John Howard, the former Prime Minister of Australia, found himself under attack at the Union on Friday night as an angry member of the audience heckled the political figure and then threw a boot at him.

The audience was left baffled by the bizarre incident. Australia’s second-longest-serving Prime Minister had only just begun his speech on “Leadership in a New Century” when an Australian postgraduate student loudly called him a racist and told him to “go home”. Mr Howard replied that he was not a racist and that he was going home on Tuesday, after which the student removed his boot and lobbed it at the speaker.

The boot was intercepted by Andrew Chapman, a third-year Robinson student studying SPS and an avid cricketer.

“I didn’t want him to get a clear shot at Mr Howard so I stood up to put myself between him and the former Prime Minister and when he threw the shoe I caught it,’’ Chapman commented.

The shoe-thrower, who wished to remain anonymous, is an Australian national who lived in Australia throughout Mr Howard’s eleven-year premiership. Speaking to Varsity, he cited his objections to Mr Howard’s foreign policy and his treatment of asylum seekers in Australia as the reason behind his protest.

“The immigration detention system continued by the Howard government saw asylum seekers forcibly incarcerated in detention facilities located both in Australia and offshore.

“In 2004 over 2000 children had fallen victim to this harsh immigration policy. The Howard government’s approach to people seeking asylum in Australia was condemned by the United Nations and I do not believe that it was a valid way to treat human beings.”

Julian Domercq, President of the Cambridge Union, said in a statement, “We cannot condone this kind of behaviour, and hope that our members will not be discouraged from engaging in reasoned dialogue in future events. We are grateful to Mr Howard for kindly giving up his time to address our Society, and admire the good grace with which he handled the incident.”

The throwing of shoes at political figures has been a popular method of protest in recent years, not least in Cambridge. This February, Darwin College postgraduate Martin Jahnke threw a shoe at Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao whilst the leader was delivering a speech on the global economy at Cambridge University.

Jahnke was taken to court but cleared of all charges amongst claims of political interference.

Both Cambridge protestors seem to have taken inspiration from an incident last December in which an Iraqi journalist threw his shoe at American President George W. Bush during a news conference in Baghdad.

Mr Howard has attracted criticism for his close relations with President Bush and his support for the ‘War on Terror’. However, the potency of the shoe-thrower’s political statement may have been undermined after he asked a friend to retrieve the shoe he had thrown from the Union so that he could walk home.

Indeed, the fact that the shoe did not reach Mr Howard prompted the former premier him to bemoan the “pathetic throw”. After the incident he jested with Union members that the student “would never be on my team”.

The shoe-thrower told Varsity, “The act of throwing a shoe however unoriginal was intended as a harmless act of political protest.

“I wished to express my belief that the domestic and foreign policies implemented by John Howard’s government in Australia were unacceptable.”