Proposed Irving TCD Meeting cancelled

national | miscellaneous | news report

Tuesday November 05, 2002 14:33

by AFA - Anti Fascist Action

afa at ireland dot com

C/o PO Box 3355, Dublin 7.

Fair play to TCD security for refusing to provide security for the proposed Irving meeting. They realise that the grief involved is not worth it to indulge the annual idiocy of some brattish 'debating society'.

A notice from David Irving's website.

Monday, November 4, 2002

Trinity College Dublin cancels planned talk by David Irving
Students at Trinity College Dublin's Historical Society have today informed David Irving:

On Friday afternoon we received the following communication from the head of security here in college:
" A visit to College by Mr. Irving [sic] a number of years ago was cancelled for security and safety reasons. While I am sure that the Historical Society and the vast majority of the college community would act in a responsible manner during this proposed visit, it is well known that there are various elements within and outside College who would use every means at their disposal to disrupt the visit. I have to take into account the safety of every person on campus (including near to 400 candidates/guests attending a Diploma Awards ceremony that evening) plus the security and care of College buildings and property.
On these grounds, I regret to say, I would not be in favour of this visit taking place."

This letter means, in effect, that although College cannot directly ban the event they wish to do so indirectly by refusing to provide security services for it. Unfortunately, we cannot prevent them from doing this, as security is provided for our meetings at the discretion of the College authorities. We have protested this decision with the utmost vigor, but College is quite immovable.
Subsequent to this letter, we held over the weekend an extraordinary meeting of the Society Committee at which it was decided that we regretfully are not in a position to proceed with the meeting planned for November 19th if the security of our guest, our committee and our audience cannot be provided for.
I wish to take this opportunity to apologise sincerely to you on the behalf of the Society for this turn of events and especially for the inconvenience no doubt caused to you. Our illusions about the commitment of this university to free speech have rather abruptly been shattered.

More information: Robert Lynch, Trinity College Dublin duhist@tcd.ie