[Images
added by this website] I
felt extremely uncomfortable as I found myself
agreeing with much of his rhetoric on the
subject Wednesday, November 28, 2007 [source] The debate at
the Oxford Union: an eyewitness account by Jonny Wright of Altrincham, Cheshire, United
Kingdom I'VE
just returned from tonight's Free Speech Forum at
the Oxford Union. It's been a strange night, and to
some extent, a really unpleasant spectacle. I
believe I've seen the very best and the very worst
of political thought and activism on display
tonight. I'll try to describe things as I saw them,
rather than go on another big rant about free
speech. David
Irving comments: | I CAN only congratulate
Jonny Wright on his objective account. He
is now doomed if he wants a Fleet Street
career. I note how Lipstadt and
her friends now shrill that I "tried to
silence" her by my High Court action . This is nonsense. The
purpose of her "holocaust-denier" smear
was to silence me. She had already
published her book, it was dead and gone.
If I had tried to get an injunction
against its appearing, that would
be silencing. Such injunctions are
notoriously difficult to obtain in the
British courts. Lipstadt on the other
hand spearheaded the violent campaign
against St Martin's Press to bludgeon
them into dropping my
Goebbels biography; and she
went through the most unsightly
contortions in March 2005
to prevent C-Span, the US news channel,
from broadcasting a complete recording
they made of a talk I gave in Atlanta
on her trial: since the network demanded
balance, they insisted on such a broadcast
if they were to cover her speech at
Harvard. Lipstadt actually
withdrew from the Harvard speech, cutting
off her own nose to spite her already
unlovely features, in order to prevent
the broadcast of my talk -- and then
her cronies in the US media, with
Richard Cohen at their head, had
the chutzpah to accuse me of silencing her
by giving the Atlanta talk! Go figure. For the whole C-Span
dossier, go to the link below.
ON another point, I have written to the
President of the Oxford Union, Luke
Tryl: Dear
Luke FIRST,
and briefly, my congratulations for
pulling it off. You were right about the
shackles; they would have gone down well
at Imperial College or UCL, but not at the
OU. On your other request
however, and I shall not labour the point,
you were wrong: you asked me not to give
an interview to Newsnight
[which the BBC had requested] and
I acceded to your request. Today,
reviewing the TV coverage, I find that you
yourself gave such an interview, and your
request to me was therefore unequal and
even improper. You should properly have
informed me that you intended to speak
with Newsnight, when making your
request to me not to do so. I am sure you
now realise this. I have to put up with, and
suffer under, a lot of unfair media
coverage, and speaking live on television
is one of the few ways that I can counter
this.
Richard
Cohen's fury in Washington Post and
otehr US papers that C-SPAN grants equal
air time: to silence David Irving,
Lipstadt cancels her
consent
Our
complete dossier on Lipstadt's C-Span
fiasco | The anti-fascist demonstration was scheduled for
7pm, so I arrived at the Union at quarter-to,
hoping to get in safely before any trouble started.
The Union consists of a main building (with the bar
and the library), the imposing Victorian debating
chamber opposite, and a garden in between. The
whole thing is surrounded by a high brick wall,
with one small gate giving access to St Michael's
Street. There's a back entrance too, but for
tonight, it was barred and shuttered: that small
gate was the only way in or out.St Michael's Street is a small, largely
pedestrianised road just off the Cornmarket, and
the demonstration was taking up the entire road.
The police hadn't set up a cordon between the
protesters and the Union gate, and it was pretty
evident that as soon as the crowd built up, it was
going to be impossible to get in and out. I made it
in just in time. Within fifteen minutes, the
anti-fascist demonstration was filling up the only
route into the Union, and a row of demonstrators
were sitting down, deliberately blocking the
gate. I went into the bar with Micah, a fellow Jewish
Society member. We'd corresponded over Facebook
about the event -- we'd disagreed over whether or
not the debate should take place, but now it was
happening for certain, Micah had decided he'd
rather be in the chamber arguing with the speakers
than outside it demonstrating. He'd had to leave
most of his friends on the other side of the
barricade. We were both hoping to speak in the
debate, so we had a beer together, compared what
we'd both written, and chatted about lines of
argument. We were both concerned that since the
motion was about free speech, it was going to be
difficult to challenge either speaker on their more
controversial views. We compared incriminating
quotations and disgusting BNP policies, and decided
that if Tryl told us off for speaking off-topic, we
could always invoke freedom of speech as a
defence. At about 7.30, there was a serious commotion
outside -- we rushed out into the garden to see.
