LONDON, Nov 26: Police were on standby on Monday ahead of planned protests against a Holocaust-denying historian and a far-right politician at Oxford University’s prestigious student debating club.

Organisers of a debate at the Oxford Union have resisted pressure to withdraw invitations to David Irving, who was jailed in Austria over his views on the Holocaust, and British National Party head Nick Griffin.

The pair was due to discuss free speech, along with other guests, including Defence Secretary Des Browne, but for days the event itself has been subject of intense debate about the limits of liberty of expression. Luke Tryl, the debating society’s president, dismissed accusations that it was a publicity stunt, pointing out that the club’s members had voted clearly in favour of extending the invitations to Irving and Griffin.

“They agreed with me that we’ve got to fight fascism head on, in debate,” he told Sky News television. But Trevor Phillips, head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, condemned the decision to go ahead with the evening debate.

“As a former president of the National Union of Students, I’m ashamed that this has happened. This is not a question of freedom of speech, this is a juvenile provocation,” he told the BBC on Sunday.

“What I would say to students at Oxford is: you’re supposed to be brilliant. Put your brains back in your head.” Security was tight, with entrance by ticket only and one door of the ancient debating chamber building sealed off.

Controversial historian Irving, 69, is notorious for attempting to claim that Adolf Hitler was not party to the Nazis’ genocide of European Jews during World World II. He spent 13 months in jail in Austria over his views.

Griffin, who was convicted in 1998 for incitement to racial hatred for material denying the Holocaust, has repeatedly denied that the BNP is a racist group. Former members of the Oxford Union include five former British prime ministers, while ex-Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was the Union’s president in 1977.—AFP