launched by the Board of Deputies, and by other organisations which we know to have

collaborated with the Defendants in producing this libellous book. This had kicked into high gear after my own imprint published an abridged edition of the Leuchter Report in June 1989. Pressure was put on the World Trade Centre in the City of London to repudiate our contract for the press conference. A picket was staged outside our front door to prevent journalists from attending when the conference was switched to my own home.

The Board arranged an early day motion in the House of Commons, as a privileged way of publishing a smear on my name.

On June 30 of that year the Jewish Chronicle revealed that representations had been made to my principal British and Commonwealth publisher, Macmillan Ltd., to drop me as an author.51 Macmillan had already published several of my books, and were under contract to publish several more. I had no fears that they would succumb to this intimidation. They had informed me that HITLER’S WAR was running so successfully that they intended to keep it permanently in print.

I am entitled to mention this background, as I have mentioned the Board’s other clandestine activities against me, because it was said by Mr Rampton that I later made one public tasteless remark (in October 1991) about the Board of Deputies.52 If somebody attacks, using secretive and furtive means, the very basis of the existence of my family then it may be at least understandable that I speak ill of them.

It is worth mentioning that when I invited Mr Leuchter privately to address my Clarendon Club at Chelsea Town Hall in November 1991, the Board tried strenuously to have him gagged. They just do not understand the word, “debate”.

They piled pressure onto Kenneth Baker, then the Home Secretary, to stop him coming, and Ben Helfgott of the Holocaust Education Trust of whom we shortly hear more, threatened in July 1991 that “violence would greet the revisionists if they were allowed in.”53 Secretly,

on July 17, 1991 fifty years to the day after Hitler granted police powers to Himmler in the occupied Soviet Union the Board of Deputies wrote to the president of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), a body of which we have heard greatly admiring words from Professor Funke; this English Board urged that they take steps to stop me, a British citizen like no doubt the members of the Board, from entering Germany.

Germany is a country on whose publishers and archives I have been heavily dependent, as the Court is aware.54 We have only the BfV’s reply, dated August 9, 1991, to Neville Nagler of the Board of Deputies. I retrieved a copy of this letter from the files of the Prime Minister of Australia; so the same Board, in London, had evidently also secretly sent its dossiers to its collaborators in Canberra, and no doubt other countries, in its efforts to gag me worldwide.

That is an indication of the world-wide networking that went on, this secret common enterprise, this frantic international endeavour to destroy my legitimacy as an historian and to deprive me of free speech, of which the Defendants have made themselves the willing executioners.

As is evident from a letter from the Austrian ambassador dated June 22, 1992 the Board also applied pressure on that country to ensure that I did not enter, or that I was arrested if I did.55 The equivalent Argentinean body, the DAIA, launched a well-co-ordinated smear on me when I arrived in Argentina in October 1991 to lecture on historical themes at universities and to private associations in Spanish and German.56 When the DAIA headquarters building was blown up with heavy loss of life a few

months later, it now was inevitable that my name would be linked with that outrage too, and my Argentinean publisher was obliged in consequence to abandon its contracts with me, as they revealed privately in a letter to me. (Four years later the similar lie was circulated that I was directly involved in the Oklahoma City bombing.) These tides of hatred and suppression lapped at the doors of my London publishers.

On November 27, 1991 a note appeared in the internal files of my publisher Macmillan Ltd., listing the remaining stocks of my books and the current contract positions. This was an ominous sign. In another internal Macmillan memorandum, editor in chief Alan Gordon Walker stated to his editors, “We will not publish Irving again.”

I was not told this; in fact my own editor there continued to write oleaginous letters to me, as they were waiting for the GOEBBELS biography which they had paid for and which was under contract. What had happened meanwhile? Firstly, I had established my own publishing imprint which was capable of producing a better quality of book than Macmillan Ltd. were currently achieving, while using the same printing firm in Somerset.

The new omnibus edition of HITLER’S WAR, published in November 1991, was one of its first products. This was just as well.

On December 6, 1991 an Internal Office Memo from Macmillan’s files records that “quite a number of people” had commented unfavourably to Macmillan’s about them publishing my books, and one person, an unnamed “Oxford Professor of Politics,” who had evidently learned nothing from the book burning episodes of Nazi Germany, stating “that they would be more inclined to publish with us [Macmillan] if we were not publishing Irving.” (The Oxford professor of politics was probably Peter Pulzer,

identified by Lipstadt in her book as such and quoted by The Independent at the time).57 This campaign had been co-ordinated by the Board of Deputies. In some of its members, it seems that the illiberal spirit of Dr Goebbels lived on behind the Board’s facade. Meeting behind locked doors at their headquarters

on December 12, 1991, a body identified as the “Education and Academic Committee” of the Holocaust Educational Trust, registered as a charitable body, had a conference on several matters, of which one pointed specifically indicated that those present, including Mr Helfgott, were searching for ways to silence my publications; after this meeting, minutes were written, including this point 6: “David Irving: Concern was voiced over the publication of the 2nd edition of Hitler’s War.

There was debate over how to approach Macmillan publishers over Goebbels Diary. It was agreed to await new[s] from Jeremy Coleman before deciding what action to take.”58 We know more of this meeting from the statement to this Court by my witness Dr John Fox, who was present at this cabal in his capacity as editor of The British Journal of Holocaust Education. He testifies: As an independently-minded historian, I was affronted by the suggestion concerning Mr David Irving […]

At a certain point in the meeting, attention turned to the subject of Mr Irving and reports that the publishing company of Macmillan would be publishing his biography of JOSEPH GOEBBELS. Mr Ben Helfgott, the Chairman of the main United Kingdom Yad Vashem Committee, spoke about how that publication by that publishing firm might be stopped. Mr Helfgott then turned to me, the only non-Jew present at the meeting, and suggested that “John could approach Macmillan to get them to stop publication”.

I refused point-blank to accede to that suggestion, arguing that in a democracy such as ours one simply could not do such a thing. That amounted to censorship, especially since nobody present had the least idea what Mr Irving’s biography of Goebbels would contain. For me, such attempted censorship was totally unacceptable. I said that if people did not like what Mr Irving wrote, the time to respond to him was when anything was actually published.

I – and to their credit, at least two other (Jewish) committee members – rejected Mr Helfgott’s proposal out of hand. Nevertheless, as the Committee minutes make it clear, it was planned by some to consider further action about how best to scupper Mr Irving’s publishing plans with Macmillan. The clandestine pressure on Macmillan’s began at once.

My editor at Macmillan’s, Roland Philipps, who had married the new Managing Director Felicity Rubinstein, noted in an internal memo of January 2, 1992 that they should reassure prospective authors that they had turned down many other book proposals from me, and had no plans to continue publishing me after Goebbels.

It was not the bravest of postures to adopt, this Court might think. “If this helps you to reassure any prospective authors we are happy for you to say it (although not too publicly if possible).”59 The desire of Macmillan’s for this stab in the