Students with tickets for the event had arrived en
masse, and were being forcibly prevented from
getting in. Cameron, a friend from my college,
stuck his membership card and his event ticket
between his teeth, and vaulted over the wall.
Others pushed or jumped their way through the gate,
with anti-fascist protesters trying to drag them
back. There were cries of "shame on you", lots of
very fuzzy megaphone rhetoric, and anti-BNP chants.
We stood in the gardens, the hundred or so that had
made it, out of over four hundred that had
tickets. Around 8pm we went into the chamber and sat
down, with the debate scheduled for 8.30. We were
checked through individually, and our membership
cards were scanned one by one. By this time, there
were serious worries about the event going ahead,
as anti-fascist demonstrators had climbed onto the
Union's wall and were overlooking the gardens. It
was pretty obvious that security had been very
heavily compromised. In the chamber, there was no
sign of Irving or Griffin; we were told to sit
tight and stay away from the windows. Then a group of 20 or 30 anti-fascist
campaigners got through the gate and into the
gardens, and tried to storm the debating chamber.
Apparently the security guards had tried to let
some Union members in through the gate, but a surge
of demonstrators had muscled their way through.
Most students in the chamber stayed sitting, but
group of around 20 debate-goers stood against the
doors and stopped demonstrators from coming in. The
standoff continued for 10 or 15 minutes; then a few
of the event organisers in the chamber decided it
would be best to let the demonstrators in. There
were a few scuffles as they came through, and I saw
some grabbing and shoving from both sides, but no
punches thrown. Micah commented to me: "I've never felt so
threatened by my own side!" The group staged a sit-in on the floor of the
debating chamber, singing anti-racist songs,
chanting, and megaphoning us. A few Union members
tried to talk to them, but they seemed far more
interested in shouting us down than in discussing
the issues. I cobbled together a makeshift banner
in blue fountain pen and bits of A4 paper. It said
"FREE SPEECH IS YOUR BEST
DEFENCE. One of the photographers snapped
it; I don't think anyone else noticed. Around 9pm, the police finally arrived, -- where
had they been up till now? -- and herded everyone
upstairs into the gallery, checking everyone's
membership card on the way. They rooted out the
protestors, escorted them out of the building, and
a few minutes later brought us back down into the
chamber, checking all the membership cards a second
time. They obviously didn't do a great job, because
I found myself sitting next to two students from
Exeter who'd come to demonstrate, but were now
curious to hear what Irving and Griffin had to say,
and asked me not to rat on them. At
ten to ten, Lib Dem MP Evan Harris came in.
He was one of the scheduled speakers for the event.
He explained that another large group of Oxford
students was in the main building; they'd been
brought in via another entrance -- I heard
anecdotally that they'd come in via the fire escape
that leads to the Union's underground nightclub.
They couldn't be brought into the debating chamber,
because the demonstrators on the wall were making
it impossible to cross the garden between the two
buildings. Apparently, the forum was going to be
split into two halves, with Irving speaking at one,
and Griffin at the other. Five minutes later, Luke Tryl arrived, repeated
what Harris had said, and asked us specifically not
to applaud, jeer, or make any other loud noise
throughout the event. He didn't want to give the
demonstrators an impetus to storm the building
again; it was clear they could swarm over the wall
given half a chance. He went out for a few minutes, and came back
accompanied by David Irving; apparently the other
group had the dubious pleasure of being addressed
by Nick Griffin. Evan Harris and Anne Atkins
were also speaking. The seating arrangements were interesting. Tryl
was in the centre, at the speakers' table, where
you'd expect the President of the Union to sit for
a discussion forum. Harris and Atkins sat right
next to him, on the benches to his left. Irving was
on the other side, on his own, right in the middle
of a bench. Nobody was sitting anywhere near him.
He looked like a pariah; he looked very gruff and
very sullen. As Tryl introduced the speakers, he made it very
clear that he was distancing himself from Irving.
("Like all of you, I abhor his views, but ...") He
called him "despicable" and "abhorrent". It wasn't
quite as eloquent as Lee Bollinger's introduction
to Ahmadinejad, but it was heading in that
direction. His introductions of Harris and Atkins
were very matter-of-fact by comparison. Evan Harris kicked off the debate. He was
his usual self -- very slick, very personable, a
decent public speaker. He said that he would be
fully behind the protesters if only they were
arguing against Irving's and Griffin's views; but
since they were arguing against their right to
express those views, he couldn't back them. He
slammed the police for failing in their duty to
protect the debate, and asked why they hadn't
formed a proper cordon around the Union. He also
told us a bit about his decision to speak: he'd
been invited to the forum before it became public
that Irving and Griffin were going to speak, but
once he found out that they were coming, he decided
that it would be very unprincipled to drop out.
