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Posted Sunday, July 25, 2004

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Auckland, New Zealand, Friday-Saturday, July 23-24, 2004
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David Irving comments:

STEVEN SEDLEY? Name rang a bell. Oh yes, that was the Lord Justice of Appeal in London in 2001 who refused me leave to appeal against the Judgment in DJC Irving vs. Lipstadt, a refusal which was upheld in two subsequent actions, to the pleasure of his friends in the Jewish community.
   Small world, isn't it? Steven Sedley's seem to be as thick on the ground as John Smiths here in England or Istvan Kovacs or Tibor Szabos in Hungary.
   English Sedley's views seem to overlap those of NZ Sedley's 100 percent too. See the profile in our dossier on the Lipstadt Trial.
   In my closing address I happened to use his words: ". . . And those rights include the right, as Lord Justice Sedley recently put it in another Court in this building, of any person to hold to, and to preach, unpopular views, perhaps even views that many might find repellent."
   He was an original member of the leftwing Cloisters Chambers founded by D N Pritt, KC, the UK's leading communist lawyer. Incidentally, the last time I was in NZ I spoke to a small gathering in Lower Hutt, of people freely attending: nobody died, and there were no disturbances._

Irving and free speech

letterIN PRINCIPLE I wholeheartedly agree with your editorial and with Voltaire that "Freedom of speech means that within established legal boundaries, differing views must be heard". But this needs to be qualified. It does not mean "arguments devoid of credibility".

Lying to promote an evil agenda exceeds the acceptable limits of free speech. As you correctly say, David Irvings views have been utterly discredited, but he is not just a misguided scholar who reappraised the events of the past and drew a valid but different conclusion from others.

He manipulates historical evidence for a political end. The history of the last century shows the enormous harm people who use bad scholarship and bad science can do. [*]

Steven Sedley,
Lower Hutt.

 

[* Website comment: Iraq?]

 

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Dossier: attempts by New Zealand Jews to stop David Irving's 2004 visit

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