Around 200 protestors gathered outside the Cambridge Union on Tuesday afternoon to protest against Marine Le Pen's invite to speak. The French far-right leader, who was set to address students from 4pm, was met with chants of "Nazi scum - off our streets", "Le Pen, Le Pen - never again" and "Follow your leader, shoot yourself like Adolf Hitler".

The Union building was surrounded by private security guards and around 50 police officers, holding back some demonstrators who attempted to make their way into the building.

Those attending the speech were given allocated by a random ballot and attendees were thoroughly searched and prevented from bringing in cameras and mobile phones. Police officers were jeered with chants from the crowd of "Who protects Nazis? Police protect the Nazis". French protestors chanted "Vichy, Vichy-jamais plus!" as French television cameras and reporters looked on. Shortly after 15:30 a Holocaust survivor addressed protestors outside the building, telling the crowd Marine Le Pen was a "new symbol of fascism" in Europe.

According to the Cambridge News, University of Cambridge senior proctor Owen Saxton, present at the protest, said: "The Union is separate from the university but we are supporting their action in inviting her to speak because everyone has the right to free speech." A University spokesman commented that "the University would not interfere with the decisions of the Union Society and would defend the right to free speech by anybody in the interests of debate.”

Inside, Le Pen's speech was beset by communication and audio problems with students struggling to hear the MEP's words as they were relayed by a translator. As the afternoon went on, the number of protestors outside thinned and as darkness fell, smaller groups of activists were attempting to block some of the Union building's exits. At 18:45 Le Pen left the venue, hurriedly exiting through a side door, as demonstrators continued to chant against her.

Le Pen, in an acknowledgement to the furore surrounding her visit, began her talk by expressing she was glad that the number of people present in the chamber showed “there are some people still prepared to defend freedom of expression”. She thanked the Union for “sticking to their traditions and allowing her to express the thrust of her political thought”.

She began by talking about the current state of French politics. She described her “honour at directing a political front which is about the defence of the weakest.” “There have been 30 years of setbacks in France”, she said. “Now it must come back to play the game of the nations”.

On immigration, she elaborated upon her party’s proposed 'New Deal for Immigration'. Claiming that “immigration pushes down workers” and “immigrants then end up in ghettos and directly cause tension”, she also insisted it “leads to more and more radical Islamism which poisons the secular French state and security”.

Her talk, however, mainly concerned France’s position within the European Union. “The EU has isolated itself from international politics”, she insisted; “the construction of Europe has gone off the rails. The whole point of the Union has always been to aim for a Federation; its philosophy will always be ultra-liberal. It is a mega-techno structure imposed on people. The European bureaucracy is drunk with incompetence. The markets are a dictatorship, destroying public services.” Just like communism in its time, she suggested, Europe “has veered off the rails”. All this to the chants and whistles of protestors, which halfway through her speech grew increasingly audible from the chamber.

Meanwhile, Le Pen suggested that France should engage in a more protectionist policy. “We need a French equivalent of the Small Business Act. We need to reign in the finance sector. Investment banks, like Goldman and Sachs, influence political decision making more than they ought to. France has inherited this phenomena, unfortunately, from the US and UK.”

She related French concerns to the current British political scene. The EU problem is “at the heart of British concerns. Cameron fears that the future of the UKIP party under Nigel Farage will be bright. Only the people, in a referendum, can decide on these questions.” Britain was a positive example for Le Pen in much of her talk. She asserted a "certain respect for the UK for its commonwealth and ability to influence the rest of the world through its post-colonial situation."

Le Pen concluded her speech with a quotation by William Blake: “everything to be imagined is an image of truth”.

Originally scheduled to end at 17:00, the demand to ask questions was such that the talk went on much longer. Asked where she saw France in thirty years, her response was that the twin threats of immigration and globalisation could see French civilisation disappear, as it loses its know-how, and sense of identity. If Nazism and communism were the twentieth century’s totalitarianisms, Islam and globalisation were this century’s equivalents.

Ex-Cambridge Union President Francesca Hill delighted the audience with her interrogation of “how many generations do you need [as an immigrant] until you can say that France is your home?” Le Pen’s response was indignant, insisting that Hill was mistaken, and subscribing to a caricature image of the National Front as racists and xenophobes. She cited Italian, Spanish and Polish immigrants who had succeeded in successfully assimilating within French society. The problem today, she said, in French society was that immigrants are not assimilated individually.

Asked about provocative statements made by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1987  concerning the Holocaust, specifically that it was “a detail in the history of World War Two”, she expressed her frustration that the comment is so frequently brought up: “my family has absolutely nothing to blush about”, she maintained.

On radical Islam, she stated that as president she would fight it with complete strength, comparing it to “cancerous cells” with a tendency to “mitosis”. She targeted Qatar and Saudi Arabia as examples of states supporting terrorism, and denounced the “hypocrisy” of European countries maintaining relations with them.

Le Pen answered a final question with the insistence that the National Front party did not just attract xenophobes. If you come to meetings, there are all social classes, all ages, people from right and left, she insisted. On her attitudes towards the burka, she deemed it “imprisoning”, and concluded that not wearing it is a sacrifice immigrants should want to make for participating in their new nation’s “common destiny”, so “hated” is it by the French.

Responses to Le Pen’s talk from Cambridge students afterwards were mixed. “I found it hard to agree with anything you said”, one questioner during the talk had challenged, and this attitude was a common one. A student who asked not to be named, when asked for their reaction, said simply “she’s good at evading questions”.

Emily Dean of Murray Edwards College compared Marine Le Pen and her father: “I heard her father speak, he was an incredibly good speaker; everything he said seemed so reasonable at the time. Then you go away and think about what he is trying to persuade you of and rationalise it. But I think she is cleverer, more dangerous.”

Trinity student Tatiana Zoe Bella Barnes, however, was more critical. “She said nothing surprising and had obviously safely tailored her response to an English middle class student audience. Even though the protestors were wrong to try and stop free speech, they really had nothing to worry about because thankfully she was useless.”