IRVING
was up next. I have to say that I was very
surprised by him. I expected an angry diatribe from
a stern-looking hatemonger. Irving comes across far
more like an academic, with a clipped and slightly
soft accent, very English. He spoke quite calmly.
He started off by thanking the Union for the chance
to speak -- this was his seventh invitation, and
the only one that hadn't been cancelled. He
expressed his hope that the demonstrations were
largely aimed at Nick Griffin rather than
himself. He began his argument with the words "I'm not a
Holocaust denier -- but you've never had the chance
to find that out." He insisted time and time again
that he published what he believed to be the truth,
and that he was being victimised because his view
didn't correspond to the orthodox one. He peppered
his speech with references to the Holocaust, and it
sounded as if he was doing it rather
self-consciously, almost defensively. He
paraphrased Animal Farm, claiming that he was "less
equal than other historians". At this point, the two demonstrators from Exeter
who were sitting near me got up, and stomped out of
the hall in disgust. Irving then went on a bit of a general rant
about free speech. I felt extremely uncomfortable
as I found myself agreeing with much of his
rhetoric on the subject, although I was well aware
that in every sense, he had utterly failed to live
up to what he was preaching. He said "freedom of
speech means the right to be wrong sometimes" -- I
doubt he's admitting that his views are wrong, but
in truth, it shouldn't be a crime to lie (or, more
likely, to delude oneself) about historical
facts. His parting shot should be a serious warning to
the anti-fascist demonstrators: "Every time I'm
banned from another country, I regard it as a
victory ... it means there's no-one there who can
debate against me!"
Anne Atkins was next up. She took much the same
line as Harris on free speech; it's noteworthy that
as a Christian writer, she argued for the repeal of
the blasphemy laws ("God doesn't get offended!").
She also told us that the protestors outside had
been chanting "Kill Tryl", which in her view very
much fell outside the limits of legitimate free
speech: it was incitement to murder; how ironic.
She spoke about people in the past who had been
killed simply because they spoke against the view
of the majority -- her main example was of course
Jesus, whose views were considered dangerous and
worthy of suppression by the Roman rulers of the
time. By this point, the constant din of anti-fascist
protesters outside had almost entirely vanished. It
sounded like they'd given up. It was almost 11,
close to the time limit for the debate, and neither
Micah nor I got to make our speeches. Tryl decided
that instead of opening the debate to the floor,
he'd allow questions and answers instead.
Predictably most of the questions went to
Irving. Wasn't he a hypocrite to defend free speech when
he had sued Lipstadt in order to silence her? No,
he said, he had agonised for a long time over
whether or not to take legal action, but did so
ultimately because "she had amassed a landslide
against me", and because "free speech doesn't mean
a licence to smear". He did, however, agree that
"it looks hypocritical". There was, apparently, a
"fine line". He also said that the trial took place seven
years ago, and that if anyone accused him nowadays
of being an active Holocaust denier, they were
slandering him: "I don't buy the whole package,
that's all -- but it doesn't make me a denier." No
jeers -- people reluctantly obeyed Tryl's request -
but there were hisses, muffled expletives, and very
audible intakes of breath. Micah got his hand in, and asked about Irving's
infamous racist poem, which he'd written for his
young daughter: - I am a Baby Aryan
- Not Jewish or Sectarian
- I have no plans to marry an
- Ape or Rastafarian
The reply wasn't very edifying. Irving admitted
to writing it, told us how it had been used against
him in his trial, and pointed out that it was only
19 words long, and was found after people had
trawled through hundreds of thousands
[in fact
millions] of words of his diaries.
"Whatever that poem represents, it's a very small
percentage of who I am ... I told that to the
judge, and he wasn't impressed." Nor were any of
us, and the under-the-breath hisses told it
all. It was about quarter past eleven, and Tryl
called time on the debate. Irving was escorted out
of the room; we were told to stay put until it was
safe for us to leave. Anne Atkins and
Evan Harris kept us amused by taking more
questions and answers, until at about 11.30pm we
were told we could go. The protest had dispersed by
then; just banners strewn all over the floor. St
Michael's Street looked like a total mess. I took
my little makeshift banner on the way out; somebody
patted me on the back as I held it up. Coming onto
the Cornmarket, I walked straight back to college,
and made a beeline for the computers, which is
where I am now. Writing it all up. It's too late, and I'm too tired, to formulate
any sort of coherent response to what's happened
today. I'll just set out a few quick thoughts, in
the order that they ooze out of my brain. - Firstly, it's ridiculous to claim to be
anti-fascist when you're blocking a public right
of way, and stopping people from getting to a
legal meeting, however much you disagree with
that meeting.
