OXFORD: Non-white students were urged to boycott Oxford University and up to 1,000 protesters kept a noisy vigil after the university's debating society invited two far-right speakers -- a racist and a holocaust denier -- to talk about free speech Monday night.
A group of 30 protesters broke into the debating venue -- the Oxford Union debating society -- and held up the event for nearly two hours before they were removed, allowing British Nationalist Party chief Nick Griffin and pro-Nazi historian David Irving to speak to an audience of around 400 that had turned up to hear them talk about "the limits of free speech".
The protesters, who turned up in 10 coaches from nearby towns and cities, sparked a security nightmare but police did not throw a ring around the venue and allowed students and anti-racist activists to climb over the wall.
Both men are controversial for their views -- Griffin was convicted of incitement to racial hatred in 1998 and Irving spent a year in an Australian jail last year after being sentenced for denying the Nazi holocaust. Holocaust-denial is a crime in Australia.
The decision by the 184-year-old Oxford Union, which calls itself the world's most famous debating union, to invite Griffin and Irving has already led one senior Tory MP, shadow defence minister Julian Lewis, to resign his life membership and several leading politicians to cancel their speaking engagements there.
The event -- described as a "night of discussion on the limits of free speech" -- descended into chaos when protesters from cities such as Birmingham arrived to register their anger and besieged the Oxford Union building. They draped anti-racist and trade union banners all over its walls and blockaded the building.
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