Marine Le Pen’s Oxford university speech delayed by protesters

By Jon Henley and Areeb Ullah. Appearance by leader of France’s far-right Front National party sparks protests by students chanting anti-fascist slogans.
A crowd of some 300 jeering, banner-waving demonstrators delayed by more than an hour a controversial speech by Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Front, to the Oxford Union on Thursday.
Security guards were forced to close the doors to the university’s debating society after a dozen balaclava-wearing anti-fascist protesters, chanting “Le Pen, never again”, “No pasarán” and “Oxford Union, shame on you,” came close to scaling the walls from the street outside.
Smuggled in through a side door two hours before the scheduled start of her speech, Le Pen said she was very grateful for the invitation to address an organisation that “since its foundation has been a place of open debate and freedom of expression”.
In the aftermath of last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris in which three Islamist gunmen shot dead 17 people, including 12 at the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, she said it was clear that the “first of all our freedoms, security, is now threatened by Islamist terrorism”. More...