Review 22.1
1 February - 14 February, 1997

LEGAL EAGLE:

David - does he ever give up? - Irving announced last month he would launch defamation proceedings against Prime Minister John Howard following comments the PM made last year. Defamation actions are a favoured tool of Mr Irving, who cites freedom of speech arguments to contest international bans on his activities and then sues anyone who criticises his crypto-fascist views. The PM should not rush out to mire himself in QCs. He is just the latest addition to a long line of distinguished recipients of Irving writs, such as the Melbourne Herald Sun, the London Sunday Times, Penguin Books, the author Professor Deborah Lipstadt, Australia/Israel Review, Times columnist Bernard Levin, The Observer, Canadian Secretary of State Gerry Weiner, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews, among others. We are not aware of one action that has been successful. Hang tough, Mr Howard!

BUSTED IN BERCHTESGARTEN:

While David Irving is busy suing the PM, the Attoney General is trying to recover $50,000 in costs awarded against Irving. This covers successive failed Federal Court appeals against previous government decisions to refuse the goose-stepping dilettante a visa. Mr Irving has so far refused to pay costs awarded against him. The Department of Finance may have to get in line if they want to collect. A glance at the London Registry of County Court Judgements found that Mr Irving appears to have a surprising amount of charges taken out against him, including: Westminster court for £1,726,71; Shoreditch for £175.56; Westminster again for £1,633.33; Uxbridge in 1993 for £48.46; Reading for £402.72 and £306.44; Central London in 1993 for £985.32; Bloomsbury in 1988 for £273.67; Horsham in 1993 for £478.44 and Westminster again in 1992 for £5, 337.21.

Irving also appears to be a landowner of considerable means, including the flat in which he resides at Duke Street, Mayfair, London. This very upmarket address Mr Irving estimates to be worth £500,000. But there are people standing in line there too. Like the charge registered over the property in favour of Bradford and Bingley Building Society and the Order Nisi of the High Court in favour of Simon and Schuster publishers and then a further charge in favour of Alan G. Kent. Then there is the Grosvenor Estate, which sued him for £8,000 in service charges for the property and last month a further £5000 for unpaid accounts. And so it goes. The High Court ended up throwing Mr Irving into jail last year after he refused to pay yet another outstanding account to yet another creditor holding him in contempt of court.

FLEA BAG:

But fear not that Mr Irving is about to go belly up. In a recent confidential letter to key supporters Mr Irving boasts that contributing to his personal Fighting Fund he has "293 major supporters in North America, 94 in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Europe and 29 in the UK".

One of them is definitely not Andrew Neil. The former editor of London's prestigious Sunday Times, whose new book Full Disclosure, recounts his 10 years as editor, takes a rather dim view of Mr Irving. "I also made the huge mistake of using David Irving, the Nazi apologist historian, to translate the Goebbels' Diaries. He was the only expert able to read Goebbels' writing and all the excerpts we published rather refuted Irving's views on Nazi history. But many were understandably appalled we were having anything to do with him and it did the paper damage - a good illustration of the maxim that if you lie down with dogs you get fleas".

FRIENDS:

Mr Irving won't send you a copy of this photo (left) with his confetti-like press releases. It was taken in 1983 in Germany at a memorial for Nazi Hans-Ulrich Rudel. At far left is Dr Gerhard Frey, long-time friend of Rudel and Chairman of the neo-Nazi Deutsche Volks union (DVU). The platform hosts one of the most complete collections of old Nazis and modern-day torch bearers, including, from left to right, Rudel's biographer Gunther Just, neo-Nazi National Zeitung editor Harold Neubauer, Colonel Walther Dahl, David Irving, Bruno Wetzel, vice-Chairman of the DVU, Dr Bernhard Steidle, DVU official Dr Karl Weinrebe, Richard Etzel and Dr Hans Mugler. Rudel, a Luftwaffe air ace and the most highly decorated officer in the Wehrmacht, remained an unrepentant National Socialist. After the war he fled to Argentina and with Otto Skorzeny established the Organisation der Ehemaligen SS - Angehorigen, better known as ODESSA,using the network to get Josef Mengele - the Auschwitz "Angel of Death" - out of Germany and into Paraguay. Rudel returned to Germany in 1951 and collaborated with Dr Walter Neumann in the failed infamous 1953 neo-nazi coup plot. Rudel then helped establish the Deutsche Reichspartei, a precursor to the violent neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD).