24 April 2003: Cambridge
Le Pen humiliated at the Cambridge Union
Some 200 Anti Nazi League pickets blockaded and humiliated Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French fascist leader, when he came to speak at the Cambridge Union on Thursday 24 April. Le Pen left as he entered, surrounded by bodyguards and whisked away in a fast car, with hundreds of anti-Nazis surrounding him. The meeting was a shambles – no-one attending could hear Le Pen speak thanks the volume of chanting outside.
Jean-Marie Le Pen
French Nazi Jean-Marie Le Pen: blockaded by activists
The meeting was disgracefully and dishonestly organised by the Cambridge Union (a private debating society, not to be confused with the university's Student Union).
Edward Cumming, president of the Cambridge Union, wrote to the ANL in February "to invite you to a debate This House would Gag the Bad ... this is an issue which is particularly prominent in Cambridge at the moment after the Student Union passed a No Platform policy in the wake of an invitation to Nick Griffin to speak."
In fact, the debating society had twice invited BNP führer Griffin to speak – and Anti Nazi League protests stopped him both times.
These repeated attempts to roll out the red carpet to Nazis prompted Cambridge students to campaign for a No Platform policy, which was won at a Student Union meeting earlier this year.