London, Monday,14 May 2001

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Letters[letters@ standard.co.uk]

The Oxford Union made a poor choice

THE Oxford Union was wrong to offer a platform to David Irving (Oxford bans Irving from free speech debate, 10 May). The judge in the libel action that Irving saw fit to bring, to prevent Deborah Lipstadt from attacking him, described him as a man who “for ideological reasons, persistently misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence” and is “an active Holocaust denier . . . anti-Semitic and racist.”

The “Error of judgment” (Editorial, 10 May) was that of the Union in inviting this man — and sadly, later yours in criticising it for withdrawing that invitation.

The Lord Janner of Braunstone, QC

Chairman, Holocaust Educational Trust,

St James’s Park, SW1

 

Website note: READERS who want to form their own impression of Lord Janner — and we are not referring to the outrageous criminal allegations levelled about his personal life some years ago — and the activities of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and his pet animal, the “Holocaust Educational Trust”, are invited to have a look behind the armourplated doors of the Board, at a secret meeeting held in December 1991, where that same charitable trust plotted to blackmail Mr Irving’s publisher Macmillan Ltd into violating their publishing contracts with him:   Secret minutes of the meeting | Witness Statement of a non-Jewish participant, who refused to be a party to the blackmail | That academic’s letter published in The Daily Telegraph reporting the incident | A Complaint in Nov 1996 to the Data Protection Agency about the Board of Deputies of British Jews

Related items on this website: 

 Irving is blackballed by the Reform | Oxford Union bans Irving from debate on free speech | Free speech under threat at Oxford Union | debate storm | boycott threat | threat to Oxford Union over Irving appearance