Luke Tryl, a former Youth Parliament member for Calderdale, is facing a boycott tonight.

Mr Tryl, who was chairman of Halifax branch of Conservative Future, is now a student at Magdalen College, Oxford, and president of the union debating society.

He invited Holocaust denier David Irving and BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak at a free speech forum tonight.

Now other speakers are refusing to appear at the union, famous for its high-profile debates.

Defence Secretary Des Browne, TV presenter June Sarpong, Labour MP Chris Bryant and former Europe minister Denis MacShane have pulled out.
But Mr Tryl, formerly of Burnley Road, Trimm-ingham, Halifax, defended his decision.

He said: "These people are not being given a platform to extol their views, but are coming to talk about the limits of free speech.

"There will be other speakers to challenge their views, head to head, and the opportunity for students to challenge them from the floor.

"Pushing the views of these people underground achieves nothing – it only allows them to become free-speech martyrs, and from my own experience in Halifax, which has suffered from race-relation problems in the past, groups like the BNP do well if they look like they're being censored."

Mr Griffin is the leader of the British National Party and has a conviction for incitement to racial hatred.

Historian Mr Irving spent 13 months in an Austrian prison for making speeches in which he disputed the Nazis had murdered six million Jews during the war.