Closing Speech
by David Irving
THE DEFENDANTS in this action, the publishers
Penguin Books Ltd and the American scholar Deborah
Lipstadt, have sought to cast this trial as being
about the reputation of the Holocaust. It is
not. The world's press have also reported it in this
way. Again, it is not. This trial is about my reputation as a human
being, as an historian of integrity, and - thanks
to the remarks made by Mr Rampton - as a father.
The Defendants are saying, and have so convinced
many people, that I am not entitled to continue to
earn a living in the way that I have earned it for
nearly forty years. A judgement in my favour is no
more than a judgment that disputed points which I
have made about some aspects of the narrative are
not so absurd, given the evidence, as to disqualify
me from the ranks of historians. Under the laws of
defamation in this country, it could not be any
thing else, and nor must the defence team, no
matter how powerful, or moneyed, or eloquent, or
numerous, be allowed by their tactics to skew it in
any other way. I may add that the points I have made do not
necessarily ,lessen the horror or the burden of
guilt. I always have accepted that Adolf Hitler, as
head of state and government, was responsible for
the Holocaust. I said, in the Introduction to my
flagship biography, HITLER'S WAR: If this biography were simply a history
of the rise and fall of Hitler's Reich, it would
be legitimate to conclude: "Hitler killed the
Jews".1 But my years of investigation suggested
that many others were responsible, that the
chain of responsibility was not as clear cut as
that. Nothing that I have heard in this Court
since January 11 has persuaded me that I was
wrong on this account. These latter points lead to another
consideration. Your Lordship will have heard of the
- largely successful - effort to drive me out of
business as a historian. This Court has seen the
timidity with which historians have already been
fraught once the Holocaust is questioned: one
notable historian, ordered by summons to attend,
showed himself reluctant even to confirm what he
had written in my favour, repeatedly, over the last
twenty years. A judgment rendered against me will
make this paralysis in the writing of history
definitive; from then on, no-one will dare to
discuss who exactly was involved in each stage of
the Holocaust, or how extensive it was. From then,
on discussion will revolve around "safe" subjects -
sacred texts in the Middle Ages, or Marx in the old
USSR, or the Koran in a fundamentalist state today.
Every historian will know that his critique needs
to stop sharply at boundaries defined by certain
authorities. He will have a choice: accept the
official version, holus-bolus ; or stop being a
historian. A judgment in my favour does not mean that the
Holocaust never happened; it means only that in
England today discussion is still permitted. My
opponents would still be able, just as now, to
produce other documents if they can; to expound
alternative interpretations. They would be as free
as ever to declare that they think I am wrong. They
would be impeded in one way only: they would not be
able to say in a loud and authoritative voice that
I am not a historian, and that my books must be
banned. As a result of my work (and of this case)
the holocaust has been researched more. Those who
(rightly) believe that these crimes should never be
forgotten should ask whether their case is batter
served by a compulsory - and dead - text imposed by
law and intimidation, or by a live and on-going
discussion. Our Common Law has at its kernel an
"adversarial" procedure whereby, it is believed,
truth is best elicited by each side putting their
case as strongly as possible. I agree with English
Common Law. I read in The Independent, in a lengthy and
deeply libellous article published only last week,
these words: "But if he wins, it will open the door
for revisionists to rewrite any event in history
without the requirement to consider evidence that
does not suit them and without fear that they will
be publicly denounced for their distortion."2 In bygone days, I venture to submit, such an
article, published while an action was literally
sub judice, would have been a clear contempt of
Court. Your Lordship will have noticed that I
wearied, after a few days, of drawing attention to
the coverage of this trial. Allow me however to
introduce one cautionary statistic: not including
the fuss about the Eichmann manuscript, the British
press have published no fewer than 167 reports
during the seven days that I was on the witness
stand, that is 24 per day; but just fifty-eight
reports during the twenty days when the boot was on
the other foot and I was cross-examining Mr
Rampton's witnesses, that is roughly three per day.
That is a disparity of some eight to one against
me. If Your Lordship has noticed any of these
items, you will perhaps have observed that the
reporting in both cases is almost exclusively
devoted to the defence statements, or their
questions to me, and not to the product of the
examination. The Court however operates by
different standards, and it will not allow public
sentiment to guide its verdict. I believe it was
Churchill who once said, "There is no such thing as
public opinion, there is only published opinion."
