Diary: September 12, 2007

Real History, and a Radical’s Diary

Documents on the

Rudolf
Hess was put on hold. Saddam Hussein was. Nelson Mandela, John Bunyan, Mark
Twain… Evidently passionate beliefs are not enough in the free-thinking world of British university academia.

September
5, 2007 (Wednesday)
Windsor

UP at 6:30 a.m., and resume unpacking in our new home.

I find a tin containing wonderful photos from the earliest days with Jessica, including the photos we took as B. came upstairs in Duke Street in
December 1993, carrying the new-born Jessica.

I have been told that a Gerald
Gable affidavit reveals that Peter M. is an agent of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and of MI5, a thoroughly nasty piece of work, who latched on to Lady Birdwood in her last days. I send a consequent warning to my Coventry organiser, adding: “Unfortunately M. … will have been sent one of the 104 letters. He must
NOT be given the meeting location therefore if he turns up at the meeting point.”

At 5:11 p.m. I read an e-mail from Andrew
Mackenzie, President of the European
Society at the University of St Andrews: “I am writing to invite you to come and speak about the holocaust and Adolf Hitler at the
University.”

(Well, yes, I am something of an expert on both now.) He continues:

I
believe it is important for an academic
institution to consider alternative and
controversial viewpoints, and so I am very
keen for you to come and share your views. I
hope we will be able to arrange an event and
I look forward to hearing from you.

I reply: “I will be happy to come and talk.
Let’s arrange a date soon.”

John
Stamat writes from Australia:

You
got a mention on a program here called “Media
Watch” on our ABC channel 2 television
station.

The comment was that the “History Channel” keeps on playing WW2 war documentaries. It was stated that the narrator made Hitler out to be the world’s most popular politician and a brilliant military strategist and so on. The program commentator then reveals that “the narrator was none other than David Irving, the controversial historian that is banned from coming here” (Australia). You have set great fear into these narrow minded morons who do not want historical facts revealed.

I can imagine how you must feel.

September
7, 2007 (Friday)
Windsor

I WRITE to Mackenzie at St Andrews: “You may need some backup material, and I am enclosing a few papers which you can use as you see fit.
Visit my website for a bunch of useful quotes, what the experts have written about my writings.”

What a big house this is. Acres of floor space and cupboards. I must not lose it. Another chat with John the under-gardener; he speaks hoarsely — he had an operation for throat cancer three years ago, and looks a bit gaunt but recovered.

A friend writes with more low-down on Peter
M.:

He
did have Lady B “sectioned” [under the
Mental Health Act]. We eventually managed
to visit her in the ‘Home’. He took charge of
her during the time we discovered she was
being given massive doses of Thorizine which
the Formulary says is unsuitable for people
with osteoporosis, which she had badly. A
nurse said it was to calm her down because
she was violent and had hit a man! She died
shortly afterwards.

I asked the Coroner for
an Inquest but he refused without a doctor’s
certificate which I could not get as a
non-relative. M. also managed to convince
Barclays Bank that he was her sole Executor
and not I, one of the two she had named. As a
result, he and [three others] shared
her legacy between themselves.

September
8, 2007 (Saturday)
Windsor

SLEEP out here is very good. Different air from the West End perhaps?

I write to Alexander Mackenzie at St
Andrews: “I have mailed to you a package of stuff you may be able to put to good use if your invitation raises eyebrows. Please let us firm up a date soon, as my timetable rapidly fills.”

One of the messages last night was from
[another University] Union, inviting me (yet again) to speak.

The
debate would be centred around the idea of
free speech and your controversial and
outspoken stance, and the legal result of
that stance, make you an ideal contributor to
the discussion… We assure you that the
debate will not only go ahead, but that it
will be very well attended and one of the
highlights of our Michaelmas termcard.

