Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day014.12
Last-Modified: 2000/07/20

   Q.   It does, does it not?  "He says the astonishing sexual
        activity among black men accounts for why a large number
        of white female intellectuals and students like having
        black boyfriends which now, of course, they will regret.
        God works in mysterious ways, but here we agree he", that
        is God, not your mate Burridge, "appears to be working
        remorselessly towards a Final Solution which may cruelly
        wipe out, not only the blacks and homosexuals, but a large
        part of the drug addicts and sexually promiscuous and
        indiscriminate heterosexual population as well."
                  Not racist, Mr Irving?
   A.   What is racist about that?
   Q.   You are hoping that God is going to complete his long term
        plan, his Endlosung, his Final Solution, and wipe outline
        all the blacks as well as the homosexuals and everybody else?
   A.   What a totally perverse spin you have put on that diary
        passage.  I am a religious man.  When I see things
        happening, I see God's hand in everything that is
        happening.  When I see God inflicting a plague like this

.          P-102

        on Africa, I ask myself what the possible explanation for
        it can be.  I am talking to a medical expert, who is a
        medical expert from Swaziland, who is describing to me
        what I did not know, I had never heard of at that time.
        I know a great deal more about the AIDS, the incidence of
        AIDS, among the native population of Africa.  At this time
        it was total news to me and he told me, and it undoubtedly
        is true, that it is cutting a swathe right through the
        native populations of the whole of the African Continent,
        and we are musing about the strange way that God works in.
   Q.   So God, like you, would have used capital F, Final,
        capital S, Solution, would he, just as Hitler, no doubt,
        was God's instrument in applying that to the Jews?  Is
        that right, capital F ----
   A.   It is obvious I am referring to the Final Solution in the
        Aryan sense there, yes.
   Q.   Do you think God ----
   A.   But you will not find in that sentence the slightest trace
        of approval of what is going on there.  I think this is
        another of these enormous human tragedies.
   Q.   Do you think, and I do not want ----
   A.   And to suggest that I approved of what was done to the
        Jews or to suggest that I am approving here of what is
        happening to the wretched black population of Africa is
        perverse and repugnant.
   Q.   It is God working remorselessly towards his capital F,

.          P-103

        Final, capital S, Solution, so far as the blacks etc.  are
        concerned ----
   A.   You cannot find in any of that passage any hint of
        approval from me of what is happening.
   Q.   I see.
   A.   It is -- I am listening aghast to what the doctor is
        telling me about what I had never heard of before, namely
        the incidence of AIDS in the black population of Uganda
        and Swaziland and the southern African Continent.
   Q.   Now I would like to look at something else, please.  Tab 5
        of this file, pages 10 to 11.  This is your talk to the
        Clarendon Club ----
   A.   While we were on that previous African tour, it is a pity
        you did not leave in the pages of the diary which referred
        to my visit to Soweto township where we picked up several
        black people in our car -- this was at the height of the
        troubles -- and drove around Soweto with these five blacks
        sitting in our car allowing -- to show us around the whole
        of their township because I was very interested in their
        problems, but, unfortunately, you took those pages out.
   Q.   Do you agree with me, Mr Irving, that one sometimes gets a
        better insight into a person's true thoughts and feelings
        when one reads them written in his private diary than in a
        speech, for example?
   A.   Oh, yes.  These diaries are not intended for publication
        and you have been very fortunate to have them.  50 million

.          P-104

        words have been placed at your disposal.
   Q.   No, thank you, Mr Irving.  People who bring libel actions
        have to make discovery.  It is as simple as that.
   A.   And I have had no objection whatsoever.  I attach the
        proper conditions to it and I said you can have access to
        my entire private diaries and telephone logs and
        everything.  So far this is all you have found.
   Q.   Can we turn to tab 5 in this one?  This is something, my
        Lord, that is not copied into the extract.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Is not?
   MR RAMPTON:  It is in your Lordship's but not in mine.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Can you give me the reference in mine?
   MR RAMPTON:  I cannot, no, because I have not got it -- page
        35, 2/D.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Thank you.
   MR RAMPTON:  Mr Irving, I am going to read the full entry in
        this which is a talk I think you gave to the Clarendon
        Club, whatever that may be, on 19th September 1992, as you
        can see from the beginning of the tab.  After some
        applause you say this:  "For the last four weeks just for
        once I have gone away from London, where I have been
        sitting, down in Torquay, which is a white community.  We
        saw perhaps one black man and one coloured family in the
        whole time I was down there.  I am not anti-coloured, take
        it from me; nothing pleases me more than when I arrive at
        an airport, or a station, or a seaport" ----

.          P-105

   A.   Can you tell me what page you are, please?
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I am lost too.
   MR RAMPTON:  10 of 13 at the top of the page.  I will start the
        paragraph again.
   A.   The bit about I am not anti-coloured, right?
   Q.   Yes.  I read the previous paragraph.  "I am not
        anti-coloured, take it from me; nothing pleases me more
        than when I arrive at an airport, or a station, or a
        seaport, and I see a coloured family there - the black
        father, the black wife and the black children.  I think it
        is just as handsome a spectacle as the English family, or
        the French family, or the German family, or the South
        African family ... (reading to the words)... I think that
        is the way that God planned it and that is the way it
        should be.  When I see these families arriving at the
        airport I am happy (and when I see them leaving at London
        airport I am happy)".  Well, Mr Irving, well, Mr Irving?
   A.   It reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in a car in Durban
        which said, "Welcome to Durban, now go away".  I think we
        all dislike tourists of any colour.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  These are black tourists though, that is the point.
   MR RAMPTON:  Tourists?  These are black people ----
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   --- you are talking about, and your statement, "i am not
        an anti-coloured, take it from me", was a cynical little

