(London) August 26, 1994

Historian flees as crowd attack car

By Michael Fleet

MR DAVID IRVING, the Right-wing historian had his car "kicked and pummelled" by demonstrators after he addressed a meeting on Britain's future, magistrates at Brighton East Sussex, were told yesterday.

Mr Irving said the experience was the worst he had known in years of international lecture tours, but the court refused to award him compensation for the £100 he had to pay in an insurance excess on the hired car.

Paul Haining, 24, was given a conditional discharge after being found guilty of using threatening behaviour.

Haining of Charlotte Street, Brighton, did not give evidence but Mr Daniel Jerome, his solicitor, said his defence would have been that he was trying to prevent a crime, having heard a man get into the car and say: "Let's go and do a Jewish cemetery."

Mr Jerome added that he would be seeking a judicial review by the High Court into the magistrates' decision that he could not ques-tion Mr Irving about his past.

"The only ones to gain confidence by Mr Haining's con-viction are people such as the Combat 18 members who sit in the court guarding Mr Irving," he said.

Mr John Marden-Lynch, prosecuting, said Mr Irving's car was surrounded by demonstrators after being caught in traffic and Haining was seen hitting the roof with a stick.

Mr Irving, of Duke Street, Central London, said he had given a lecture "about the direction Britain was taking" to a private meeting of about 100 people and as he was driven away his hire car was surrounded by about 30 demonstrators.

"I made sure the doors were locked and that the windows were secure,"' he said. "The demonstrators began pummelling on the car, kicking at the sides, pounding on the roof and punching the windows.

"I looked around with considerable apprehension -- apprehensive that they would smash the windows and do physical damage to myself and my driver.

"In lecture tours around the world I have never experienced anything like it. I was extremely alarmed, and my young female driver was in a state of nervous shock," Mr Irving added.

She was so terrified she drove all the way back to London without stopping to inspect the damage, which was later valued at £800.

Mr Irving first came to prominence as the author of The Destruction of Dresden and has since written several books on Hitler and the Second World War, becoming best known for his assertion that six million Jews did not die in the Holocaust.

(London) August 26, 1994

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'Holocaust hoax' writer was threatened
Court convicts anti-Nazi man

by DANNY PENMAN

AN ANTI-NAZI League supporter was yesterday found guilty of using threatening behaviour against David Irving, a revisionist historian who claims the Jewish Holocaust was a hoax.

Paul Heining, 24, from Brighton, East Sussex, denied the charge, claiming he was acting to prevent Mr Irving and British National Party activists from desecrating a Jewish cemetery.[...]. 

WE regret that by letter dated Tuesday, December 12, 2000 a Ms. Louise Hayman, the head of legal services at The Independent newspaper, requested that this article be removed from this website. We have adjusted the masthead accordingly.