May 18, 2000

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http://www.smh.com.au/breaking/0005/18/A3158-2000May18.shtml

Australian envoy snubs David Irving

Australia's envoy in Britain today delivered a diplomatic snub to revisionist historian David Irving.

High Commissioner Philip Flood declined to shake the hand of the man described by a High Court judge as a Holocaust denier.

Irving, four times refused a visa to enter Australia because of his views on the Holocaust, accosted the High Commissioner before a concert at Australia House in the Strand.

As he was introduced to Mr Flood, Irving held out his hand but his gesture was refused.

The High Commissioner later told reporters he had declined the handshake when he realised who Irving was.

"I find David Irving's views totally repugnant and offensive and I believe the overwhelming majority of Australians would find his views and attitudes repugnant and offensive," he said.

"But I'm not going to ask him to leave a concert that's open to the public in Australia House.

"Any British resident is free to come to a concert that's open to the public and we wouldn't ask people to leave as long as they were not causing a disturbance ... we don't have a rule rejecting certain people."

Irving is facing legal bills of STG2 million ($A5.2 million) after losing a libel suit he brought against academic Deborah Lipstadt and publisher Penguin Books in Britain's High Court last month.

He was branded 'an active Holocaust denier', an anti-Semite and a racist and a pro-Nazi right-wing polemicist by Justice Gray in his ruling.

Irving said he had lodged an application for leave to appeal his failed libel case in the High Court today.

The 62-year-old writer spoke to Mr Flood and his wife Carole for five minutes but left before the start of the concert in honor of the Tait Memorial Trust, a fund for Australian musicians in the UK.

Irving attended as a guest of Australian-born Lady Michele Renouf.

Lady Renouf, the third wife of Frank Renouf, said she had taken an interest in the libel case and brought Irving along as a 'small protest for freedom of speech'.

"I'm certainly a champion of Mr Irving," Lady Renouf said.

"I didn't know Mr Irving before. I just saw in the paper where it said he thinks that it's time that if he were a Jew he would ask why these terrible things had happened to them.

"That's what took me to the High Court expecting to find some crazy person who would dream of saying that genocide didn't happen and I find a very well-grounded debater."

Irving, whose daughter recently acquired Australian citizenship, said he planned to ask Mr Flood why he could come to the High Commission 'to be among Australians and friends when I can't come to Australia and do the same thing'.

"I'm now beginning to step up my campaign to visit Australia again so any week now I shall be making another application," he said.

"It probably won't go across (Mr Flood's) desk but he will be able to say at least Mr Irving turns up in his pin-striped suit and didn't start throwing chairs around".

Our opinion

  FOR the sake of historical accuracy, we can state that Mr Flood of course shook hands with Mr Irving as they met and talked for five or ten minutes; but he declined to do so again for the assembled press. Mr Flood is not the boor the article might inadvertently suggest him to be. His wife Carole, incidentally, told Mr Irving that the British government have refused to allow even her dual citizenship.