British National Party MEP Nick Griffin has written to Sir Bob Geldof and other honorary patrons of Trinity College’s philosophical society asking them to intervene in a row which has seen him disinvited from speaking at a debate in the college tomorrow night.
In a letter to patrons, including former taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mr Griffin attributes the retraction to speak in the debate titled “This House Believes Immigration Has Gone Too Far” to “a mob of about 30 far-left activists” who “threatened students to such a degree that the debate was cancelled on safety grounds”. He called the issue “an attack on free speech”.
Meanwhile in a letter published in this paper yesterday, the graduate students union said the retraction was the result of “widespread opposition throughout the entire Trinity community to Ireland’s most prestigious university lending a platform to neo-Nazi ideologists.”