Given such a baleful glare from the press gallery,
My Lord, I am glad that Her Majesty has such a
resolute officer presiding over this case. The
outcome is in your hands, and yours alone, and I am
confident that nothing that the Press has written,
or may yet write, will deflect Your Lordship from
arriving at a just conclusion. * * * The Defendants have sold around the world a
book, Denying the Holocaust. May I say that I see
here Penguin Books Ltd to my sorrow, as they have
published my own works in the past; but they are
continuing even today to sell this book for profit,
in the knowledge that it contains very defamatory
allegations and that these allegations are held to
be untrue. It is a reckless, even foolhardy
posture. Neither of these Defendants evidently bothered
even to have the manuscript professionally read for
libel. I say "evidently," because we do not know:
they have not deigned to enter the witness box to
answer even that straightforward and most
elementary of questions. Nor have they answered
this question when it was put to them in writing.
Such a report is, in my submission, not privileged,
and I would have been well prepared to argue the
point; had they claimed that privilege, I should
have asked, "On what grounds?" If a report was
written, it should and no doubt would have been
disclosed. It was not. We are entitled to assume
they did not bother to have the book "read",
therefore. So it does not exist. Whatever other limited excuses - whether of
sheer ignorance, or of innocent dissemination -
that the publisher might have (quite wrongfully)
deployed for publishing this malicious and deeply
flawed work were destroyed from the moment when
they received my writ in September of 1996, and
were thus informed, if they did not in fact know
already, of the nature and scope of the libels it
contains. And, as said, they have continued to sell
it, hoping no doubt to cash in on, to profit from,
the notoriety gained by these libel proceedings, a
textbook case of Rookes vs. Barnard if ever there
was one, since the book they are selling still
contains even the several libels which they have
made no attempt here to justify. They have to
justify their allegations, or their defence fails;
and as your Lordship is aware, where the
defamations are particularly grave, a higher burden
of proof falls upon them than the mere balance of
probabilities that is normally acceptable. In both
Defendants, moreover, there is clear evidence of
malice, both in those few documents which the
author of this work has disclosed, and in the fact
that the same firm of publishers had previously
distributed a work in which I was variously
caricatured as Adolf Hitler, and wearing swastika
eye-glasses. The very worst of the libels are so blatant,
that neither Defendant has insulted the
intelligence of this Court by offering any
justification for them. They hope instead to divert
the court's attention by reference to distant and
notorious matters of history. In consequence, for
thirty days or more of this Court's time we have
had to rake over the embers of what may be one of
the greatest crimes known to Mankind: a harrowing,
time-wasting, and needless effort, which has
yielded even now few answers to great questions and
mysteries which even the world's finest academics
have so far not managed to unravel. On page 14 of the book, the Defendants published
one of the gravest libels that can be imagined for
a respectable English citizen who lives a very
public life, namely that I consort with the
extremist anti-Semitic Russian group Pamyat, with
violent anti-Israeli murderers , with extremist
terrorists, and with Louis Farrakhan, a Black Power
agitator who is known to be acting in the pay of a
foreign power, namely the Libyan dictator. This is
not just the simple allegation of associating with
"extremists", about which they have made so much.
The words on page 14 are as follows - and I make no
apology for reminding the Court of them: "The confluence between anti-Israel,
anti-Semitic, and Holocaust denial forces was
exemplified by a world anti-Zionist conference
scheduled for Sweden in November 1992. Though
cancelled at the last minute by the Swedish
government, scheduled speakers included black
Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan, Faurisson, Irving
and Leuchter. Also scheduled to participate were
representatives of a variety of anti-Semitic and
anti-Israel organisations, including the Russian
group Pamyat, the Iranian-backed Hizbollah, and
the fundamentalist Islamic organisation Hamas.