.          P-106

        joke?
   A.   I do not agree.  I am not anti-coloured.  This was the
        cynical little joke at the end because you will notice
        that the first bit did not get the laughter.  It was the
        cynical little joke at the end that got the laughter.
   Q.   Yes, "... and when I see them leaving" ----
   A.   Right, so that was recognized as being the joke.
   Q.   "When I see them leaving at London airport I am happy.
        [Cheers and Laughter]".  You were speaking to a bunch of
        fellow racists who would like to clear these islands of
        all their black people?
   A.   On what information do you base the knowledge of what the
        audience was ----
   Q.   Otherwise you would not have got cheers and laughter; you
        would have been bundled out ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  I think it is a question.  It is a question.
        Were you speaking to a bunch of racists?
   A.   Was I -- no, I was not.  No, they were perfectly ordinary  ----
   MR RAMPTON:  Why were there cheers?
   A.   Well, they obviously liked the jokes that I said.  They
        liked the way that I told the joke at the end.
   Q.   If you had been speaking to a normal audience of
        non-racist people and you had said something like that,
        you would have been chucked out on your ear, Mr Irving.
   A.   Mr Rampton, you can take it from me, I am less racist than

.          P-107

        yourself probably as witnessed the people that I employ.
   Q.   All right.  I am going to read on.  "But if there is one
        thing that gets up my nose, I must admit, it is this - -
        the way ... the thing is when I am down in Torquay and
        I switch on my television set and I see one of them" - -
        "one of them" -- "reading our news to us".  Now, who is
        the "them" and who is the "us"?
   A.   Trevor McDonald.
   Q.   No, "one of them"?
   A.   Well, in fact, this is a stock speech I used to make.
        I used to -- it was a debating speech I would deliver to
        university audiences.  I would start off by talking about
        having our people, the God old days, Lord Reith, the
        announcer wearing his dinner jack, you knew the people
        behind the camera were actually wearing dinner jackets too
        on Royal occasions, but now in the gradual drumming down
        of television, they have women reading the news and they
        have -- it is part of a general speech I used to deliver
        and I used to say ----
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  The question, I think before you go further  ----
   A.   I am trying to set the ----
   Q.   --- was what did you mean -- listen to the question -- --
   A.   Yes.
   Q.   --- what did you mean by "them", not what did you mean by
        "one".  What did you mean by "them" and "us"?  What is

.          P-108

        the answer to that?
   A.   As you say, I go on straightaway, I talk about women.
   MR RAMPTON:  Right.  Wait a minute.  We are coming on,
        Mr Irving.  You have rambled on without reading the text,
        unfortunately.
   A.   Well, that is the clear answer.  The very next sentence
        says ----
   Q.   No, Mr Irving, we are going to read on.
   A.   I do admit to chauvinism.
   Q.   "It is our news and they're reading it to me"?
   A.   That is right.
   Q.   If I was ----
   A.   It is male news and it should be read to us by men
        wearing  ----
   Q.   Mr Irving, will you please be patient?
   A.   --- dinner jackets and ----
   Q.   We are going to read quite a lot of this.  Please.
   MR JUSTICE GRAY:  Mr Irving, please.  Can I just ask one other
        question because I am puzzled, and I want to make sure
        I understand what you are conveying.  When you were asked
        what was meant by that passage, you said the "one" was
        Trevor McDonald ----
   A.   Yes, because ----
   Q.   --- but you then said that the "them" was women.
   A.   Well, we come to ----
   Q.   Well, I do not understand.

.          P-109

   A.   --- oh, we come to Trevor McDonald over the page, I see,
        my Lord.  I was jumping ahead of myself.  He is three
        paragraphs on.
   MR RAMPTON:  Trevor McDonald is one of us because, like me, he
        wears glasses, is that right -- one of them, rather?
   A.   I am afraid I do not follow that.
   Q.   You said initially without thinking of your clever, clever
        "woman" answer, you said, "That is Trevor McDonald"?
   A.   Well, this is a standard speech that I used to give as
        a standard gramaphone record.
   Q.   Why did you say that Trevor McDonald was one of them?
   A.   Because I know what is coming.  I know what is coming in the speech.
   Q.   What "them" is Trevor McDonald one of?
   A.   Well, he is someone who is different from us.
   Q.   In what sense?  He wears glasses?
   A.   No, he speaks English better than you and I do ----
   Q.   That is what you meant, is it?
   A.   --- for example -- yes.
   Q.   He is one of them very good English speakers?
   A.   This is a witty speech being delivered after dinner to an
        audience in a private club.
   Q.   "Wicked", Mr Irving?
   A.   "Witty", not wicked.
   Q.   "Witty", did you say?
   A.   Well, it got laughter.

.          P-110

   Q.   Oh, yes -- just, no doubt, as Dr Goebbels' audience would
        have laughed at him.
   A.   I used to deliver exactly the same speech to the
        University of Durham, Cambridge University Union Society
         -- no complaints from anyone.  The women laughed loudest of all.
   Q.   Can we turn over the page to page 11 of 13.  Can?
   A.   But, of course, you are missing out the bits that help to
        set the tone of the kind of mood of the evening.

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