London - Angry student demonstrators forced their way Monday into an Oxford Union debating hall, disrupting an event at which the controversial historian David Irving was due to speak. Irving, who is British, has repeatedly denied the Holocaust and served a prison term in Austria for the offence.
Police said that a group of about 30 students were staging a sit- in inside the debating hall of the renowned Oxford Union, which is attached to Oxford University.
A hard core of some 30 protestors, singing and chanting anti- fascist slogans, stopped the debate from getting under way, reports said.
They had broken away from up to 500 protestors and scaled a wall to force their way into the building, shouting "shame on you" and "fascists out."
Irving and Nick Griffin, leader of Britain's racist British National Party (BNP), had arrived hours before the evening event to be escorted into the building.
They were due to take part in a debate on free speech.
Martin McCluskey from the Oxford University Students' Union said that giving Irving and Griffin a platform would be to give them "legitimacy and credibility."
"It is as if we are saying, we agree with what they are saying," he said.
But Anne Atkins, a British writer and broadcaster who was participating in the event, said it was wrong to silence those espousing controversial views.
While she was not agreeing with the two men's views, it was "dangerous and disturbing" to believe that the "majority is always right."
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.
The Union is well-known for hosting high-profile foreign speakers, including Henry Kissinger, Mother Teresa, Benazir Bhutto and the Dalai Lama.
In Britain, 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.
Julian Lewis, a Conservative member of parliament, resigned from the Union in protest.
Luke Tryl, 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."
Denis McShane, former Europe minister in the British 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 onto a prestigious platform like the Oxford Union is to validate modern anti-Semitism," said McShane.
Irving was sentenced in Austria in February 2006 to three years in prison for Holocaust denial but was released early in December of the same year.
Griffin has been convicted of 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.
Hafia Hassan, a 19-year-old French and Spanish student, who had come to listen to the debate, said: "I think we are intelligent enough to oppose these people."