"3 The whole statement was a reckless lie. It
appears from their Discovery to have been based on
a press release issued by the Jewish Telegraph
Agency, which neither that agency or the Defendants
made any attempt to verify. The Court will have
noticed in one of my bundles the letters which I
sent to every Scandinavian embassy at the time,
anxiously denying the malicious JTA allegation. I
have pleaded, as Your Lordship is aware4, that the
innuendo was that I was "thereby agreeing to appear in public
in support of and alongside violent and
extremist speakers including representatives of
the violent and extremist anti-Semitic Russian
group Pamyat and of the Iranian-backed Hizbollah
and of the fundamentalist Islamic organisation
Hamas and including the black Muslim minister
Louis Farrakhan, born Louis Eugene Walcott, who
is known as a Jew-baiting black agitator, as a
leader of the U.S. Nation of Islam, as an
admirer of Hitler and who is in the pay of
Colonel Muammar GaddaÞ." And "that the true or legal innuendo of the
word "Hizbollah" is that used to refer to and
describe a known international terrorist
organisation led by one Sayed Hassan Nasrallah
from Beirut in the Lebanon also known as the
Hizbollah whose guerrillas kill Israeli
civilians and soldiers thereby deliberately
provoking retaliation, and which organisation
has been determined by President Clinton, at the
international anti-terrorism conference in 1996,
as being among the enemies of peace, and whose
ofÞcials and armed activists are now being
hunted down by . . . the Israeli army."5 As for the Hamas, I set out in para 12 of my
statement of claim that "the true or legal innuendo
of the words "Hamas" is that of an Islamic
fundamentalist terrorist organisation similar in
nature to the Hizbollah." I submitted to Your Lordship at the outset of
this trial a representative selection of news
reports from reliable outlets, including the BBC,
on the murderous nature of the organisations
concerned. In my pleadings, I also (paragraph 8) argued
that by these allegations I had "been brought into
hatred, ridicule, contempt, risk of personal
injury, and/or assassination". The nature of the
libel, and the damage that it caused, hardly need
arguing in detail here. To put it in a domestic
context, if the Defendants had equally untruthfully
stated, for example on a Channel 4 television
documentary, that I consorted with Ulster loyalist
death squads who were part of a conspiracy to
murder Roman Catholic nationalists, itself a grave
accusation which also would put me at risk of
assassination, and if the Defendants made no
attempt to justify that libel, then I respectfully
submit that Your Lordship would have no hesitation
giving judgment in my favour. I submit that there
is no difference between these examples. The Defendants have relied however on Section 5
of the Defamation Act. In other words, they accuse
a respectable Englishman of consorting with
terrorists and murderers, and then plead the
relative insignificance of the accusation when it
turns out to be a reckless lie. And there are other
incendiary lies which they have stuffed into that
particular sand-bucket, Section 5, in the hope that
they will sputter out: the Defendants repeated the
story - first published in Izvestia - that I placed
a portrait of Hitler over my desk.6 For that lie
too they have offered no justification. I read
incidentally recently in Literary Review, January
2000, that Lloyd George had signed photographs of
both Hitler and Mussolini on display.7 The only
signed photograph in my apartment, as many
journalists have observed, is one of Sir Winston
Churchill. I submit that Your Lordship should not accept
the Defendants' contention that these allegations
should be disregarded on the basis of Section 5.
Even if they could sufficiently justify their claim
that I deliberately bent history in favour of
Hitler, and I submit that they have not, it would
still "materially injure the plaintiff's
reputation" (thus the wording of Section 5) to say
that I had a portrait of Hitler above my desk. The
claims which they do seek to justify suggest that I
am culpably careless and (perhaps unconsciously)
sympathetic to Hitler; bad enough, but having a
portrait over my desk implies a full-hearted 100
percent conscious commitment to that man, which is
very different. I have provided to Your Lordship in one bundle a
number of passages quoted from A J P Taylor's
words. Taylor himself accepted that they inevitably
improved Hitler's image: maybe he did not originate
the actual mass murders himself; maybe he did slip
into war with Britain rather than planning it;
maybe the Anschluss with Austria was more a stroke
of good fortune, which he grasped, rather than long
planned as a take-over; maybe the Nazis did not
burn down the Reichstag in 1933. These views of
Taylor have been criticised as being wrong, even as
being too sympathetic to Hitler. But everybody
would accept that to suggest that Taylor had a
portrait of Hitler "over his desk" would suggest
something far worse. So it should be for me
too. Again, for the purpose of Section 5, the
allegation that I bend history in favour of Hitler
because I am said to admire him, and that I consort
with other people holding such views, is a very
different kettle of fish from stating, as the
Defendants do, that I consort with people who are
widely regard as violent and murderous terrorists.