- Secondly, the argument we heard time and
time again about the threat from BNP activists
being so great that it trumped the right to free
debate. I didn't see any BNP people at all
(although I'm willing to admit I wasn't in a
position to see everything that happened, and
they may well have been there). What I did see
was a large group of so-called anti-fascists
prepared to use physical force to stop people
getting to a debate, use large amounts of
amplified noise to try and drown the debate out,
shout abuse and intimidation at students going
about their lawful business, and call for the
death of a 20-year-old young man with pretty
mainstream political views.
- Thirdly, I felt sickened by Irving's
constant references to the Holocaust, coupled
with his constant efforts to underplay the scale
and meaning of it, and his noxious suggestion
that Britain should have done a deal with the
Nazis in 1940, and pulled out of the war -- it
would have meant the subjugation of the entire
continent and the eradication of European Jewry,
but Irving maintains it would have been in the
best interests of Britain. As an
internationalist and as a believer in universal
human rights, that sickens me.
- Fourthly, I'm immensely glad that I was able
to hear Irving speak. I don't think it
endangered me or put me at risk of corruption.
It broadened my horizons and let me find out
something about a man who up till now had only
ever been a sort of bogeyman -- and some of the
things that I found out were genuinely
surprising. I don't see why I should have been
barred from going to this talk because of
somebody else's arbitrary judgement. I'm also
quite glad that Irving's views were shown up and
challenged very strongly by students in the
audience.
Fifthly, I'm physically and mentally shattered,
it's quarter to two in the morning, I'm not sure I
can stomach any more of this whole saga which has
dominated Oxford life for the past two months, so
I'm going to bed! [Don't
forget to view the many comments: click and scroll
down] -
David
Irving, a Radical's Diary: After thirty
years, I finally speak at the Oxford Union. Not
everybody is happy about it. A full
report
- BBC
report on the event -- an Oriel undergraduate,
said most questions were addressed to Mr
Irving. He said: "I think it was a very
balanced argument and both sides did really
well." | Guardian
| Independent
| Evening Standard | Will
Self: "I loathe these bigots' views but we can't
just ban hate" -- (who are the bigots, then,
Will? Get your heroin-addled brain sorted out.)|
Der
Spiegel's version [in German, but good
photos] | Mark Hoofnagle [where do they
get these names?]: Holocaust
Denier David Irving at Oxford -- A report
-
Lipstadt
threw her weight into the voting fray -- "No one
at the Union seems to support Irving's
views" | BBC
report | Oxford
Mail: defeated opponents now threaten violence
on Monday
-
The Independent reports Oxford
votes on whether Irving should address Union
| and earns a
warning letter
-
David Irving, a Radical's Diary: Today
I must drive into London to get a haircut and
some balls. I shall need them for Monday
-
David Irving
issues a warning letter to Denis McShane: I
shall without further notice issue a Claim in
Defamation against yourself
-
Flashback to 2001: When
Lord Triesman threatened a global boycott of
Oxford University if Mr Irving spoke
-
Socialist
Worker reports Oxford students plan reponse to
Mr Irving's O.U. debut -- who's paying, now
that Moscow won't? And he denies he's coming
anyway | Scottish
Student newspaper comments on Oxford Union
invitation
-
Losing battle -- Should
David Irving be a guest of the Oxford Union?
asks The Times Features Editor Daniel
Finkelstein (I wonder how he got that job),
and may be surprised at the answers his blog
gets
-
More outrage from usual suspects: Irving
isn't a denier, says Oxford paper
Cherwell
-
Cherwell
(Oxford University) on the invitations
uproar | Confronted
with spook that David Irving may speak at Oxford
Union, National Union of Students says, "We'll
prevent it."
| Outrage at
STL Jewish Light What is going on here? Has the
statute of limitations expired on open and overt
anti-Semitism on college campuses
-
The Guardian's outrage: BNP
leader Nick Griffin and David Irving invited to
address Oxford Union, the famous speaking
forum
-
David Irving, A Radical's Diary: Is
he speaking at Oxford or not?
-
David
Irving issues a warning letter: "I shall without
further notice issue a Claim in
Defamation"
-
What
David Irving really thinks about the Holocaust -
Hitler's apologist
-
Why
Irving regretted his days in court
-
A
Radical's Diary: The Jewish Chronicle is
becoming Irving-obsessed
-
|