In a debate in the Irish Political Review earlier this year about the typescripts—but no diary—sent by the Police to the DPP, Jeff Dudgeon stated that this “does not preclude the typed versions existing before the diary manuscripts” (Irish Political Review, April 2026). Together with other letters in the Irish Political Review, serious doubts were thereby cast upon the existence of manuscript diaries at the same time.
The mail below was sent to Jeff Dudgeon on 1st July, 2026.
Dear Jeff,
Your letters in The Irish Political Review have created serious doubts about authenticity since they do not cite independent witness evidence for the diaries’ existence. Can you eliminate those doubts?
Best wishes,
Paul R. Hyde, Jack Lane, John Martin, Philip O’ Connor,
PS. Kindly acknowledge receipt of this mail.
In the interests of openness and transparency, a number of interested persons were cited in the CC section. The question put to him was simplicity itself—‘Can you eliminate those doubts?’
On 11th July an email was received from Jeff Dudgeon which ignored that simple question, feigns not to understand why he has been ‘challenged’, and makes no reference to his recently published tell-tale letters.
At almost 1,100 words his mail is too long to reproduce here and it would in any case be futile, since this incoherent exercise in strategic evasion and distraction is a minestrone of cliché-laden demotic … and boring Unionist mantras: Catholic Ireland, the IRA, nationalist, separatist ideology, Pearse as paedophile, Anglophobia, the GAA etc. That he resorts yet again to the familiar evasive chicanery which has shielded him for decades demonstrates that he is unable to eliminate the doubts about authenticity because he cannot demonstrate the material existence of the diaries in 1916.
This is because he has found no impartial evidence for their existence —there is none to be found. This too is consistent with his letter of 10th May, in which he listed the names exclusively of Crown employees—rather than citing a single name of an independent witness—thereby conceding by default the fact that no such witnesses existed.
As Angus Mitchell confirms in his current Village article: “Jeffrey Dudgeon… concedes that no independent witness to the manuscript diaries in 1916 can be named”.
The outcome of all this is that his 11th July email contradicts the evidence he mentioned in his April letter, evidence which compelled him to admit the possibility of forgery. Now he denies there is any evidence. He also makes a second denial:
“The test of ‘independent witness evidence’ for authenticity, of course, is not one that historians can ever meet. We use whatever sources are available to make a reasoned assessment, ‘independent’ or not”.
Thus he denies that historians can ever rely on independent witness evidence for authenticity. Therefore he denies the value and therefore the existence of such evidence.
This is an extraordinary anti-scientific assertion which violates the basic integrity of all scholarship, including historical studies. Its affinity to Holocaust Denial is obvious: he denies that the oral and written testimony of survivors, the testimony in official and unofficial documents—including testimony of the perpetrators and that of independent witnesses—can contribute to confirming the reality of the Holocaust. Thus secure historical knowledge is impossible.
By this assertion, even the atrocities witnessed by Casement can be doubted. This is more than Dudgeon’s habitual sophistry; it is a barbaric assault upon history, memory and truth, upon all that protects fragile human identity and dignity.
To close, Dudgeon’s email announces:
“there is not a scrap of evidence that the … authorities typed up … diary entries … and later turned the typed pages into manuscript diaries.”
But this denies exactly what he spontaneously acknowledged as possible in his April letter. The abundant evidence, which he does not even attempt to refute, demonstrates that the authorities did precisely what he denies.
The fact remains that he voluntarily published his letters—the first of which unambiguously concedes the diaries might be forged, while the second fails to cite a single name of an independent person who saw the diaries in 1916.
These letters cannot be unwritten or unsaid.
After thirty years of simulating authenticity, those letters reveal that logically he can no longer conceal the absence of vital evidence or deny what explains that absence—that no manuscript diaries existed at that time.
Paul R.Hyde
Jack Lane
