WAS The Oxford Union right to invite David Irving, the Holocaust denier, and Nick Griffin, leader of The British National Party, to speak at one of its meetings?

The Oxford students' union - not the same body as the Oxford Union - firmly believes it should not have done so. But surely it is the mark of a mature democracy to allow freedom of speech even to those whose views are generally regarded as contemptible? The students' union says not: "There is a world of difference between defending free speech and choosing to provide a platform for fascists. Far from being the champions of free speech, history shows that when fascists rise to power they destroy freedom of speech, democracy, human rights and they have murdered millions of people."

The students' opposition is hopelessly muddled and misguided. They are certainly right to say that fascists destroy freedom of speech. So why do the students adopt the same fascist policy of banning people with whom they disagree from speaking? Why are the students themselves behaving like the fascists they claim to detest? We might have expected a more consistent logic from members of Oxford University.

The students believe that Nick Griffin and David Irving are in the wrong. Students at the elite Oxford University are intellectuals - at least they are reckoned to be intelligent. So why do they have so little confidence in their own intellectual competence? If they believe that Irving and Griffin are in the wrong, they must believe this on the basis of reason and rational argument. Why then, don't they demonstrate the superiority of their rational arguments by first listening to Griffin and Irving and then refuting them publicly?

If they lack the gumption, let me do it for them. Irving is a malicious fool to deny the Holocaust. There is so much historical evidence to say it took place: the liberation of the concentration camps; the reports of survivors; the confirmation of mass slaughter in thousands of captured Nazi documents; the massive depletion of the Jewish population worldwide after the Second World War; the thousands of miles of reels of film depicting the evil events which Irving denies. For Irving to persist in denying the Holocaust is as if a man should deny that the Second World War itself ever happened.

The policies of the BNP are vile and sectarian.

If they were ever made into law, they would turn race relations in this country into a blood bath. The evil, mindless racism of the BNP is in any case based on lies and the misrepresentation of racial characteristics. There is no evidence to support their white supremacist views.

Their policy of wholesale repatriation is impractical.

More important than practicalities though is the fact that the BNP preaches that white British people should despise non-white British people.

I condemn as evil the views of both Irving and the BNP absolutely and unreservedly. But I am ashamed of the Oxford students who will not give platform space to these views and then demonstrate to the public at large just why the Holocaust deniers and the BNP thugs are wrong. This would do us all a great service by exposing evil and exorcising it. As usual the rentamob left-wing loudmouths have copped out.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.