Cambridge
Union invite me to Free Speech
debate April 24; here we go
round the Mulberry Bush
again.
—
Mr Irving’s diary, February
13, 2003

Tuesday,
February 18, 2003

Traditional enemy gags Irving visit to Cambridge
Union

Tuesday,
February 18, 2003 —
CAMBRIDGE university Union today cancelled its invitation to David Irving to lead the debate defending free speech at the prestigious Cambridge
Union on April
24, thus joining a long list of British and Irish universities that have come under pressure to prevent him speaking.

The invitation was extended to Mr
Irving in a letter from new Union
President Edward Cumming earlier this month. The letter stated that the university — home of the chief expert witness hired by Deborah Lipstadt, professor Richard (“Skunky”) Evans
— would debate the motion that “bad people” should be gagged.

Mr Irving, who has been banned on several occasions recently from speaking in Britain’s universities, noted in his diary: “Cambridge Union invite me to Free
Speech debate April 24; here we go round the Mulberry Bush again.”

Accepting the invitation to lead the opposition to this outrageous theme, he replied to Mr Cumming: “It is several years since I last spoke at the Union, seconding Auberon Waugh I believe.”
He predicted:

“You may expect some
opposition to your choice when the time
comes, and I am mailing to you today my
two latest works, “Hitler’s
War” (Millennium Edition, 2002) and
“Churchill’s
War“, vol. ii: “Triumph in
Adversity” which will enable you to
brandish them at my critics.

I was
invited four times by the Oxford Union
in the last 12 months, and they caved
in each time and withdrew; what else
would you expect of them.”

Mr Irving also debated at the Cambridge
Union with the famous broadcaster and humorist Magnus Pyke, and in 1977
he attracted an audience of 1,000 students to the Fabians Society when he defended his flagship book Hitler’s War. The invitation on that occasion came from undergraduate student Robert
Harris, who later became a famous BBC producer and novelist (“Fatherland” and
“Enigma”).

As recently as last week Union president Mr Cumming expressed pleasure at
Mr Irving’s acceptance: “I am delighted that you are coming!” Confirming that Mr
Irving would lead the opposition to the anti-Free Speech motion, he added: “I feel that this way you would be defending your right to speak about what you believe (rather than specifically what your views are) and in this way we can best deal with the critics.

The argument over whether you can defend your right to speak is one which I am more than willing to fight and win!”

NEWS of the withdrawal of the Cambridge invitation was telephoned to Mr Irving as he drove into a snow-decked Indianapolis, on his United State speaking tour, at 7
a.m. this morning. (Two of his pre-arranged speaking functions, to army veterans at Louisville, and at the university of Kentucky, scheduled for today and tomorrow, were also cancelled after those bodies came under outside pressure, but he