Indeed, the word used by the Defendants in the
Hamas/Hizbollah/Pamyat context is "confluence",
which suggests something even worse than "consort".
The passage suggests that I provide support (maybe
only theoretical support, but still support) for
violence and murder - murder now and murder in the
future. I ask therefore that Your Lordship not
allow either of these matters to be discarded into
section 5. My Lord, the Court will be aware that from the
very outset I argued that this hearing should not,
effectively, leave the four walls of my study,
where I wrote my books; and that what happened
fifty or sixty years ago was of less moment to the
issues as pleaded. The matter at issue, as pleaded
by the Defendants, is not what happened, but what I
knew of it, and what I made of it, at the time I
put pen to paper. To take a crude example:
neglecting to use the Eichmann memoirs, released to
us only a few days ago, had they contained
startling revelations -- which they did not --
could not have been held against me because they
were not available to me in the 1960s, 70s or
80s. Your Lordship took a different view, and I
respectfully submit that it was wrong. The
Defendants have invested a sizeable fortune in
re-researching the Holocaust, and possibly for that
reason alone we have all been dragged through that
vast and inhuman tragedy yet again, and quite
needlessly in my submission. It would have sufficed
for their purposes if they could have proved, on
the basis of the total disclosure of my files which
I made to them and their experts, that I had indeed
"distorted, misstated, misquoted, and falsified."
Fearing or finding however that they were unable to
prove wilful fraud, in effect, they have fallen
back on the alternative plea in the tort of
negligence: that "Mr Irving ought to have known." I
respectfully submit that this unsubtle change of
defence should not have been allowed to them, as it
was not pleaded at the outset. If my submission on the law is, however, wrong
then Your Lordship must ask what effort would have
been reasonable on the part of an individual
historian, acting without institutional support
like that of Yad Vashem, and with the doors of
archives increasing being slammed against him
because of the activities of the bodies to which I
shall shortly refer. These Defendants have spent
reportedly some six million dollars, and twenty
man-years or more, in researching this case: this
blinding and expensive spotlight has been focused
on the narrowest of issues, yet still it has
generated more noise than illumination. I heard the
expert witnesses who were paraded before us use
phrases like the "consensus of expert opinion" as
their source so often - in fact the word consensus
occurs so far no fewer than forty times in the
daily transcripts of this trial - that I began to
wonder what archives were for. I suggest that these
experts were more expert in reporting each other's
opinions and those of people who agree with them
than in what the archives actually contain - and do
not contain. The phrase "Holocaust Denier", which the Second
Defendant boasts of having invented, is an
Orwellian stigma. It is not a very helpful phrase.
It does not diminish or extend thought or knowledge
on this tragic subject. Its universal adoption
within the space of a few years by media, academia
and government and even academics seems to indicate
something of the international endeavour of which I
shall make later mention. It is in my submission a
key to the whole case. Perhaps this Court should
raise its gaze from the red and blue files and
bundles for a brief moment, and re-read George
Orwell's brief appendix to "1984" which seems to be
very relevant to this case. From the witness box, with its revelations of
the "consensus of opinion", "moral certainty," and
the mass male-voice choir of the "social sciences"
or "social scientists" on which the Defendants'
German expert Professor Hajo Funke relies for his
certainty as to what is right-wing extremism, we
seem to hear more than a vague echo of Orwellian
Newspeak - a language that moulds minds, and
destroys reputations and livelihoods. Orwell was however wrong in one point: he
thought it would take the forces of the State to
impose Newspeak: Professor Lipstadt and her
reckless publishers Penguin Books Ltd - I shall
justify that adjective shortly - have sought to
impose it through the machinery of the literary and
media establishments. Only the Royal Courts or
Justice, independent and proud, can protect the
rights of the individual from now on. And those
rights include the right, as Lord Justice Sedley
recently put it in another Court in this same
building, of any person to hold to, and to preach,
unpopular views, perhaps even views that many might
find repellent.8  |
