Death Threats Sent to Oxide DJs
Two students have received death threats over their plans to interview BNP leader Nick Griffin on Oxide Radio.
OUSU stepped into the row by cancelling Griffin’s appearance, calling his views “just too offensive” to give airtime.
The two presenters, whom The Oxford Student has decided not to name, were set to speak to Griffin live on air next Thursday. But their plans were met with a torrent of threats by email and post.
In addition, student activists even warned that they would storm the Oxide studio in protest against the far-right leader’s appearance. In a joint statement released before OUSU’s decision, the presenters said, “Since announcing this show, we’ve received threats from various legions of unwashed little creeps in their mother’s basement, both by email and now more recently by post. But we’re not going to be bullied into changing our minds.
Even though an “unexpected level” of threats had been received at the beginning of Third Week, the two presenters decided to go ahead with the show. In an unexpected intervention, OUSU, who fund Oxide, demanded that the presenters scrap Griffin’s appearance. On Wednesday afternoon, the OUSU Vice-President for Finance, Ed Mayne, instructed Station Manager Paul Arrich to cancel the interview.
OUSU President Alan Strickland said, “We were deeply concerned to hear that Oxide had arranged to interview Griffin. OUSU has always had a no-platform policy for fascist groups like the BNP, meaning that we deny them all access to any public platform within our control.” He added, “There is no way we would let a fascist group use any of the Student Union’s facilities or services to spread its message of division, offence and hate.
In response to the news of his cancelled appearance, Griffin said, “I’m not particularly surprised. I’m afraid that most student unions are in the hands of a group of far-left fascist cranks. “It’s a shame that Oxford is controlled by this unrepresentative clique. I hope that the majority of Oxford students will realise that their student union cannot continue to clamp down on free speech.
Since his appointment as BNP chairman in 1999, Griffin has sparked outrage by referring to the holocaust as the “holohoax".
Griffin has also pledged support for capital punishment. His party campaigns for “stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration” into Britain, according to their 2005 manifesto. He was recently found not guilty of inciting racial hatred after referring to Islam as a “wicked and vicious faith” in a BBC undercover documentary.
Griffin said, “Fundamentally, this is not only an attack on freedom of speech but an attack on Oxford students’ rights to hear things and make their own minds up.” BNP spokesperson Dr Phil Edwards said, “These people who send threats are just part of a totalitarian tyranny "It’s just like the Soviet Union. They’re going against the spirit of open debate. “Our freedoms are being taken away �" we’re turning into a nation of bloody idiots.
The two Oxide presenters have stood by their decision to interview the BNP Chairman. They said, “We are firmly of the opinion that everyone is entitled to freedom of speech, and reasoned debate is by far the best method of combating right-wing feeling. Stifling it seems blinkered, pig-headed, counterproductive and stupid. If we ignore the BNP, it’s not just going to go away.” Station Manager Paul Arrich said, “Oxide is in favour of free speech.
“Figures like Galloway [who was interviewed by Oxide last term] and Nick Griffin might be controversial, but we don’t believe that silencing people is right.” Balliol student Duncan Money, who recently protested against George Galloway’s appearance at the Oxford Union, told The Oxford Student that he and a group of students had planned to storm the OUSU building, where the Oxide studio is based, during the interview with Nick Griffin.
He said, “Someone who advocates the hanging of homosexuals should not be allowed to participate in a debate about ‘Britishness’.
1st Feb 2007