The scenes outside the Oxford Union the other night were deeply depressing. Here was a mob determined to stifle free speech by preventing a debate on that very subject.

However abhorrent the views of David Irving and Nick Griffin might be to the vast majority of people, in a free society they should have the right to express those views, just as those who disagree with them have the right to challenge them - though in debate, not by baying, howling and brandishing banners.

Isn't that what a grown-up democracy is supposed to be about? But then, that's not the sort of country Britain now is.

Those who sought to silence these two men will have risked doing far more to win sympathy for the far right than if they'd let them make their cases and then used calm and reasoned moral argument to demolish them.