I reply:

Could
not think straight last night; I was in Rugby
speaking to a small but appreciative audience
there. Now I am back down in Windsor, in the
home I moved into on Monday. Empty and full
Pickford’s boxes everywhere. I can guarantee
that if you get your Free Speech debate off
the ground, I will bring in one of your best
audiences of the year.

Depends how you play it. When Robert Harris
(“Fatherland,”Enigma” etc.) was at Cambridge
[in 1977], I gave him an audience of a thousand (he was chairman of the Fabian
Society).

It is [two agencies] who are most likely to throw a spanner in your works. What date have you in mind, so I can pencil it into my timetable? It fills quite rapidly over the months ahead. I will mail some stuff today, ammunition to use in case the plans raise hackles.

September
9, 2007 (Sunday)
Windsor
– London – Windsor (England)

AT midday I drive into London, taking with me a tall, three headed tea-rose from our Windsor garden. Nobody answers the doorbell at Sloane
Street. I have no mobile phone, so cannot call.
From Duke Street — one of the two phone boxes has been dismantled and removed, and all the parking meters now exchanged for “pay by phone” systems — I phone Jessica. She is already on her way over. She joins me for lunch half an hour later.

She is beginning to look very much the young lady, just like her troublesome mama.

A very pleasant Sunday lunch with my daughter; she takes my Independent from me, reads aloud from it and comments on the stories she comes across, most intelligently.
She has written an essay on a John Steinbeck novel, she says, and quotes passages from memory; I am quietly impressed. She’s in the same class at school as both Mimi, the daughter of Nigella Lawson (right, in the pink), and Charlotte Johnson, Boris’s niece.

[…]

September
10, 2007 (Monday)
Windsor (England)

A CORRESPONDENT sends me a French translation of an August 24 item from the Viennese newspaper
http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=3009214">Der
Standard.

It reports that the Austrian government has arrested the 56-year-old engineer
“Wolfgang F.”, on suspicion of “Reactivation” under the quaint Stalin-era Banning Act which they used to imprison me in 2005.

Since F. is being charged under section 3(h) of the Act, he can expect a sentence on conviction of up to twenty years or even a life sentence, as a particularly obstinate re-offender. His real crime is that he was preparing a formal complaint about Austria to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, protesting at the Act and in particular its infamous section 3(h). Austria has avoided the embarrassment of being found guilty by the U.N., by … using the Act to silence him.

I might mention that while incarcerated in the same ancient and overcrowded Viennese prison, I encountered Wolfgang
Fröhlich several times, as he was serving his second jail sentence for the same offence; our paths briefly crossed in the holding tank, we shook hands, and he provided me with clippings on my own confinement. Then my own capable lawyer Dr Herbert Schaller
won an appeal for him, and he was gone. Now he is back behind the same grim walls.

HISTORY repeats itself. From the University of
St Andrews, Andrew Mackenzie at first inquires what dates will suit me, then a couple of hours later e-mails the brush-off that I have been expecting.

Here is the brief-lived sequence:

Yesterday Mackenzie wrote me: “I apologise for the delay in replying. We’re currently waiting for word back from Reservations re room availability before we plan dates for the coming year. Is there a point in the coming months that is most convenient …?

Hear
David Irving speak in British
cities. Register
interest Next city Coventry, Sept 21st, buffet
and talk, 7-10 pm

I reply that the other University I mentioned have just fixed a date, November 23: “I can make most other dates you suggest.”

But then I find another email has come from him during the afternoon at 5 pm:

The
University has raised concerns with me
regarding the event, particularly security
and use of their property, so unfortunately I
will have to put my invitation on hold for
the time being.

I still passionately believe all views have a right to be heard, and so very much appreciate your contact thus far and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

“Put on hold”. That is student-speak for cancelled, vanished without trace, disappeared.
Rudolf Hess was put on hold. Saddam
Hussein was. Nelson Mandela, John Bunyan,
Mark Twain… Evidently passionate beliefs are not enough in the free-thinking world of
British university academia.[Previous
Radical’s Diary]

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