London - Demonstrators vowed Monday to disrupt the appearance of controversial historian David Irving at the Oxford Union Debating Society attached to the renowned British university. Irving, who has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and served a spell in prison in Austria for the offence, was due to be flanked on the platform by Nick Griffin, the leader of the nationalist right-wing British National Party (BNP).
Despite opposition from the Oxford Student Union, and the university's Muslim and Jewish societies, Oxford Union members voted by a margin of 2 to 1 to let the ticket-only event, entitled Free Speech Forum, go ahead Monday evening.
A string of politicians, including defence secretary Des Browne and Labour politician Chris Bryant, pulled out of the event after learning that they would have to share a platform with Irving and Griffin.
The Conservative member of parliament, Julian Lewis, resigned from the Union in protest.
But Luke Tryl, the president of the Oxford Union, said "the men were not being given a platform to extol their views, but were coming to talk about the limits of free speech."
Tryl, who called BNP policies "abhorrent," argued that silencing the men would increase the support for them.
Denis McShane, the former Europe minister in the Foreign Office, last week pulled out of an Oxford Union event, after objecting to plans for "two notorious anti-Semites to be given a platform."
"To put four-star Jew-haters on to a prestigious platform like the Oxford Union is to validate modern anti-Semitism," said McShane.
Hundreds of anti-fascism and minority rights campaigners were planning to gather outside the debating chamber to jeer the arrival of the speakers.
Irving was sentenced to thjree years for Holocaust denial in Austria in February, 2006, but released early in December of the same year.
Griffin has been convicted for incitement to racial hatred and denying the Holocaust.
"There is no place for racists and fascists at universities," said Yair Sivan, of the Union of Jewish Students at Oxford.
The Oxford University newspaper, Cherwell, said students had received death threats from neo-Nazis as BNP supporters were planning to "target" demonstrators at Monday's protests.
