Archive/File: people/i/irving.david/libel.suit/transcripts/day015.02 Last-Modified: 2000/07/20 MR JUSTICE GRAY: Where? MR RAMPTON: Page 3 of the transcript, my Lord, and page 37 of the clip. I am going to start a little bit before the clip extract begins. If Mr Irving wants to read on or have more, than he must do it himself, the whole text is there. I am going to read, Mr Irving, from the sixth line . P-9 in the middle of the page after the words "our national heritage", where you say this: "When people ask me about racism I say 'would you mind explaining to me what is the difference between racism and patriotism'? Journalists, television interviewers, I've had a great deal of these in the last 2 or 3 weeks, you won't notice this of course, because I've been going to the television studios here or in Camden town or in Isleworth, speaking by satellite live on prime time Australian television, 3 or 4 times last week. New Zealand television as well because New Zealand always picks up what their big brothers do in Australia, and the journalist has said 'Mr Irving, we read in today's newspapers that you told the ABC radio" -- that is an Australian radio, is it not, Mr Irving, ABC radio? A. Yes. Q. "'That you feel queasy about the immigration disaster that's happened to Britain. Is that your opinion'? And I said well yes, I have admit to being born in England in 1938, which was totally different England, I feel queasy when I look and see what has happened to our country, nobody has stood up and objected to it' and he says, 'well what do you think about black people on the Australian, on the British cricket team then? How do you feel about that then, the black cricketers'? So I said, 'that makes me even more queasy,". Pause there, please, . P-10 Mr Irving. A. Yes. Q. I am going to read on. Why does it make you feel queasy that black Englishmen should play cricket for England? A. What is left out here is what is also stated in the interview that he then said exactly same question as you and my reply to him on air was, what a pity it is that we have to have blacks on the team and that they are better than our whites. Q. Why is that a pity? A. It is a pity because I am English. Q. Are they not English too? A. Well, English or British, are you saying? Q. I am saying that they are English. Most of them are born here, just as all the Jews in England were born here, most of them. A. Are we talking about blacks or Jews now? Q. It does not matter. They are all English. A. The England I was born into it, if you had read earlier, the England I was born into, which is the England I come from and probably the England you come from, although probably a few years after mine, was different from the England that exists now. Q. Well, thank goodness. A. When I talk about English, I am talking about the England I came from. . P-11 Q. When did the Irvings arrive on these shores, Mr Irving? A. King Robert the Bruce, I think. We can go back as far as that. Q. Where did they come from? A. Scotland. Q. No. The Bruces came from France. They were Normans, beastly foreigners. A. The Bruces came from France? Q. Robert the Bruce was a Norman princeling, if you like. Where did the Irvings come from? A. What do you mean, where did the Irvings come from? How far back are we going to go? Q. That is the point, is it not? How far back do you have to go? Does it matter, Mr Irving? A. It does. You see, what I am saying in this entire paragraph is this. Somebody born in England of 1938, with all the values that I grew up in, grew to respect and admire and love, I regret what has happened to our country now. Sometimes I wish I could go Heathrow Airport and get on a 747 and take a ten hour flight and land back in England as it was, as it used to be. That is what this paragraph is saying. Q. Yes, it is. It is saying that England has changed in this regrettable respect, that now we have all these black people in England. A. One wonderful thing about England, Mr Rampton, you may . P-12 disprove of it, is that privately you are allowed to have your own private thoughts about the way things go, what you would call a state of mind, and my state of mind is that I regret what has happened to the England I grew up in. Q. That, I am afraid, Mr Irving, is characteristic of people that one may properly and legitimately call racist, is it not? A. Or patriotic. Patriotism is literally respecting the country that has been handed to you by your fathers, by your parents. Q. You are proposing ---- A. I wish you would not interrupt me when I am speaking. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Finish your answer. MR RAMPTON: I am sorry, I had not thought you had anything more to say, I am bound to say. A. You interrupt my flow of oratory. MR RAMPTON: Carry on. A. I do not think there is anything despicable or disreputable about patriotism. You wish to call it racism, that is your choice. I call it patriotism. Respect and love of the country that I grew up, the England I was born into. