London,
Friday, November 3, 1995
[4:35 PM]
Dear
Sir
Luciano
Cheles, et al (ed.), The Far Right in Western
& Eastern Europe.
As
you will be aware I am a professional speaker and a
historian of repute, whose works have been published for
thirty-four years in the major publishing houses of the
world, with several works being published in the former
Soviet Union, and of whom The Times has written:
"David Irving takes his place in the first rank of
historical chroniclers."
A
Jewish colleague, a professor at a Canadian university,
has sent me a copy of certain passages of the above work
published by your firm and he has drawn my attention to
its several defamatory references to myself. From the
index alone it appears that my name figures in its pages
over twice as often as that of Adolf Hitler, a
startling statistic. Regard this letter therefore as a
Letter before Action, and please consider my requirements
set out below most seriously. I have as recently as late
September succeeded in enforcing swift but satisfactory
High Court libel action against a major British Sunday
publication on very similar grounds.
I
am referring principally to chapter 14, entitled,
"Britain's Nazi Underground," by a Mr Gerald
Gable. Should any trial of this action result from
your ignoring my desiderata as set out below I shall
bring it to the attention of the Court that your author
Mr Gable, by feloniously breaking and entering my
family's private apartment in 1963, earned a criminal
record for himself and his fellow-burglars when I caught
him red-handed; and that he has borne toward me since
those dates a demonstrable Malice with all the
connotations that that word bears under the Defamation
Act. I attach one or two press
clippings which
will bear that point out.
I
now list some, but by no means all, of the passages to
which I take exception:
Page 258, chapter title: BRITAIN'S
NAZI UNDERGROUND.Page 261: "The nature of Combat 18 and those who
run it. In autumn 1991 an event took place in London
that was to breathe life into Combat
18. David Irving, the far-right 'historical
revisionist', held a rally at Chelsea Old Town Hall,
at which his guest speaker was the US revisionist
Fred
Leuchter, whom the Home Secretary had banned from
entering Britain. It was a long time since Irving had
held such a gathering in London, and in the distant
past his meetings, under the name the Clarendon Club,
had been guarded by thuggish elements drawn from
various far right groups. This time he had come to a
security arrangement with Nick Griffin, the
former chairman of the NF and now the leader of the
International Third Position [ITP], a small
Strasserite group (i.e. one espousing a 'left'
anti-capitalist form of Nazism, as did the Strasser
brothers in Germany in the 1920s). Griffin, it
appears, was linked to a newly formed security
company, which he used to provide security for
Irving's meeting. [12]
The meeting turned into a fiasco when the large
body of police guarding it was informed that it was in
fact protecting a man who had been banned from
entering Britain. After a short delay in the
proceedings, Leuchter was led away and two days later
deported to the USA. As the police moved in, stewards
fled in all directions, leaving the two hundred or
more Nazis, anti-Semites and racists, who had come
from around the world, in a state of near panic."
[Note 12 gives as your author Mr
Gable's only source in fact his own publication,
From Ballots to Bombs, Searchlight, London,
1989, and his chapter "The far right in
Contemporary Britain" in your current editors' work
Neo Fascism in Europe, (Longman, 1991.)]
Page 263: "Derek Beackon, who was elected as
the BNP's first ever local councillor in Tower Hamlets
in September 1993, had been the BNP's chief steward,
but was clearly seen taking orders from the Sargents
[identified on page 262 as the "criminal"
Steven Sargent and his brothers William and
Paul David who "all had a long record of violence"
and allegedly directed Combat 18] on all major
events that they attended together. Most of these
events during 1992 and 1993 were meetings of David
Irving's Clarendon Club in London and Sussex."
Page 266: "By late 1993, the BNP's association with
Irving appeared to have come to an abrupt halt after
Irving's failure to turn up at the BNP's annual 'Party
Day' rally. (The BNP does not have annual general
meetings, but instead holds a rally, at which overseas
Nazis and racists join [John] Tyndall
on the platform.)"
Page 269: "Anthony Hancock, the Nazi printer
and publisher, has maintained his close ties with
David Irving and his Clarendon Club, which appears to
exist only inside Irving's head.... Despite his
[Hancock's] convictions for fraud and his
involvement in two cases involving drugs and
counterfeit money, he appears to live a charmed life,
being of use to a wide range of Nazi groups
internationally."
----We
are all accustomed to a certain amount of rough and
tumble, when we -- as writers -- are in the public eye.
