BNP’s Griffin calls critics ‘Nazis’

Did BNP leader Nick Griffin pay a backhanded compliment - in his eyes - to anti-fascism protesters at last night's Oxford Union debate on free speech? There were angry scenes as scores of demonstrators broke through a security cordon to stage a sit-down protest against the presence of Griffin and the Holocaust-denying historian David Irving. The event went ahead with the two men forced to speak in separate rooms - Griffin in a cramped room in the main university building, while Irving remained in the renowned debating chamber.

In his speech to about 150 students, Griffin, flanked by two shaven-headed heavies, said of the protesters: "Those people outside are a mob and they could kill. I have seen them beat old men and women who are wearing war medals and try and kill them. Had they grown up in Nazi Germany they would have been splendid Nazis."

Irving, who has spent time in jail in Austria for denying the Holocaust, and was once described by a High Court judge as "racist" and "anti-semitic" during a libel trial, said he refused to be bowed. "I am not going to write what they want me to write. I am going to write what I find in the archives." (Continued below)

Two Oxford University debating stalwarts took to the floor against Griffin - Jess Prince, a 23-year-old Canadian who said she has been debating for 11 years, and James Dary, 25. Prince called Griffin "disgusting and abhorrent". But unlike most debates at the Oxford Union, there was no official motion and therefore no way for the audience to express whether they liked what Griffin and Irving had to say.