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Can we just go back to the cricketers? Is the regret you feel about them playing for England or wherever because of the colour of their skin? . P-13 A. No, it is, I think -- I feel sorry that my England was unable to provide enough good cricketers, if I can put it like that. MR RAMPTON: So the answer to his Lordship's question is yes, is it not? A. No, it was not. Q. You regret the fact ---- A. The answer was as I stated it. Q. Don't you interrupt either, please, Mr Irving. You regret the fact, do you not, that there are not enough good white cricketers to keep out the black cricketers? A. Well, again this is probably a tendential answer, but I am not very well up on cricket and I am not a great cricketing fan. This is an example that I am not very positive about. Q. Do you ever watch the English football team or any of the English clubs play football? A. If I do not watch cricket, I certainly do not watch football. Q. Do you propose that the numerous black people who play for first class football clubs and for England in this country are not patriotic, Mr Irving? A. What I am probably saying is this, is that it is regrettable that blacks and people of certain races are superior athletes to whites. Now, if this is a racist attitude, then so be it. It is a recognition that some . P-14 people are better at different things. And perhaps you may wish to legislate that state of affairs away, you may wish to describe it as despicable, but it is a recognition and it is an objective statement about the way things are. They run faster, they jump higher and there is no disputing that fact. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Why is it regrettable? A. Well, it is regrettable in as much as it is now described as being a racist attitude, and there is disreputable to point out that there are differences between the species. Q. You would like it to be the position, would you not, as with the National Alliance, that this country was a pure white Aryan race of people who went back at least as far as Robert the Bruce, for what difference it makes, would you not? A. Well, you heard what I said about taking off in that 747 and landing back in England as it was, the England of the blue lamp and Jack Warner and when there was no chewing gum on the pavements, and all the rest of it. Q. I will just finish. A. It is just an old fashioned attitude, I think. You will probably find that 90 per cent of Englishmen born at the same time as me think the same. That is what democracy is about. Q. I am sure you have not been standing with a clipboard in Oxford Street either, Mr Irving? . P-15 A. You will have heard the word "probably", on the balance of probabilities. Q. I will just finish this, if I may, and then I want to pass to one more. Where was I? "'How do you feel about that then, the black cricketers?' So I said, 'That makes me even more queasy ...' and so he says right, and I say, 'No, hang on, it makes me feel queasy but I would like to think we've got white cricketers who are as good as the black ones' and he couldn't climb out of that, you see"? A. There you are. That is precisely what I just said. Q. Yes, Mr Irving, but I do not myself see -- perhaps you can enlighten me -- why the journalist should have anything to climb out of. A. Because he was wanting me to express an attitude that the blacks are in some way inferior to us. They are different from us but not inferior. Q. Then he says, you see, he has rather not had anything to climb out of, he has picked up on what you said, he says: "'So what you're advocating then is a kind of race hatred'." He was absolutely right, was he not? A. Well, he obviously had his agenda of questions. He probably had them written down on his clipboard in front of him, "Ask him about race hatred. Use the word 'race'. Keep calling him a racist'. This is the way journalists keep their jobs, is it not? They are politically correct. They know the questions to ask and nobody fires . P-16 them. I have never been politically correct and I am not ashamed of it. Q. "So I said, 'Before I answer your questions, would you tell me what you believe in, as a journalist, an Australian journalist. Do you believe in mixing up all God's races into one super, kind of mixed up race? Are you in favour of racial intermarriage and racial mixing?' and he said, 'Well, I believe in multi-culturalism'." Do you believe, Mr Irving, in intermarriage between races, as you call it? A. I have precisely the same attitude about this as the Second Defendant does. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Tell us what your attitude is. MR RAMPTON: Tell us what her attitude then is. MR JUSTICE GRAY: Well, or yours. A. I believe in God keeping the races the way he built them. MR RAMPTON: Yes, I see. A. And I will be putting evidence about the Second Defendant's position on this in court later on. Q. Although he is remorselessly ---- A. I beg your pardon? Q. Sorry, although he is remorselessly pursuing his Final Solution to kill off all the blacks in Africa? A. In his infinite wisdom. Q. In his infinite wisdom. A. That is not exactly what I said in the previous diary . P-17 passage. That is a total manipulation of that passage. Q. One more and then we can pass on to Moscow, Mr Irving. There is a tab 3A in this file, K4. Your Lordship will find this, I hope, on page 37A of the clip. This is, I think, the Clarendon Club speech? MR JUSTICE GRAY: My clip does not have a 37A. MR RAMPTON: It has not got a 37A? It is a very short passage. I have mine at 37A. May I ask your Lordship to use the file which has got a tab 3A -- at least mine has. Your Lordship has a 3A tab. MR JUSTICE GRAY: A tab, yes, but not in the clip. MR RAMPTON: No, I am sorry, that is my fault. I have made my own new number? A. Can I say here, of course, that when the tables are turned and it is my turn to cross-examine, I shall be putting in any amount of evidence which completely refutes the notion that I have racist attitudes. MR JUSTICE GRAY: That is a perfectly proper thing to say. A. The reason I say that, of course is ---- Q. You will have your turn, Mr Irving, of course. A. Yes, but in the meantime, the world turns and newspapers appear. MR RAMPTON: That is too complicated for me. I cannot follow that. Could you turn to -- this is the Clarendon Club in 1990? A. Yes. . P-18
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