This time you as publishers and your author Gable have
stepped over the line that separates robust criticism
from publishing malicious and reckless defamations with
the avowed intention of injuring, and with reckless
disregard for the truth.
The
unsavoury picture which emerges from Gable's untrue
account is that I have invented a fictitious body called
the Clarendon Club, which either meets or does not meet
-- he contradicts himself; that I knowingly consort with
people convicted of fraud and involved in counterfeiting
and drug dealing; that I find it necessary to use
thuggish elements to guard my lectures or gatherings,
which he describes as "rallies", and which he also
suggests are a figment of my imagination -- i.e. that I
am a liar; that I breathed life into a violent and
criminal Nazi underground body which he identifies as
Combat 18, an organisation which terrorises old ladies
and anti-Nazis, and is responsible for racist attacks in
southern England; that I came to security arrangements
with one Nick Griffin and with violent criminal elements
including the brothers Sargent to use Combat 18 to
provide such security; that police had to smash up a
"rally" of the Clarendon Club at Chelsea Old Town Hall
which ended as a fiasco and in panic (many members of the
press and ITV were present at this lecture and can
testify to the contrary); that I struck some kind of
bargain with the BNP to attend as a keynote speaker at
their national rally, and then failed to
attend.
The
facts are these: the Clarendon Club has existed
informally since 1982, has published a number of
lectures, and currently (October 25) has 926 people on
its U.K. mailing list; it meets on an irregular basis; I
have no links with people known to me as fraudsters,
counterfeiters or drug dealers; I am happy to rely solely
on the very capable Metropolitan Police to protect any
lectures, dinners, or gatherings where there is danger of
injury being done by outsiders to my invited guests,
audience or speakers; I have no links or association with
any body remotely like that described as Combat 18; I
have never had the slightest connection with the BNP
(British National Party) or any of its affiliates, nor
with a Mr Griffin (although I note that a Nick Griffin
figures on a mailing list having applied to buy an
advance copy of my forthcoming biography
of Dr Goebbels,
and that a man of that name wrote to me in November 1994
with an inquiry about the air
raids on Dresden;
I know no more about the man); that I have never met nor
had any dealings with the brothers Sargent; that no
gathering of the Clarendon Club has ever ended in fiasco
and panic; that the meeting in Chelsea referred to
continued in an orderly manner even after the police had
abducted one
of its speakers
at the request of the Jewish authorities in London; and
that I have never undertaken to appear at a BNP rally,
and consequently never failed to appear at such a rally
having given an undertaking to appear; such an
allegation, namely failing to show up for an agreed
function, is a particularly serious libel for somebody
like myself who is a professional lecturer and speaker;
moreover I would never have accepted such an invitation
to appear at a BNP rally had it been extended as such,
which it was not.
These
are all serious and seemingly deliberate libels on my
name by an author who has borne a demonstrable grudge
against me since his arrest and conviction in 1963 -- 4.
For thirty years and more I have adopted the Christian
etiquette of turning the other cheek; I have gritted my
teeth at these and similar smears by Mr Gable and his
consorts, and looked the other way; no more. I therefore
require your firm, within seven days of receipt of this
letter, to undertake in writing: --
to
expunge the above libellous passages from all future
editions of this work;
to
refrain from repeating in future editions of this work
or in other works these or essentially similar libels
against me;
to
remove all current copies of this work from
circulation, recalling those already issued from the
libraries, distributors, warehouses, and
bookshops;
to
inform me to the nearest hundred how many copies of
the work containing these libellous passages have
already been published or otherwise circulated within
the jurisdiction of our courts, and how many have been
published or otherwise circulated
overseas;
to
pay an agreed sum of money in damages and in
compensation for the injury wilfully or negligently
inflicted on my reputation by this
publication.
Failing
satisfaction in each of the above five points, I shall
reserve my rights to commence without further notice
immediate proceedings under the Defamation Act and serve
Writs against yourselves and the author(s) of these
libels. I further expressly reserve the right to expand
any statement of claim to include statements made in the
rest of this publication about me.
Will
you be so good in your reply as to indicate whether the
address below is the Registered Office of your company;
whether you or your solicitors will receive service of
any legal documents; and whether you are authorised to
accept service on behalf of your editors Luciano
Cheles et al., and on behalf of your author Mr Gerald
Gable as well.
Yours
sincerely,
David
Irving
The
Managing Director,
Longman Group UK Ltd., Publishers
5 Bentinck Street
London W1
FILE:
KNIGHT'S MOVE 2
Recorded
Delivery
write
to David Irving