Sunday, February 22, 2004 Two
good meetings in Copenhagen Score,
Irving 2: T.E. nil COPENHAGEN -- David Irving
returns to London tomorrow morning after speaking
in Copenhagen. Ever since he announced his return
visit to Denmark, scores of people registered to
hear him, including students, academics and others
dissatisfied with the conformist version of
history.  The
Traditional Enemies of free speech had mobilized in
great strength to prevent him from speaking, and
even claimed to have had busloads of
trades-unionists and others standing by.
Much of this was bluff, but Denmark's police
force provided adequate security cover for the two
functions, and advised the organizers at every
stage on lessons learned from previous events, and
procedures to follow this time. They provided Mr
Irving with an unobstrusive round-the-clock watch
from the moment he arrived at the capital's
airport.  During
Saturday morning
two television companies filmed him for their
evening bulletins, and national newspapers like
Berlingske Tidnigen requested interviews
too. There was a noticeable softening in the line
that the bulletins took after their reporters had
actually met the British historian.
On Saturday afternoon he hosted a small luncheon
at the Falconer hotel in downtown Copenhagen, whose
staff functioned expertly and provided discreet
assistance. The informal discussion that afternoon
ranged across many topics of World War II, and Mr
Irving ended by imparting to some of the more
persistent questioners about the Holocaust advice
against becoming obsessed with such narrow issues
of modern history. As a lesson in how an
obsession can destroy an individual's life, he
told the harrowing story of H W Wicks, an
Englishman who had approached him, as a young
best-selling writer, for help in 1963. Wicks had
become obsessed with the wrong done to him by a
London insurance company -- it had had him
jailed for criminal libel in the 1930s. On
account of this perceived injustice, Wicks wrote
letters to Hitler, Mussolini, Himmler,
Roosevelt, and scores of other personalities of
history, asking them to redress the injustice
done to him. "Even in Moscow," said Mr. Irving, "I found on
the glass
plates which recorded the Goebbels diaries the
minutes of a ministerial conference at which
Goebbels had announced, in 1942, that he had
received a promising letter from an Englishman, a
Mr H W Wicks, who wanted to tell him about the
injustice that had been done to him." Mr Irving capped this sad story by informing his
listeners that he had last told the H W Wicks story
at a dinner
in Victoria, British Columbia; in 1992, at
which he had been presented with the George Orwell
Award for Free Speech. At the end of the dinner
eight "Mounties" had entered, the restaurant and
led him away in handcuffs, at the request of the
same enemies who are crowding into Copenhagen
today!  
SUNDAY'S afternoon meeting required particularly
careful tactical planning, because there had been
weeks of threats of violence; it involved its
organisers in reserving three separate locations.
After the traditional enemy announced their
intention of blockading the large, modern Falconer
hotel, the organisers smoothly moved over to the
first such location, the more antiquated Hotel A.,
where staff had offered every assistance (while
denying everything to outsiders, both at the time
and afterwards).
"It was just
like Denver," says Mr Irving, referring to
similar deception tactics which had outwitted the
Traditional Enemies of free speech in Colorado in
December. The police force, who had suggested
security measures, threw a heavy cordon around the
Falconer hotel, with many truckloads of officers in
side streets,  a
fact which seems to have further deceived the
would-be troublemakers; meanwhile Mr. Irving was
addressing his listeners in peace at a major hotel
in the heart of Copenhagen only two miles away. Before leaving Denmark, he extended his thanks
to the ever-courteous staff of the Radisson SAS
Falconer Hotel, the Hotel A., and the police force
which had enabled his visit to proceed without
further difficulties. "This kind of thing should not be necessary in a
western democracy," he says, "but I am grown-up
enough to know that extremists breed in every
society -- people whose one obsession in life is to
prevent other people's views from being heard.
Thank you, Copenhagen!" Picture
above shows: Mr Irving arriving at Hotel
Angleterre,
Sunday afternoon, February 22, 2004 (Foto:
Modkraft)
 Mr
Irving will
return
to Denmark to speak at a dinner on a September
weekend this year, 2004. Those interested in
attending are invited to register by
email
for
a private dinner and speech, with full payment
in advance (410 dkr at present rates, including
the dinner and taxes), and a no-quibble refund
policy in the event of cancellation.
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